How We Can Stem the Tide of Personality from Overwhelming Non-Partisan American Ideals
From the earliest days of the American Revolution to the present, the United States of America has, above all, endeavored to be a nation premised on a set of ideas. Representation. Equality. Liberty. Freedom.
Individual people — our leaders — have helped manifest, define and evolve those ideas in our nation’s enduring pursuit to realize their full intent. But the underlying ideas have always remained paramount. And the preeminence of ideas over individuals is one of the fundamental tenets separating our democracy from a descent into autocracy.
I’ve been vocal about how disturbed I’ve been to see this paradigm flipped on its head during the last 4 years of the Trump Administration. In ways not demonstrated by any other President in our history, President Trump was insistent upon demonstrations of personal loyalty above all else. Even above loyalty to the foundational institutions of our democracy — the ideas that make America unique, and indeed, often exceptional.
This fundamentally autocratic belief system was never more clear than in President Trump’s behavior in the post-election period — as he pushed everyone from state legislators, election officials, and even Vice President Pence to undermine the Constitution and subvert the will of the American people by decertifying the results of the election.
That last Constitutional act was, of course, violently disrupted by a domestic terror attack on the United States Capitol earlier this month, in one of the darkest moments in modern American history. During that siege, the dire consequences of a movement defined principally by the power of an individual was on clear display. As thousands stormed the Capitol, some chanting “Hang Mike Pence” and insisting that the President had sent them there, a harrowing and eerily symbolic scene unfolded outside. Two rioters climbed the Capitol scaffolding, ripped down the American Flag, and raised a blue flag, emblazoned only with Donald Trump’s name.
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After the January 6th attack on the Capitol, the Nation sits at a historically critical inflection point. Do we succumb to our most reflexive political instincts and try to normalize and rationalize away why this tragedy happened? Or do we commit to confronting the painful questions about how we let ourselves get to this dark place?
The answer is complex and multi-faceted. But I’ve become convinced that there is at least one small, simple thing we can do at an individual level to help fight against the normalization of authoritarian-minded governance in the United States. We simply commit to stop giving self-centered demagogues, regardless of their political ideology, the oxygen they so desperately crave. In this instance, we stop saying Donald Trump’s name.
I want to be clear in what I’m proposing, especially in light of social media’s recent crackdown on President Trump and outcries of “cancel culture” (a legitimate phenomenon, but a term that has become increasingly amorphous and meaningless). I’m not suggesting we bury our head in the sand, pretend political opposition doesn’t exist, or support efforts to suppress political speech. Such an approach will only deepen our national divide and intensify the political echo chambers that have already torn apart at our social fabric. What I am proposing is that we stop elevating individuals and start elevating ideas.
This isn’t a partisan statement. There’s plenty of blame to go around for the toxic state of our political discourse. Certainly, Donald Trump owns a lion’s share of blame for what ultimately culminated on January 6th. Trump’s propensity to generate controversy was never accidental, it was always a deliberate strategy of provocation.
The Democratic Party and large swathes of the media continued to fall into this trap. Their persistent, breathless outrage of Donald Trump’s every move was counterproductive, making it difficult for Americans to discern what was worthy of real outrage. I’m certainly guilty of it personally, wasting far too much mental bandwidth trying to calibrate the real historical importance of the day’s latest controversy. This outrage cycle has been nothing but fuel for Donald Trump, making him an effective martyr for his political base.
But up until Noon on January 20, 2021, this type of non-stop analysis has been a necessary journalistic imperative. By virtue of holding the Office of the Presidency, everything Donald Trump said and did mattered. Period.
But now, as a new Administration is sworn in, every utterance won’t matter. Donald Trump will continue to make shocking statements and fan the flames of conspiracy. But we need to end the outrage cycle. We need to stop defining everything by Donald Trump and break the cult of personality that has dominated our politics for the last four years.
We can do this, in part, by recognizing that the underlying policy ideas — those that obviously had resonance with many of the over 74 million Trump voters — matter deeply. They should be understood, analyzed, debated and, as appropriate, integrated into the vision of a Biden Presidency to foster a more unified America.
But the messenger simply doesn’t need to matter anymore. And the extent to which we continue to pretend it does, we are only promoting the power of an individual — at the expense of ideas and ideals — in a way that is fundamentally antithetical to the American story.
