Requiem

For two months, I’ve refrained from writing. I’ve been mostly silent on social media. Part of this was necessity, part of it was simply desire to stop. I needed to stop reading compulsively and I wanted to stop writing. 

I wanted to stop writing and I needed to stop reading compulsively so that I could take time to look and listen at the world without noise. It isn’t what I’ve seen or not seen that leads me to write this. It’s what I’ve felt, what I’ve been feeling.

When the regime came to power in November 2024, I knew then that the nation had crossed the rubicon into authoritarianism. Setting aside a worthwhile argument that the election’s balanced was tipped by a person or persons with vested interests in returning a would-be king to power and seeing to it that Project 2025 was followed closely, the fact remains that there is a substantial minority of voters, of citizens in this country who very much would welcome the end of democracy and who support minority rule. 

Participants in an ethnographic study conducted by the Johns Hopkins Agora Institute “had an immediate negative reaction when asked about democracy.” (1)

I am very much indebted to Jonathan V. Last at The Bulwark for bringing this study up in a Substack post well worth your time. I won’t amplify what JVL writes but I will share some of his insights as I go along.

One insight that bears keeping in mind is that “the people in this study seem politically illiterate”(2) and another is, in rebuttal to a comment by one of the participants, “These people seem wholly unaware that the American Constitutional order is specifically constructed to resist majoritarianism — that’s why we have the Senate. That’s what the Electoral College does. Ditto the Supreme Court.”(3)

While that is so, and I’m sure Last is aware of this, those institutions have failed us drastically. 

What I’ve been feeling over the past couple of years and as a dull spiritual ache more recently is very much the sense of schism - in values, in expectations, in - for lack of a better term, humane reasoning - and the systemic denaturing of institutions intended to protect the people. 

It is systemic and it is by design. This is a matter of record. What is more disturbing is that an estimated 40 million or so people voted for this, supported this. Perhaps some regret that vote, but many do not, and if the Hopkins study is any indication, more support the present demise of the republic than regret having supported the regime that has swung the wrecking ball to end it.

An optimist may argue that the number is likely smaller and with the mid-terms in the offing, why, surely, the majority party will flip and the Occupier of the White House will be rendered a Lame Duck. I find this naive.

While many tout that most people did not vote for him, the fact remains that many stayed home. Americans are not now and have only fleetingly been active participants in their own democracy. Yes, yes, more people are now more politically engaged than we’ve seen in many years, but many more are complacent and I believe, wholly apathetic. 

Quite frankly, they don’t see the terror of the situation. They hear about ICE raids on their neighbors and say “how terrible” or shrug their shoulders at SCOTUS’s callousness toward women, people of color, and LGBTQ people and are convinced there’s nothing they can do about it. 

While I’ve continued keeping up with headlines and news and stepped back from reading too much legislation, I sense that there is a cloud over people. They know something has shifted deeply, but they can’t name it or perhaps, deep in the marrow do know what it is, but if they don’t name it, they can be spared its effects. 

This is an illusion. That cloud of knowing yet unknowing is the effect. Then, there’s another kind of unknowing that is not completely unrelated. It is the unknowing of what has led to this very moment. The memory hole is subsidized by advertising, by algorithms, by a concerted effort of those in the regime to keep people distracted and frankly, uneasy. 

There is also the not knowing - not merely of what is to come but also - of the past and how the present has come to be. 

I mourn the passing of the republic, flawed as it was. It was founded on fine ideas but also on a different kind of corruption which has fruited into the schism defined so accurately by that study.

Let’s be clear that the Declaration of Independence, while a foundational document and in many ways expressive of the highest ideals politically expressed, ever is also rife with a tragic strain of preserving the status quo of the subjugation of Black people and the justification of the ensuing genocide of indigenous people. 

Note the final grievance regarding George III: “He has excited domestic insurrections among us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.” 

