Complacency Will Be the Death Of American Democracy

I have been politically engaged and - in my view - informed for decades.  Sadly, many Americans cannot say that as evidenced by the over 40% of registered voters who could not be bothered to vote in last year's presidential election.  This indifference - complacency, if you will, is having dire consequences on the viability of America's democracy, not to mention the rights of minorities.  The phenomenon is not new, but seems to have intensified in the run up to the 2016 presidential election and even afterwards as some minority communities, the LGBT community in particular. If one is a student of history, one knows that the Founding Fathers were (i) educated individuals, and (ii) believed that citizens have an obligation to educate themselves on issues and be politically involved.  Stated another way, an obligation of citizenship is political involvement and staying fully informed on matters. This latter concept was and is essential to maintaining and protecting democracy.  Compare this concept with the proverbial soccer moms who fixate on PTA issues and children's' sports yet remain clueless on pressing political issues and all to often either fail to vote cast their votes in utter ignorance.  I use soccer moms as but one example.  The problem is replicated across many groups in society, including the LGBT community where a minority seems to be engaged and informed while others remain clueless and often fail to support community organizations from which they receive benefits.   Excuses the "I'm too busy" or "I don't like politics" simple are not acceptable and are a default of fulfilling one's duty as a citizen.  History has shown us time and time again of what can happen when the citizenry falls into complacency.  Two pieces look at the consequences of complacency, one by Michelangelo Signorile directed at the LGBT community and the other on remarks made by Barack Obama.  First, these highlights from Michelangelo's column:

Inside the U.S. Supreme Court this week for the oral arguments for Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission I couldn’t help but look at Justice Neil Gorsuch and imagine how things would be if Merrick Garland were rightly sitting in that chair. 

Had Republicans not stolen that seat, refusing a vote on President Obama’s nominee for almost the entirety of his last year in office and allowing Donald Trump to put Neil Gorsuch ― an ideologue on the issue of “religious liberty” ― on the court, we would not be in this dangerous predicament.

[M]any progressive legal observers are concerned ― some very much so ― and the general consensus among journalists who cover legal issues is that it will come down to Kennedy, and that he, by his own history, could side with the baker. It’s often forgotten that on another gay rights decision, Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Kennedy joined the majority in a 2000 ruling that the Boy Scouts could ban gay scouts and scoutmasters on First Amendment grounds. 

In my 2015 book, It’s Not Over, I wrote all about what I’d termed “victory blindness,” a phenomenon in which minorities who are discriminated against become seduced by big wins ― like the Obergefell ruling ― and think they’ve achieved full equality in society. Victory blindness, I argued, overcame many LGBTQ people, who let their guards down or dismissed some anti-LGBTQ actions, not realizing that the anti-equality forces were organizing fiercely, and that the backlash would be intense and could roll back LGBTQ rights while we’re celebrating or not paying attention.

Victory blindness often prevents us from seeing how tenuous our wins are and how all minorities must continue to fight for their rights because the political winds can shift very quickly.

Donald Trump’s election and presidency did a lot to shake us from it, forcing us to become energized and to vow to fight. This week at the Supreme Court, no matter how the case eventually is decided, should serve to do the same.

The second piece goes well beyond the confines of the LGBT community and looks at how complacency can give rise to authoritarianism.  It has happened before throughout history and Donald Trump and today's GOP seemingly hope to allow it to happen again.  Here are highlights:

American democracy is fragile, and unless care is taken it could follow the path of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

Mixed in with many softer comments, that was the somewhat jaw-dropping bottom line of Barack Obama last night as, in a Q&A session before the Economic Club of Chicago, the Chicagoan who used to be president dropped a bit of red meat to a hometown crowd that likely is a lot closer to him than the man whose name never was mentioned: President Donald Trump.

Obama moved from that to talking about a nativist mistrust and unease that has swept around the world. He argued that such things as the speed of technical change and the uneven impact of globalization have come too quickly to be absorbed in many cultures, bringing strange new things and people to areas in which "people didn't (used to) challenge your assumptions." As a result, "nothing feels solid," he said. "Sadly, there's something in us that looks for simple answers when we're agitated."

Still, the U.S. has survived tough times before and will again, he noted, particularly mentioning the days of communist fighter Joseph McCarthy and former President Richard Nixon. But one reason the country survived is because it had a free press to ask questions, Obama added. Though he has problems with the media just like Trump has had, "what I understood was the principle that the free press was vital."

The danger is "grow(ing) complacent," Obama said. "We have to tend to this garden of democracy or else things could fall apart quickly."

That's what happened in Germany in the 1930s, which despite the democracy of the Weimar Republic and centuries of high-level cultural and scientific achievements, Adolph Hitler rose to dominate, Obama noted. "Sixty million people died. . . .So, you've got to pay attention. And vote."

