A crumbling democracy

The headline spoke of America as “a crumbling democracy.” Crumbling is a state of deterioration due to aging. Crumbling is what you see in the Roman and Greek ruins when you travel abroad.

America is not crumbling, rather it is a nation being bludgeoned and slashed to the ground by the actions of a rogue president, an impotent Congress, and a complicit Supreme Court.

Project 2025, product of the Heritage Foundation, was published in 2023. Though project 2025 was revealed in mainstream media, few read it, and even fewer believed it could be implemented. It was the blueprint for dismantling the administrative state and imbuing the executive with power and immunity from prosecution.

Trump’s first administration created the climate that produced project 2025.  

Champions of Project 2025 are either writers or supporters who are enacting the dream of Project 2025. Russell Vought, Tom Homan, Peter Navarro, Patrick Duffy, John Radcliffe and a host of others have become leaders in the effort. 

It has only taken seven months to dismantle a lot of what America has stood for the last 250 years. Tom Friedman, in a recent NYT opinion piece, says, “The America we knew is rapidly slipping away.”

The Republican Senate affirmed a cabinet that is making us the laughingstock of the world. Even Thom Tillis voted for most of the incompetents who now serve at the pleasure of the president. His votes for Pete Hegseth and Emil Bove tell us who he really is.

The 78 million who voted for Trump likely have never seen footage of cabinet meetings where fealty is on full display, as they go around the room heaping praise on the “dear leader.”

What might have been “mission impossible” has become “mission accomplished.”

The Cabinet is corrupt. Homeland security is an oxymoron. If they weren’t so dangerous, I might feel sorry for them.

The Supreme Court is dismissive of precedent, as rights are plundered and broad power is given the president. Emil Bove, as an Appellate Court appointee, is the sycophant Trump needs to carry the courts farther right in enacting his agenda.

Brown people are being targeted. LGBTQ people are singled out. Human rights are disappearing. Agents dressed in black, with masks over their faces, grab farmworkers like low hanging fruit. They are sent to who knows where.

Even young people in school on legitimate visas are disappeared like voodoo vanishing.

War is happening in Ukraine, Gaza, Turkey, Syria. People are walking down Park Avenue in NYC with long guns and malicious intent.

Children are starving in Africa, Gaza, and, with SNAP and school lunch benefits being slashed, we might see American children with swollen bellies and matchstick arms and legs.

Congress just passed its “Big Beautiful bill,” which will advance the far-right agenda and create an America where the rich get richer and the poor get screwed!  

Folks, this is not America. The cruelty and hurt is out of bounds. Not surprising. It comes from the leader down.

If that weren’t enough, cheating on a golf score, when the video evidence is right before our eyes, is petty and pitiful.

I was with a group last week and one man said he was trying to give Mr. Trump the benefit of the doubt. Are there not redeemable qualities in everyone? All of us are made in the image of God, right? Michael Smerconish and Bret Stephens and others are sounding that same note. My response to them is: Do the ends justify the means? Does the cruelty, denial, lying and indiscriminate firing not matter? Is the starvation and suffering, hurt and pain acceptable as part of the plan? Do these means really justify the end?

Tom Friedman recalls the situation in 2021, when Trump calls Georgia’s secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger, asking him to “find just 11,780 votes” to overturn Georgia’s election. Trump even threatened Raffensberger with “criminal intent” if he did not. There is audio evidence of this exchange.

Friedman goes on, “the difference (referring to the firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics chairperson, Erika McEntarfer for reporting news Trump didn’t like), is that back then there was something called a Republican official with integrity… but that species of Republican official seems to have gone completely extinct in Trump’s second term. Trump’s rotten character is now a problem for our whole country.”

We are travelling a path I did not choose. Nearly 80 million Americans did. Their vote counts as much as mine. They may be happy to see what’s going on. Or maybe they choose not to look.

As norms are deconstructed – universities, the press, scientific discovery, weather services and history – there is no regret or excuse for the pain inflicted. This is a road not taken before in America. We are living the lyrics, “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

Hard lessons lie ahead.

Lib Campbell is a retired Methodist pastor, retreat leader, columnist and host of the blogsite www.avirtualchurch.com. She can be contacted at libcam05@gmail.com