I want to be clear: this is as much a fabric of this nation as the much lauded and laudable “self-evident truths” that “all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” and that there is no squaring the circle. Yes, at the time of the country’s founding, “Men” did not refer to non-land-owning gentry, much less to Black people or the nations of the Indigenous who were rightly incensed at finding themselves on the wrong side of “our frontiers.”

This nation’s racism and xenophobia runs deep. It has always been with us and no matter how much we would like to deny it, it is a foundational element of the country. We have not eradicated it, we have not evolved beyond it; it is a present-day part of who we are. Add to racism and xenphoboia, homophobia and transphobia and the cocktail is complete. 

Of course, at different points in our history, it has appeared that we may have “moved past” or somehow outgrew these qualities. However, these are merely appearances. Even if it is a minority that still willingly embraces these hatred’s, they remain salient components to the national character. 

Why am I focusing on this? Because this is our schism and our shame. Because there is a significant portion of the population that feels strongly that they are better than others by divine fiat and there is another part of the population that simply does not care.

It apparently also needs to be stated baldly that these are the afflictions that drive the regime and are manifested in policies of greed, corruption, and disenfranchisement. However we want to analyze the economic or international impact of what the regime does, we of necessity, must return to the nature of the voters and their like who would keep the power structure in place.

It’s stated as a truism that the Democrats lose because they play “identity politics” when they should be focusing on the economy and less “abstract” issues. There is nothing abstract in how one treats one neighbors. Not calling out bigotry and hatred for what they are is not “identity politics”. It’s holding a mirror up to the faces who need to see it most.

That would, of course, alienate too many people. It would exacerbate their already sensitive butt-hurt feelings of their disenfranchisement. How dare black and brown and gay and trans people be recognized as human beings? 

It is stated as a truism that the Democrats don’t know how to talk to the “common folk”, but I wonder. What if there was more direct, unsparing engagement of that sector of bigots and misanthropes who revel in their ignorance and their presumed superiority over everyone who isn’t like them? What if, instead of debating issues with smug, narcissistic tech bros and thuddingly ignorant podcasters and edge-lords, they were simply shut down for their ignorance and casual misogyny and racism?

They would likely double down and dig their boots in deeper. And because too many of them have too much money (as opposed to their poorer cousins who share their “values”), they are not as easily dispensed with.

It is arguable that my doubling down on racism and its associated failings as central to the nation’s failure might seem exaggerated. Perhaps it is. These are learned traits. They can be changed. 

However, they have been systemically and systematically exploited over the past two and a half centuries. Few more adept approaches to manipulating mobs exist than utilizing a group’s fear and/or hatred of the Other. History has shown us the mad folly that ensues when minorities are made scapegoats and victims by people who, frankly, are themselves victims (though not in the ways they might suspect). 

Nor does it matter if the racist or homophobe hails from an Ivy League education or ate his cereal growing up with the proverbial or literal silver spoon. The ignorance and blindness required of a human being to see others as “less-than”, once inculcated is difficult to excise and finds justification at every turn. From “well, I don’t think they’re all like that” to “I’m not talking about the good ones”, the defenses are laid via a mile-thick wall of unawareness reinforced by the cement of willful ignorance.

To be clear, I mourn the passing of the Republic for what it has become. I do not bemoan fallen empires and make no mistake, the United States was very much and imperium; however, I always held out hope that we might see us work through at least some modicum of our malaise and self-aggrandizing.

I mourn the failure to correct course when at different times in my life, it felt as though we had the wherewithal and ability to do so. When I was a teen and Richard Nixon was driven from office by threats of impeachment  (when that meant something), it was the result of protesting his abominable foreign policy, domestic corruption, and a militant press that pursued facts and reported them accordingly. Ford’s pardon was a betrayal to the concept of justice and facing responsibility. 

I thought there might be a chance that the Reagan administration would be held accountable for its horrid denial of the AIDS epidemic, its assault on abortion, its deregulation of industry and the resulting ecocide, and for its machinations that led to the Iran-Contra hearings. By the end of the 1980s, I was pretty sure I was on the losing side of history. 

