Widespread faith in democracy is on the decline. The autocrat, after all, can make needed changes quickly and without interference. Unfortunately, the autocrat can be wrong.
A democracy is slower to act and less prone to catastrophic mistakes.
Sadly, autocracy is sometimes the result of a terrible democratic failure.
After major American upheavals, the country has perceived a need for new laws. New, sometimes transformational, laws were enacted after the Civil War, the 1929 stock market crash, World War II, Watergate, 9/11, and the 2008 financial crisis.
Assuming that Donald Trump’s presidency ends in a conventional election in which Republicans are decisively defeated—admittedly, not a sure thing—what new laws (and repeal of existing laws) will be necessary?
I find it distressing that some people who feel that the government is not working for them believe that scrapping our democratic institutions and being ruled by a dictator is a rational alternative. It is not; it is a pact with the devil. Unfortunately, many of our so-called democratic institutions are not all that democratic. Read my suggestions for enhancing our democracy in my essay We Need More Democracy.
I made a list of my favorite movies the other day, and it struck me that it would be interesting to compare my list with movie lists of friends. I am calling friends with similar lists cinema companions. Actually, I don’t expect to find people with a very similar list, but comparing lists is a good way to identify serious movie lovers. You can find my own list and some thoughts about lists and comparing lists here.
What follows below is excerpted from Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography by Harlow Robinson. It describes the arrest of Lina Prokofiev, who was married to composer Sergei Prokofiev. Lina was not a spy, but she had been consulting with foreign diplomats in her attempt to escape Stalin’s Soviet Union.
This awful story is distressingly similar to what is happening in Trump’s America. (I learned only tonight that the administration has deported children who are American citizens.) ICE agents, sometimes masked and showing no identification or warrant, are grabbing people off the street and deporting or trying to deport them.
WAKE UP AMERICA! THE FATE OF THE REPUBLIC IS IN YOUR HANDS!
Lina’s arrest—“on suspicion of spying”—was tragically typical of thousands (perhaps even millions) of others that occurred during 1948.
On February 20, as she was lying in bed with a cold, Lina received a telephone call from a friend in Leningrad. The friend told Lina she had sent her a package via another friend who was arriving that day in Moscow by train. She asked if Lina could meet this person at the railroad station not far from Lina’s apartment. When Lina explained that she was sick, and asked if the person couldn’t come to the apartment with the package, her friend insisted that Lina needed to go herself. Reluctantly, Lina agreed. Since she thought she would return in a few minutes, she didn’t even bother to dress very warmly.
As she was waiting in front of the station, a dark-colored car suddenly drove up right in front of her. Someone got out and asked Lina whom she was waiting for.
“What business is that of yours?” she replied indignantly.
“Do you know that you’re waiting for a criminal?” the man asked her.
“You must have made a mistake,” Lina replied, beginning to feel uneasy. “You have the wrong person.”
The men in the car were very insistent that she was the person they wanted, however. Finally they instructed her to get into the car.
“Come with us and we’ll explain everything,” they said. “If we’ve made a mistake, you can go—we’ll even bring you back home.”
They forced Lina into the car and drove off. As they passed the apartment building on Chkalov Street, Lina was hoping desperately that Oleg or Sviatoslav [her two children] would appear. She asked where they were taking her.
“We’ll explain everything in a minute,” they said.
But there was no need to explain when the car passed through the gates of the Lubyanka, Moscow’s most infamous prison, on Dzherzhinsky Square across the street from the Children’s World Department Store. When they were inside, Lina immediately recognized a man sitting there as someone she had seen in the subway and on the streets. He had been following her. There had been a few other subtle signs that she was being watched, but Lina had failed—or refused—to take serious notice.
Lina was to spend years in the Gulag, only being released after the death of Stalin.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, on April 19, 1775, Massachusetts colonists fired upon British soldiers at Lexington and Concord. We are now entering a period of commemorations of the American Revolution, of events 250 years ago. Last night, at Open Mic Night at Sulfur Books, I read Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride.” That poem concludes with these lines:
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,Through all our history, to the last,In the hour of darkness and peril and need,The people will waken and listen to hearThe hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
Are you awake and listening?
Increasingly, I hear advertisements for financial services targeted at “high worth” individuals or families. “High worth” is the latest euphemism for “rich” or “wealthy,” each of which suggests a class difference that Americans are reluctant or embarrassed to acknowledge. Significantly, “rich” is often preceded by “filthy,” creating a phrase that clearly is a term of opprobrium. “Wealthy” is somewhat less objectionable—no one speaks of the “filthy wealthy”—but the class distinction is still uncomfortably present.
Our lives are increasingly influenced by the super wealthy whose net worth has been greatly expanded through government policies. Perhaps we should speak more often of the filthy wealthy.
