It was a thoroughly Trumpian move, and to some degree, it worked. The entire convention drew on imagery from dictatorships. A parade of family members assured us Trump is wonderful, subordinates offered generic over-the-top praise, and every speaker demonized anyone who doesn’t support Trump’s continued rule. The convention had demonstrations of mercy from the president as he both pardoned a criminal and granted citizenship to five immigrants (who were apparently not told they would be part of the convention), a standard trope in the authoritarian’s handbook. And it had the trappings of dictators, from First Lady Melania Trump’s dress that evoked a Nazi uniform— almost certainly to provoke a response while appealing to the alt-right—to the cathedral ceilings of our hallowed civic temple, to the wall of flags, all evoking tradition, majesty, and might.
It was desperately sad to see the White House, the people’s house, turned into the background for a political rally, emblazoned with flags and sporting jumbotrons that spelled out “Trump/Pence.” It looked like a Biff Tannen fantasy.
The men who founded our government based it not on hereditary leadership, or on religion, or on race, because they recognized that such governments would inevitably lead to bloodshed. They knew well the history of European countries torn asunder by warring families or religious sects. Instead, they took the radical step of founding a nation on the idea that all men are created equal, that no man is any better or any worse than another, and that all must be equal before the law. They were blind to things they should have seen, of course—their “all men” excluded men of color and women—but the principle of equality before the law was a radical new idea in western history.
A government of laws, not of men, meant that no one should be able to leverage his political office to retain power, and when officials began to violate that principle, Congress in 1939 passed the Hatch Act, forbidding all federal employees except the president and vice president “from using federal property for political activities or for engaging in anything that is a partisan political act,” as political scientist Norm Ornstein, from the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, put it.
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Tonight’s event at the White House demonstrated that we are in another great crisis in American history. A reactionary group of older white men look at a global future in which questions of clean energy, climate change, economic fairness, and human equality are uppermost, and their reaction is to cling to a world they control.
But that world is passing, whether they like it or not. Even if Trump wins in 2020, he cannot stop the future from coming. And while the United States will not meet that future with the power we had even four years ago, we will have to meet it nonetheless. It will be no less exciting and offer no fewer opportunities than the dramatic changes of the 1850s, 1890s, and 1930s, and at some point, Americans will want to meet those challenges.
If history is any guide, when that happens, we will restore the principle of equality before the law, and push America into the future.