By the time Clinton assumed office, I’d learned to mix the bitter with less bitter. “Don’t ask, don’t tell”, but do push through the disastrous NAFTA (for Mexico…not so bad for the US); no major wars, but many smaller conflicts supporting US interests and yes, by all means, please continue shoring up Israel. That said, balancing the budget and closing our your presidency with a surplus? Well done, sir.

Leave it to your successor to completely fuck it all up. 9/11 was a gift that continues to give. This is where the heartache really begins, as we see America’s first willful damage of trust in our international relationships abroad and each other domestically. Bush wasn’t smart enough to engineer the expansion of presidential powers, but the use of executive orders to push through malignant and harmful policies ramped up under him. He had strong mentors in Cheney and Rumsfeld.

And it is here where the media begins to hit the brick wall of fascism. Embedded journalists limited to what they could see and report on? No scenes of body bags of troops? “Mission accomplished”? All of these were the first dips into the subjugation of media to the state. (To be sure, this had its genesis in the 80s when Reagan rescinded the Fairness Doctrine, but we saw the rise of Fox News a quarter of a century ago become the voice of the GOP louder with each successive year.)

Not one but two terms. Let that sink in. The 2000 election remains a farce. Yes, it was close, but no, there was no reason why there shouldn’t have been a do-over for Florida and a fight over every allegation of votes being thrown out or lost. Or hanging chads. 

The thinking early on was that GWB would be a one-term president and the fall of the towers, the crash of Flight 93, and the damage to the Pentagon were all turned into political theater to establish division among the polity and hegemony over the oil in the Middle East. No tears need be wept for Saddam Hussein, but attacking a country that had nothing to do with the attack on the US was miscalculated folly. The ensuing imbroglios in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan served no purpose; at best, they disrupted the power balances in the region but not necessarily in the US’s favor. It wasn’t exactly a smooth imperial maneuver.

However, domestically it did reinforce suspicion of Muslims specifically and brown people in general (“officer, how was I know to he was Mexican? Dark hair? Brown skin? And he lives on this street? What?”). But it set the playing field for another schism; the so-called “educated elites” as opposed to the hard-working middle Americans. 

Sure, there has always been an intense anti-intellectual strain in the American make-up. Now, however, we had people who would vote for a man for president because they’d rather have a beer with him than the other guy. In many ways, this drives home how much ignorance drives the American electorate. 

Never mind that many of the Republican high command are graduates of the same elite institutions, but never let that get in the way of a white guy (or girl) who believes dutifully what they’re told, going to the polls and voting for the party that says they’ll cure all the white voters’ ills by lower taxes and prices and shipping off those brown people you don’t like or are so afraid of. 

Obama rolled in and while a breath of fresh air and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate for not being George Bush, sigh, expanded the power of the executive further with warrantless wiretapping and extrajudicial executions. Also, bailing out the banks? Really? Once again, justice isn’t served. It wasn’t even deferred. It was ignored.

Another bone to pick; allowing the Republican House to kill meaningful legislation again and again, to shoot down appointments aimed at establishing balance and much-vaunted bipartisanship. How is it that Mitch McConnell and his coterie were so adept at this? Stalling a presidential Supreme Court appointee? If ever a man needed to be removed from office, it was Kentucky’s biggest asshole. 

Obama did his best, I’m sure. Politics is the art of compromise, but there are moments in his administration when it looks less like compromise than capitulation. I won’t ignore that he received more than his share of racist stonewalling, particularly from the Republicans. The branding of Barack Obama as “socialist” is as laughable, if not more so, than how they usually bandy that term about. Yes, I respect the man for the most part, but he’s as corporate as any politician and didn’t exactly do all he could to shore up protections against corporate malfeasance.