Why "Waiting Calmly" For Trump to "Moderate" Will Fail

The presidency of Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Fuhrer, is terrorizing many across the globe but perhaps nowhere more than Germany which knows from history the dangers of people like Trump and the price of that complacency and failure to act early to prevent the advance of evil.  Donald Trump has been in office a mere 14 days yet it already seems like an eternity in some ways.  With each day we have seen more autocratic and bizarre behavior coming from the current occupant of the White House. First the Muslim ban - which excludes, of course Muslim nations where Trump has investments - and now a likely license to discriminate law that will give special rights and preferences to Christian extremists.  Then there is the threat to send American troops into Mexico, the threat to take military action against Iran, the threatening and rude telephone conversation with the Prime Minister of Australia, a steadfast American ally for over 100 years. Oh, and let's not forget the threat to take away federal funds from the University of California at Berkley and the appointment of Christian Right extremists Jerry Falwell Jr. to head an education reform task force.  A piece in the German publication Zeit looks at the mistakes made by 1930's Germans.  The same mistakes are now being made on 2017 America.  Here are article excerpts:

Is there reason to worry? No, thought Nikolaus Sieveking, an employee at Hamburg’s World Economy Archive. "I find the act of viewing Hitler’s chancellorship as a sensational event to be childish enough that I will leave that to his loyal followers," he wrote in his diary on Jan. 30, 1933.

Like Sieveking, many Germans didn’t initially recognize this date as a dramatic turning point. Few sensed what Hitler’s appointment as chancellor actually meant, and many reacted to the event with shocking indifference.

The chancellor of the presidential cabinet had changed twice in 1932 -- Heinrich Brüning was replaced in early June by Franz von Papen, who was replaced in early December by Kurt von Schleicher. People had almost gotten used to this tempo. Why should the Hitler government be anything more than just an episode?  In the Wochenschau news programs shown in cinemas, the swearing-in of the new cabinet came last, after the major sporting events. 

This, despite the fact that Hitler had plainly explained in "Mein Kampf" and countless speeches before 1933 what he wanted to do once in power: to abolish the democratic "system" of Weimar Germany, to "eradicate" Marxism (by which he meant both social democracy and communism) and to "remove" the Jews from Germany. As for foreign policy, he made no secret of the fact that he wanted to revise the Versailles Treaty and that his long-term goal was the conquering of "Lebensraum in the East."

German President Paul von Hindenburg’s camarilla, which had hoisted him to power through a series of intrigues, agreed with Hitler’s goals of preventing a return to parliamentary democracy, of cutting the chains of the Versailles Treaty, massively arming the military and once again making Germany the dominant power in Europe. As for the rest of Hitler’s stated intentions, his conservative coalition partners were inclined to dismiss them as mere rhetoric. Once he was in power, they argued, he would become more reasonable.

Hitler’s thirst for power couldn’t have been more grossly underestimated. . . . . Big-business representatives shared the same illusion. In an editorial in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, which had close ties to heavy industry, editor-in-chief Fritz Klein wrote that working together with the Nazis would be "difficult and exhausting," but that people had to dare to take "the leap into darkness" because the Hitler movement had become the strongest political actor in Germany. The head of the Nazi party would now have to prove "whether he really had what is needed in order to become a statesman." The stock market didn’t seem spooked either -- people were waiting to see what would happen. 

The conservatives who helped Hitler rise to power, and his opponents in the republican camp, were wrong in their assessment of the true division of power. 

The big liberal newspapers also argued that nothing truly terrible would happen. Theodor Wolff, the editor-in-chief of the Berliner Tageblatt saw the cabinet as the embodiment of what the united right-wing political groups had wanted since their meeting in Bad Harzburg in 1931. He opened his editorial on Jan. 31 by writing: "It has been achieved. Hitler is the Reich Chancellor, Hugenberg is the economics dictator and the positions have been distributed as the men of the ‘Harzburger Front’ had wanted." The new government, he argued, would try anything to "intimidate and silence opponents." A ban on the Communist Party was on the agenda, he thought, as well as a curtailing of the freedom of the press. But even the imagination of this otherwise so clear-sighted journalist didn’t go far enough to conceive the power of a totalitarian dictatorship. He argued there was a "border that violence would not cross." The German people, who were always proud of the "freedom of thought and of speech," would create a "soulful and intellectual resistance" and stifle all attempts to establish a dictatorship. 

With their strict insistence on the legalities of the constitution, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) leadership overlooked the fact that the previous presidential governments had already hollowed the constitution and that Hitler would not hesitate to destroy its last vestiges. 

The dangers emanating from Hitler could not have been more grotesquely misread. Most of the leading Social Democrats and unionists had grown up in the German Kaiserreich. They could imagine repression similar to Bismarck’s anti-socialist law, but not that someone would seriously try to destroy the workers’ movement in its entirety. 

The fact that Hitler’s appointment meant that a fanatical anti-Semite had come to power should have made Germany’s Jews, above all, nervous. But that was not the case at all. In a statement given on Jan. 30, the chair of the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith said, "In general, today more than ever we must follow the directive: wait calmly." He said that although one watches the new government "of course with deep suspicion," President Hindenburg represents the "calming influence." He said there was no reason to doubt his "sense of justice" and "loyalty to the constitution." As a result, he said, one should be convinced that "nobody would dare" to "touch our constitutional rights." 

