Are We Witnessing a Come-to-Democracy Moment

Vladimir Putin's lawless invasion of Ukraine and the daily brutality being witness by Americans daily on newscasts has brought something rare to America: unanimity for the most part on support for Ukraine and its people and condemnation of Russian aggression.  True, some Republicans - many still political prostitutes to Donald Trump, one of Putin's enablers - prefer to criticize Joe Biden rather than look for common means to aid Ukraine and the "let's go Brandon" crowd is whining about the cost of gasing up their huge trucks and SUV's that they require to compensate for their inadequate manhood. Yet others arguing for mre oil and gas drilling in America demonstrating their ignorance to the reality that drilling today typically will not result in marketable production until years down the road (I was once in-house counsel to an oil company, so I do know this reality).   This moment in history should be a time when all Americans rededicate themselves to democracy and reject those who would divide us for political or financial gain, e.g. Christofascist scamvangelists.  A column in the Washington Post at this much needed effort. Here are highlights:

The outpouring of admiration for President Volodymyr Zelensky and the bravery of the Ukrainian people is rooted in healthy impulses. In overwhelming numbers, Americans recognize authentic virtue when we see it and understand that this struggle really is about freedom, democracy and justice.

But beneath our appreciation for a nobly embattled foreign leader lurks a form of avoidance, a wish that we might redeem our own democracy vicariously without facing up to our division, polarization and decay. We come together behind Zelensky partly because we can unite on little else.

At our most optimistic, we might imagine that Vladimir Putin’s aggression has, at long last, unleashed a come-to-democracy moment.

This is already underway in Europe, where leaders of nationalist parties who once heaped praise on Putin are fleeing him in embarrassment. In France, the National Rally Party of far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has ordered its organizers to throw away 1.2 million pamphlets that featured Le Pen shaking hands with Putin. With French voting starting April 10, she doesn’t have a lot of time for her Putin cleansing operation.

In the United States, we can be grateful that Ukraine’s cause draws support across the political spectrum. Witness the applause when President Biden denounced Putin and embraced Zelensky and the Ukrainian people in his State of the Union speech.

But Zelensky should not be used as a source of cheap grace. We cannot ignore the shadows that have fallen across American democracy, cast largely by the power of an increasingly antidemocratic far right in the Republican Party.

Republicans have been very slow in coming to terms with the depth of Putinization that Donald Trump bred in their party. The former president will now forever be remembered as the man whose initial reaction to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was to call it an act of “genius.”

I suppose it’s a good sign that former vice president Mike Pence — very, very belatedly — now says “there is no room in this party for apologists for Putin.” But Republicans largely sidestep Trump and ignore the many ways he undermined Zelensky while in office. Their preferred path, reflected in the reply of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) to Biden’s State of the Union address, is to blame Putin’s aggression on Biden’s “weakness on the world stage” . . .

Reynolds’s speech reflected a central current in the GOP — to get on the right side of popular sentiment in favor of Ukraine without cutting ties to Trump, and without giving Biden any credit for his work in corralling a broad global coalition against Russia’s imperial adventure.

Couldn’t Republicans shelve their reflexive hostility toward Biden for at least the initial spell of the Ukraine crisis? This is what Democrats did after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.  But we now seem incapable of recognizing common ground, even where it exists.

And until Putin discredited himself entirely with his Ukraine aggression, the Russian leader had successfully weaponized social divisions among Western democracies to make their politics even more dysfunctional. He built a following by casting himself as a foe of permissiveness, feminism, LGBTQ activists, secularists and diversity advocates. The more he aggravated feelings around these issues — in alliance with politicians who had an interest in driving wedges — the weaker he made the democracies.

With his criminal assault on Ukraine, Putin has reminded the world of where nationalist authoritarianism can lead and how costly a smash-mouth brand of politics that accentuates and exaggerates our differences can be. At the same time, the courage shown by Zelensky and his fellow Ukrainians in standing up to brutality should give heart to all defenders of democracy and self-rule.

But Zelensky can’t save anyone else’s democracy. We have to do this ourselves. Perhaps this terrible episode will help us recognize that our shared commitment to democracy runs a lot deeper than we thought. We need to come together to fight for it — starting at home.