We can no longer save democracy. But we can reclaim it.

A few weeks ago, I wrote for THE WEEK that democracy was slipping away, and I wondered if we would notice if and when we hit the tipping point.

Many Americans understand that Trump and his allies have given the country's norms and institutions quite a beating, but they may not realize how close our democracy is to outright failure. The breakdown will not come all at once, in a single moment. Instead, constitutional governance might die a death by a thousand cuts. The shutdown of the Michigan legislature is a warning sign: American democracy is still alive, for now, but the end could be nearer than we think.

That was before George Floyd.

Tonight, the president threatened to send the military into American cities if protests over Floyd's death continue. He seemed to offer praise to peaceful protesters -- "we cannot allow ... peaceful protesters to be drowned out by an angry mob" -- but his words were immediately belied by his actions.

Simply put, the president of the United States unleashed state violence against peaceful demonstrators outside the White House.

And he did so ... for a photo op.

Moments earlier, just outside the White House, federal authorities used rubber bullets, flash bangs and gas to clear peaceful protesters from the area.

Trump then walked across Lafayette Square to St. John’s Church, where a fire was set Sunday evening. The president held up a Bible and nodded to media cameras, before being joined by Attorney General Bill Barr and others to pose for photos.

I would submit to you that the tipping point has been reached. The rule of law -- of a Constitution that guarantees the freedom of expression, and to peacefully assemble -- has been replaced, for now, by the rule of dominance. That is not democracy. 

So I believe we can no longer save democracy.

But I do believe we can reclaim it. Or, at the very least, we should make every effort to do so.

How? Uh, that's where I come up short. I think there are some dark days ahead. I think it will be easier to go along to get along because the costs of not going along may be high indeed. All I'm left with, really, is the final words from Anne Applebaum's new piece in The Atlantic:

In the meantime, I leave anyone who has the bad luck to be in public life at this moment with a final thought from Władysław Bartoszewski, who was a member of the wartime Polish underground, a prisoner of both the Nazis and the Stalinists, and then, finally, the foreign minister in two Polish democratic governments. Late in his life—he lived to be 93—he summed up the philosophy that had guided him through all of these tumultuous political changes. It was not idealism that drove him, or big ideas, he said. It was this: Warto być przyzwoitym—“Just try to be decent.” Whether you were decent—that’s what will be remembered.

Just try to be decent.

The War on Terror comes home

Republicans are starting to sound scary. This is a sitting congressman:

And this is a senator who stands a decent chance of being president someday.

The first tweet advocates "hunting down" American citizens as though they were opponents in the misbegotten "war on terror." Cotton, meanwhile, served in the Army in Iraq, which was was war-on-terror-adjacent.

One thing that was notable about America's war on terror efforts is how cruel they often were. Dick Cheney told us we'd have to work the "dark side," and so we did -- at Baghram, Gitmo, and at secret torture sites around the world. Civil libertarians opposed these actions in real time, and a few low-level soldiers were prosecuted. But nobody in a position of real responsibility was held accountable, and indeed, pundits like Marc Thiessen made their names and careers defending the torture regime. When Barack Obama took office, he declined to prosecute the war criminals in his predecessor's administration, citing a need to "look forward." Admittedly, I thought that was the right approach at the time.

Now, though, the chickens are coming home to roost. Some leading American conservatives don't want to merely unleash the worst techniques of the war on terror against foreign terrorists -- they're ready to bring those techniques home.

Who's gonna stop them?

Why I'm not calling on Trump to resign

Because he won't.

Official White House photo, via Flickr

At The Atlantic, Michael Steinberger sees the dearth of calls for the president's resignation as a flaw in the body politic, a failure to get angry enough about this awful president:

Zelizer, of Princeton, thinks future historians will be astonished that Trump’s failure was tolerated to the point that his resignation wasn’t even part of the conversation. “I think we will look back and ask why people weren’t more furious,” he says. “Where was the outrage?”

I don't think that's a fair question. People are plenty angry! Before impeachment, there were lots of calls for impeachment. Mainstream columnists even suggested that the 25th Amendment should be used to remove him. Lots of folks want to seem him not in office, it's clear. 

So lamenting the lack of calls for resignation is a very narrow way of looking at this moment.

It seems clear to me that Trump would never heed calls for his resignation, even if it pitted him against the Republican Party and every single one of the country's voters. But that's not the condition that exists. Demanding his resignation is like begging fish to jump in your boat so you can eat them: He's not going to listen, and he's not going to comply. Thought leaders should push for effective, possible ways to seek his removal -- say through this November's election -- rather than taking empty stands that will go nowhere.

There is rage in the land. Just because it doesn't take a certain, expected form doesn't mean it's not there.

Coronavirus diary: Life goes on, brisket edition

My dad and his father both loved to make homemade BBQ sauce for Sunday roasts and briskets. I've never really done that. 

Today, my son made my dad's sauce recipe for Mother's Day brisket. 

I am proud and humbled.

Coronavirus diary: A letter to my son about values

Dear son:

The COVID-19 pandemic, and accompanying economic disaster, have made me think a lot about your future.