And then we have the Full-Out Fascist Trial Run. There is nothing I can say that hasn’t been said already and is now downright anodyne compared to the Occupier’s second term. Oh, sure, there were “adults in the room”, but we got a good enough taste of what this arrogant turd had in mind soon enough. To this day, I’m not sure he expected to win. He was running against one of the most accomplished women in the history of United States’ politics.

Oh. Wait. Did I say “accomplished woman”? Well, who knew how handy the Electoral College would come in? Russian collusion? Manipulated social media to sway voters? Yes, likely on the latter, but certainly the former. The Electoral College denied the results of the popular vote and that really boils down to state representatives who weren’t about to let Hillary Clinton assume office. 

And please - let’s do replay how much of a hit she took when she called out Donald’s supporters as “deplorables”. After his outright misogyny, xenophobia, batshit conspiracy theories, loud and proud ignorance on display for all the world to see and hear? Bear in mind, by this point, the press was playing the “bothsidesism” on full blast. But it emphasized her failing (or just accurate observation) more than his. And she still won the popular vote.

I won’t replay the Greatest Hits of Trump 0.1. A decimated economy, lives lost due to COVID, attacks on the Department of Education, vocal support of Putin and Xi, draconian immigration expulsions and imprisonment, fomenting greater distrust in the liberal order and stigmatizing of the social safety net, holding back funds earmarked to aid Ukraine, and oh, shit. I guess I did play the hits.

Oh. And January 6, 2021. I cannot …

What a fabulous legacy. 

Then came the slingshot back to some kind of normalcy. Biden stepped in with an administration that not only reversed course, but actually improved certain areas of dysfunction. Of course, the second half of his term met with a flipped and more emboldened House and a SCOTUS and lower courts packed with appointees from the prior occupant’s administration, but give him credit for what he was able to get done in those four years, even if it’s all been wiped out. Every gain has been eradicated by a malevolent, power-mad cabal of unqualified ignoramuses, voted into office and cheered on by a jeering crowd of racists and fools. 

I’m not Hillary. I don’t have to use a nice word like “deplorable”. However, I do need to point out that Trump’s rise the second time should surprise no one. Again, running against a, some would say, overqualified woman (I might; there is no place where Kamala Harris couldn’t outclass the Clod) and once again, he won. 

I’ll repeat the assertion that there was again, likely election influence, if not outright data tampering, but even if not, the turnout of elected voters was and remains to my mind, shocking. Faced with an existential threat to all that this country purports to embody, people stayed home. And they continue to.

Even if tomorrow, the administration were driven from office, the country remains fraught with structural and frankly, moral and ethical issues. We remain the only developed nation where healthcare is seen as a privilege, not a right. Where food scarcity is blamed on the starving and social mobility is a matter of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.

All of this taken together does not lead me to celebrate 250 years of a dream that has come to naught. When the people who are, in theory, supposed to be the government, decide to support a tyrant, then there is little room for sympathy with their plight (which plight is also our own who do not support said tyrant). 

Thus, “Requiem.”

Afterword/Resurrection?

Now. I want to be clear about something else. “Requiem” literally means “rest” in Latin. I needed a rest and I do mourn the nation on its 250th. However, nothing in the current political allows for complacency or not speaking out. Indeed, if anything, it seems requisite upon us to continue doing so.

Join me “in requiem”, if you will, but know that it’s time to get up and begin again, refreshed and ready for another round.

Notes

1. Warren, Scott; Osborn, Katy; Ramsey-Elliot, Morgan; Winner, Sophia; Wu, Cameron; Rahman, Tariq; Petri, Julian.  “Faith, Freedom, Family, Place: An Ethnographic Study of Conservative Americans’ Relationships to Democracy.” The Johns Hopkins Agora Institute. https://conservativestudy.redassociates.com. May 2026.

2. Last, Jonathan V. “What Cletus thinks about “democracy” “. The Bulwark. https://www.thebulwark.com/p/what-cletus-thinks-about-democracy. June 26, 2026.

2. Ibid.