Peter Walks for Democracy

On January 6^th, hold Lesson 2 from On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder at the front of your mind. 

“2. Defend Institutions: It is institutions that help us preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. [In a democracy, that is how they act on your behalf.] Thay fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about—a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union[, a public school, a conservation district, an election office, an authority]—and take its side.” 

Snyder, T. On Tyranny. Crown Publishing: United States.

On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump & his armies of the night attacked America’s most sacred institution: its elections. Fueled on resentment & lies, people flying Confederate flags, neo-Nazi, Trump, & other white supremacist & Christian nationalist banners decided that the people’s will did not matter. Your voice—the fairly won majority’s voice—was irrelevant to him & to them. So, they violently and illegally attacked the seat of the people’s representatives who would legally certify the free, fair, & secure election. It is the one if the ultimate betrayals of American ideals, outdone only by the secessionists who took the United States into the Civil War to continue the institution of slavery.

2024 is not going to be just an election year. It is the year when we determine whether the United States is a democracy or an authoritarian regime with shattered institutions. It is the year that “We the people” must refuses the religion, philosophy, politics, & demagogues addicted to resentment but call it righteousness. 

We must fight for our personal and collective freedom by standing up for our institutions. Ask yourself these questions.

Will we have free & fair elections? Or do we give up and have sham elections like Russia? In Centre County, the election deniers keep showing up at Board of Election meetings to perpetuate the deluded myths there is voter fraud. They still refuse to accept the reality that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Hell, they tried to overturn the results of the 2021 State College Area School District Board election and have me removed from office or be censured. I did no such thing. Don’t let them go unchallenged. Vote for freedom. Become an election worker.  Stand out (Snyder’s Lesson #8). Defend the integrity of election administration.

Do we have agencies where trained professionals guide the process? Or do we end up with apparatchiks who pay fealty to a political party and guide us into predictable horrifying disasters like Chernobyl? Vote for people who ensure the integrity of agencies & keep political appointees out of the rank & file. 

Do we have public schools where we wrestle with the good, beautiful, complicated, messy, & even ugly parts of history, art, & literature? Or do we end up with censors who protect the official party line & the ego of the Dear Leader? Last year’s school board elections in State College showed us that allies of the Proud Boys were willing to trespass into schools to look for the books they wanted to ban. Then they ran for school board and, as self-appointed morality police, created spectacles to ban books. That’s not surprising given their allies violently attacked the Capitol. 

Do we have courts with a common rule of law—flawed & imbalanced as it is? Or do we get the capricious whims of the ruling party & the vengeance & resentment of the Dear Leader? Look at the kangaroo courts of autocracies & totalitarian states. There is no justice or predictable procedure, only the logic that flows from the Party & for the Party’s Dear Leader. 

Do we have a nation with communities of basic trust where people use language to advance the truth and decency? Or do we have individuals who refuse to sit down with their opponents, undermine one another, who backbite & stab each other? This happened to generations in Eastern Europe, Russia, China, & North Korea. They unlearned how to be truthful and reliable, pronouncing the slogans of the Party. I’ve interviewed people who worked in Communist China in the 70s & 80s, talked with Iranians who fled the Ayatollah, & people who lived in Romania when it was behind the Iron Curtain. The police state & informal systems of surveillance atomized people. Their language became coarse (see Snyder’s Lesson #9: Be kind to our language.) They lost the ability to reflect as they became ultimately self-interested. There was no trust.

Do we have media that is focused on facts & telling the truth, complicated & muddled as it may be? Or do we have arms of propaganda, distraction, emotionalism, & rage that keep us from knowing reality, ourselves, & how to prioritize? All dictators & parties of totalitarian or authoritarian movements go after the media, especially if they tell the truth. The more violently they do so, the more right the story or line is. The more they call it a lie, the more they are projecting. 

Do we have churches that believe that we are our brothers’ & sisters’ keepers, who love our neighbors as ourselves? Or are our churches just places where we are told how righteous we in these pews are while those folks out there are the real sinners, the worse sinners? Some of the churches in Germany tried to stay out of the way. Today, too many churches aren’t staying out of the way, but aggressively calling for “righteous” action. One only need listen to the church leaders in Turning Point USA’s & CPAC’s ranks to know that the gospel is being turned into a vehicle of white nationalism.

Do we elect leaders who, imperfect as they are—they are humans after all—who show up to do the best they can? Or do we place at the helm those who ridicule & belittle, who claim perfection & godliness, & who call their opponents “vermin,” promise to “root out” his enemies, call for violence, & can’t stop lying? 

Donald J. Trump believes the world owes him everything, that all things should flow to him, should work for him, should thank & praise him, & that people should use violence on HIS behalf. Knowing that—and no one denies this unless they are fooled or self-serving—Trump will destroy or remake every institution so that HE can do anything he wants. He will destroy elections so he cannot be removed without violence and so that he can use violence. He will destroy courts so the law works for him but does not apply to him. He will destroy the press so he can say anything, others can say what he wants, and no one can hold him or his accountable. He will attack the American educational system top to bottom: critical thinking, literacy, and learned self-awareness will become things of the past. He will line the federal agencies and departments with loyalists who will advance the Trumpian equivalent of Stalin’s “socialist realism.” 

There are those who still don’t think Trump is an authoritarian threat. This is foolish and naive. Trump has said he will be a dictator on day one. He will root out those who oppose him. He has also promised to exact vengeance. And he will do that through the destruction of institutions and their recreation in his own image. The Heritage Foundation is clearly advancing in line with this with Project 2025. They will remake the administrative state for the next Republican president. 

Snyder shares in On Tyranny that a leading German Jewish newspaper published the following on February 2, 1933:

We do not subscribe to the view that Mr. Hitler and his friends, now finally in possession of the power they have so long desired, will implement the proposals circulating [in Nazi newspapers]; they will not suddenly deprive German Jews of their constitutional rights, nor enclose them in ghettos, nor subject them to the jealous and murderous impulses of the mob. They cannot do this because a number of crucial factors bold powers in check…and they clearly do not want to go down that road. When one acts as a European power, the whole atmosphere tends toward ethical reflection upon one’s better self and away from revisiting earlier oppositional posture.

It would not be long before the institutions were remade: courts, schools, the media, and elections. Jews, gays, intellectuals, and others the regime deemed undesirable were systematically oppressed, imprisoned, expelled, blacklisted, or killed. Looking at Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cambodia, the Bolsheviks who created the U.S.S,R,, and Putin’s Russia, the playing field looks different but the authoritarian’s play calls were similar. They attack the institutions that make freedom possible.

So I repeat Snyder’ call: “2. Defend Institutions It is institutions that help us preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. [In a democracy, that is how they act on your behalf.] Thay fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about—a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union[, a public school, a conservation district, an election office, an authority]—and take its side.” 

How will you do that today? How will you do that tomorrow? For the rest of 2024? Your freedom and security depend on it.

Image courtesy of VoteVets.org.