Don't miss Robert Kagan's article

We have a radical democracy. Will Trump voters destroy it?

Deep conflict has been going on during our whole history as a nation.

Hi! After several months, I am alerting my Substack subscribers to a don't-miss article by Robert Kagan that you can access without a paywall.

Although I have been posting on Notes, I have not dropped a Substack article in some months. One reason is positive—I am doing a lot of research on China and human behavior so that I can write some worthwhile articles on this important issue.

Part of my silence has been negative—I have had two major bereavements and two short hospitalizations. To give you some details on the most significant, my 95-year-old father had been living at home and driving until 5 days before his death. But then he suffered sudden kidney failure which would have made him a bed-ridden invalid despite the best of treatment. Accordingly, he and his wife (my stepmother) made a joint decision to allow him to slip away.

To some degree, one could regard his death as physician assisted suicide. When my father and stepmother decided that they were not going to seek aggressive treatment, they agreed he should receive a shot of morphine although he was not in great pain. The first shot did not even render him unconscious. Medical protocol dictates that a patient must wait 15 minutes before they receive a second shot, and the second shot killed him almost immediately.

If my father and stepmother had opted for palliative care, who knows how many days it would have taken for him to slip away.  Dying of kidney failure is basically feeling worse and worse until you slip into a coma—kidneys removed poison from the body so death by kidney failure is death by poisoning. Although in general I am against physician assisted suicide, my father’s case leaves me perplexed. It’s not that the decision was influenced by financial factors (no problem there) or that my father was ducking the challenges of life (he had faced so many along the way).  

Remarkably, my father died on my birthday— which I saw as a touching reminder of our closeness and the deep respect we had for each other.  Even more remarkably one of his grandchildren was born on my birthday, a child to whom I always felt very close. So, December 17 shows up three times in our family history between 1950 and 2023 —talk about the cycle of life!

BTW, December 17 has a little appreciated significance in the traditional church calendar. It is the start of the home stretch of Advent, as we wait for God to make his home in a world shattered by sin.  It is the date when the Great O Antiphons appear in the liturgy: “O come, O come Emmanuel!”

At this point, the church calendar is totally in sync with the natural calendar. December 17 comes four days before the depth of winter dying on December 21. In contrast, Christmas comes four days after this nadir.  As most are aware, Christmas was originally a Roman festival celebrating the rebirth of the Sun. By December 25, an astute observer does not need modern instruments to be sure that the days are getting longer.

Thus, for me, my birth on December 17 came to symbolize my willingness to accept life in its most difficult manifestations.  Since the 1960s, I have been an avid student of both World War II and the American Civil War. For many decades they seemed merely a realist counterpoint to the increasing hedonism and consumerism I saw around me.  Now, however, dark clouds appear to be gathering once more, and some fear that horrible events may be in store.

I don’t think that the most horrible of events —all-out war between the United States and China —is in the offing. That’s why I am preparing myself to write articles on the US-China relationship.

Back to Robert Kagan’s superb article

However, what is the prospect for a renewal of the perpetual civil war that troubles our country? One of the unique strengths of Kagan’s article is that it traces the liberal/illiberal split back to the days of the Founding Fathers.

Basically, Kagan concludes that 1/3 of the country favors the reestablishment of White Christian ascendency.  Corporate America has been giving signals that it can live with this shift. Less than 50% of the country will give determined opposition. Thus, he concludes that a second Trump presidency could usher in a white Christian regime that would ignore or even overthrow the Constitution.

I agree with Kagan that this is possible. However, I do not believe that such a White Christian regime could possibly be stable. It could only result in 20 years of chaos as two worldviews struggle for supremacy in this country. It would make the anti-Vietnam uproar of the 70s, with its bombings and police violence, look like child’s play.  It would also mean two decades in which China, Russia, and Iran would have much more opportunity to advance their agendas without coherent American opposition.

Please read Kagan’s article and let us discuss it in the comments section below.

If you are having trouble linking to the article, please copy the link below which seems to be working for me.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/24/trump-tyranny-christian-nationalist-democracy/