Foreign diplomats also made false assumptions about the nature of the change of power. The American consul general in Berlin, George S. Messersmith, believed that it was difficult to make a clear prediction about the future of the Hitler government and spoke of his assumption that it represented a transitional phenomenon on the road to a more stable political situation. To British Ambassador Horace Rumbold, it seemed like the conservatives had managed to successfully fence in the Nazis. But he also predicted that there would soon be conflicts between the unequal coalition partners because Papen’s and Hugenberg’s goal of restoring the monarchy could not be reconciled with Hitler’s plans. He recommended that the Foreign Office should take a wait-and-see attitude toward the new government. 

Rarely has a political project so rapidly been revealed to be a chimera as the idea that the conservatives would "tame" the Nazis. In terms of tactical cunning, Hitler towered high above his cabinet allies and opponents. In a short time, he had upstaged them and driven them against the wall, dislodging Papen from of his preferential position with Hindenburg and forcing Hugenberg to resign.

Hitler needed only five months to establish his power. By the summer of 1933, fundamental rights and the constitution had been suspended, the states had been forced into conformity, the unions crushed, the political parties banned or dissolved, press and radio brought into line and the Jews stripped of their equality under the law. Everything that existed in Germany outside of the National Socialist Party had been "destroyed, dispersed, dissolved, annexed or absorbed," François-Poncet concluded in early July. Hitler, he claimed, had "won the game with little effort." "He only had to puff -- and the edifice of German politics collapsed like a house of cards."

 I shudder to think where things will be in five months if Americans do not quickly wake up. 

The Danger of Democrat Complacency

With the campaign of Mitt Romney seemingly in self-destruction mode,  I and others have a real fear that too many Obama supporters - including the Obama staffer living with the boyfriend and me through election day - are fearful that some may feel that they can be less vigilant and may even stay home on election day.  As a piece in Politico under scores, this is a a dangerous self-deception.  The anti-Obama super PAC's still have huge sums that will be expended and in many states the race remains very close.  Thus the need to mobilize every anti-Romney and anti-GOP voter to get to the polls.  There is a second reason to push for the largest turn out possible: Romney and the GOP need to be defeated by the largest margin possible in order to send a message that their vision for America and their contemptuous view on half the population or more is not acceptable and will be DOA in the future as well.  Only then will the GOP perhaps begin the journey back to rationality.  Here are some story highlights:

Mitt Romney’s campaign might appear to be collapsing like a cheap card table, but one top Democrat close to President Barack Obama had a curt warning for allies who were declaring the election all but over on Tuesday.  It ain’t over, he said, until Karl Rove sings.

That litmus test of when George W. Bush’s former impresario gives up on the race reflects the unprecedented strength of the powerful money machine supporting the GOP. It also shows why even a wounded Republican standard-bearer could limp to victory in November.

Caution is not the message emanating from the Washington echo chamber or from giddy Democrats — and depressed Republicans — who are drafting Romney’s political obituary with nearly 50 news cycles before Election Day.

But Romney, however humbled, has nearly 50 more chances to change the narrative. Despite his stunning missteps, his failure to articulate an attractive rationale for his candidacy, a growing GOP pessimism and tales of corrosive internal dissent, he remains within easy striking distance of Obama in most polls and is showing no signs of imminent collapse.  His support isn’t likely to dip much below 45 percent to 47 percent largely because nine in 10 Republicans are backing him.

“President Obama may make major strategic decisions in response to two tough days in the fishbowl — but that’s not how Crossroads rolls,” said Jonathan Collegio, spokesman for the Rove-linked groups American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS.

“Democrats should just remember Florida 2000 before they get cocky,” veteran Democratic strategist Karen Finney said. “It’s the stuff you don’t see that goes under the radar — the robocalls … fliers and mailings. … That’s the kind of stuff you can’t detect. Karl Rove knows how to win,” she said.

[S]upport among white men is one key aspect of the tape that’s been overlooked: A lot of voters, especially white, working-class men, basically agree with Romney’s portrait of a country overrun by tax deadbeats and spongers.

As of Tuesday morning, Obama’s post-convention bump was starting to fade, and RealClearPolitics’s summary of polls had him up, on average, by only 3 points nationally. Its average of state-by-state polls showed growing but still modest Obama leads in the critical battlegrounds — up 3 in Nevada, 4 in Ohio, ahead by barely a point each in Florida and Virginia, although a Washington Post/NBC poll released Tuesday showed Obama with a widening lead of 8 points in Virginia.

The bottom line is that nothing can be taken for granted and all of us who cringe at Mitt Romney's view of and vision for America need to keep working to convince our friends and family members that they MUST go out and voted against Romney and the GOP on election day.  LGBT Americans in particular should be terrified of the prospect of Romney taking the White House and undoing all of Obama's pro-LGBT executive orders.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81369_Page2.html#ixzz26uaWtxKk