I believe that you will grow up in a tougher, meaner world than I have. It’s possible that survival, and not just self-actualization, will be the challenge that you face. Do not let this scare you: We are privileged that survival has not been a problem in my memory, nor my parents'. But people all around the world and across history have spent lifetimes much closer to the edge than we have. They have accepted the challenge and persisted — because that is what life is all about. What alternative, really, is there?

But I worry. I am a man who has made a living by talking and writing. It’s not made me rich, but for the most part I have been able to provide food and shelter on the income those skills provide. I am not sure such opportunities will be as widely available in the future. And I don’t have the experience, skills or tools to do much else. What can I teach you that will help you, practically, as you grow up and move out into this meaner world?

Your mother reminds me that we are giving you the tools to acquire those skills yourself. You’re smart, inquisitive, an obsessive reader and collector of facts. I could not be prouder of who you have already become. And I think we’ve modeled other values that we hope you’ll take on and carry through life.

Even so, I want to be explicit about the values I hope you embrace.

HONESTY: Telling the truth - even when it has a cost - is good in its own right. But there are practical reasons for embracing honesty as one. To use one, currently pertinent example: Our leaders were not honest - with us, certainly, and perhaps with themselves - about the dangers presented by the coronavirus. That failure to embrace reality, to embrace the truth, and to give that truth to the public, probably made the pandemic wider and more disastrous than it had to be.

Embrace honesty, son. Embrace the truth. 

COMPASSION: There is a temptation, during hard times, just to look out for yourself and those closest to you. It’s understandable. Nonetheless, I ask that you look for opportunities to be kindhearted to — and helpful — others. They will need your help at times. And you will need theirs. 

This is even true even when you find something detestable or off-putting. We didn’t raise you in the church. I know you’re skeptical of religion. But these verses from Matthew 5 in the Christian Bible have have stuck with me, informed my sense of what I should aspire to, even as my own faith wavered and diminished:

43You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor’ and ‘Hate your enemy.’ 44But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Do not even tax collectors do the same? 47And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even Gentiles do the same?

Other religious traditions — and traditions outside religion — have similar teachings. Like I say: I believe the world you encounter will be a mean place. The temptation will be to let it make you mean in response. I hope with all my heart that you can resist that temptation.

JUSTICE: I think this is a corollary to compassion. Both values recognize the humanity of people other than yourself and those closest to you — and demand, as a result, that you treat them the way you would want to be treated, that you advocate for people who are treated unfairly for any reason. When people are treated unfairly, work to help them be treated fairly.

This is an unjust world, and I suspect that it will only become more so. (Or maybe it’s just that people like us will be more exposed to and subject to its injustices.) Have the courage not to shrug at those injustices, or to take advantage of them, but to be a voice against them.

There is so much more to say about each of these ideas. I don’t think I have defined them well in this writing. I must hope that your mother is right, that you already have the skills to equip yourself with better knowledge and wisdom about what these values mean and entail.

A warning: You may find that these values are in tension with each other — that to ensure justice for one person makes it difficult to be compassionate to another, or that compassion to one person makes honesty difficult. I can’t give you a hard-and-fast rule to solve those conundrums — only: Let your conscience be your guide.

I am confident of that conscience, and of your heart. I am sorry that I cannot simply protect you from what is to come, only to prepare you as best I can. I love you, now and always,

Dad

Minorities, sports and getting started again

I'm aware of a study showing the shutdown of sports is taking some $12 billion out of the economy. And I love to listen to a baseball game as much as anyone.

But I guess I can't help but notice that the push to reopen professional sports -- at risk to the participants, even if fans are kept away -- is going to have a disproportionate impact.

Here's a 2018 report. First the MLB:

With people of color making up 42.5 percent of MLB players, the league has one of the best diversity scores among the four major sports. Last year saw the highest percentage of Latinos, 31.9 percent, in the last two decades.

The NBA:

With 80.7 percent of players being people of color, the NBA takes the lead among men’s sports for player diversity.

And the NFL:

The league is primarily composed of African-American and white players. The percentage of players of color has slowly risen to over 70 percent since 1997; the percentage of white players reached a new low, 27.7 percent.

The health burdens of the pandemic are falling disproportionately on minorities. Restarting sports over the next few months might be part of the same phenomenon.

Grasping at truth: Three examples of good writing about difficult topics

One thing about quarantine: It has given me time to think about how I practice the craft of writing.

I'm lucky: I've been able to make a living at writing -- both reporting and opinion writing. For most of the last decade or more, I've had a regular outlet (newspaper syndication, PhillyMag, and The Week) to express my opinions before large audiences. I don't take it for granted.

But I always know I could do better. And I sometimes suspect I'm doing a two-dimensional version of something that might better contribute to the public conversation if I could somehow express it in three dimensions.

I want to point to three pieces of writing done in recent years that I take as a model -- not just for writing, but for thinking, and maybe even doing this job in a way I consider to be moral.

And here are the lessons I've learned from them: