Extra: A New Year’s Revolution

TUCSON — Our new year’s resolutions are already half-forgotten. Same-old, same-old on TV. Santa forgot my forklift to bring the daily fluff-bloated New York Times in from the driveway. And the world is nearing – with all things considered — the most crucial showdown in human history.

That epic film, “Lawrence of Arabia,” loops in my head. A thirsty Lawrence berates a petty sheikh who refuses water from his desert oasis: “So long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people, a silly people, greedy, barbarous, and cruel as you are.”

You see where I’m going here. A deranged human hairball intends to choke off democracy in America. Yet voters might bring him back to power, rejecting a president who has restored prosperity while working effectively to thwart climate collapse and contain two widening wars.

A re-United States needs a New Year’s Revolution.

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More than 60 countries totaling four billion people plan elections this year. Some are foregone shams. Others will be close races between democracy and dictatorship. America, which should be an inspiring example, is hardly that erstwhile “shining city on a hill.”

Dangers deepen in a fractured society with more guns than people. Judges, legislators — even election volunteers — face death threats accompanied by atrocious detail. When so many people shrug off Jan. 6, imagine what could come next.

The Bill of Rights, those first ten add-ons to the Constitution, did not envision a Donald Trump or semi-automatic assault rifles. After the bedrock First Amendment, a second enabled citizen militiamen to keep muskets handy in case the British came back.

After the Civil War, Congress added the 14th Amendment. No one I know better explains its import today than Timothy Snyder at Yale. His slim book, “On Tyranny,” appeared a month after Trump was inaugurated in 2017.

“No office-holding insurrectionist can return to office,” he wrote a few days ago. “The language is clear, and the facts of (Trump’s) case are not in dispute.” Still, this incontrovertible truth fails to sink in.

Snyder wrote:

“Because we are used to hearing endless conversations about politics on television, where everyone seems to be a political advisor, it can seem normal to reduce sections of the Constitution to talking points.  But we must pause and consider.

“In fact, rejecting the legal order in favor of what seems to be politically safe at a given moment is just about the most dangerous move that can be made. It amounts to advocating that we shift from constitutional government to an insurrectionary regime. Indeed, it amounts to participating in that shift, while not taking responsibility for doing so.” 

A line in Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” put it more simply, if indelicately: “Opinions are like buttholes. Everybody has one.”

Despite Trump’s absurd denials, we all watched his high crimes live in real time. Still, he defies the rule of law every which way. No conviction is assured. In any case, federal accommodations that might await him cannot legally include the White House.

Even if Trump does not run, he has thoroughly perverted American politics. Only a clean sweep of his faithless partisans – from Congress, statehouse, school boards and sheriff’s offices – can put a reunified nation back on track toward two-party representative democracy.

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While America obsesses on domestic issues, overriding existential challenges are beyond its insulating oceans. Nikki Haley, the leading Trumplican alternative, showed at the United Nations she is inept at diplomacy. Developing states criticized her for linking U.S. aid to pro-Israel votes.

She is an artful hypocrite, skilled at tailoring her positions to woo ill-informed voters. In the 2016 debates, she excoriated Trump as everything she taught her children not to be.

Among Democrats, many want a candidate younger than Joe Biden. None in the running is even close to ready. In today’s unruly world, statecraft requires consistency and personal contacts cultivated over years. There is no time for on-the-job training.

Peruse past Reports for my take on Biden’s age and supposed dottiness. In brief, just look at the guy. He is a wise old admiral steering the fleet, taken seriously by America’s friends and foes alike. He is gifted at finding whip-smart underlings to do the heavy lifting.

Not many younger presidents would have taken that 11-hour train ride to Kyiv within Russian gunsights or made that risky trip to Israel against his aides’ advice so that he could yell at Bibi Netanyahu in person.

The “Biden crime family”? Trump’s own two sons remind me of Uday and Qusay Hussein. And, yes, there is Jared Kushner.

Any president’s power is limited by Congress, the Supreme Court and realpolitik abroad. That is why Trump so badly wants a second term with rubberstamp legislators, kangaroo courts and yes-sir generals. If he achieves his goal of neutering an honest free press, there are no limits.

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A revolution is daunting, but anthropologist Margaret Mead’s advice long ago is even truer in a wired world: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

—The first step is making sure friends, family and anyone else who will listen reflects on how the Electoral College system works, particularly in crucial swing states. Any ballot not cast for Biden, or not cast at all, fortifies his opponent. Remember Ralph Nader.

I worry when minority groups oppose Biden for not delivering all he promised. With a deadlocked Congress and packed courts, he couldn’t. He has his faults. But no president is a genie that emerges from a rubbed lamp to grant personal wishes.

Biden is criticized for not selling himself better. True, America today is all about marketing, and not enough voters draw their own conclusions from the results they see. Presidents have enough else to do. This is not about picking a winner in Dancing With the Stars.

Levels of apathy and hopelessness are disheartening. But persuasive, persistent reasoning gets people to the polls. Volunteer groups can help with registration and organize carpools to make sure ballots are cast.

Circulate ads from The Lincoln Project and videos of lunatic legislators – House Speaker Mike Johnson and Sen. Jim Jordan, for instance — who paralyze Congress. Above all, citizens need to understand how drastically lives will change if Republican truth-twisting prevails.

—The second step is to assemble convincing arguments. Whack through the limitless chaff to find essential sources. Climb over paywalls if necessary. A Mort Report on the “media” is in the works, but a few stalwarts stand out.

The New York Times is crucial. Drill down to its kernel of firsthand reporting, investigations and comment from pros like Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof who watch the world closely and write with authority. Read the Guardian, The Washington Post and monitor BBC online.

For current politics in historical context, Heather Cox Richardson is a gem. For detailed accounts of what corporate greedheads and plutocrats are up to, there is Robert Reich. For depth, The New Yorker.

And for an immediate kickstart, devour The Atlantic’s January/February special issue: “If Trump Wins.” In 24 often-superb essays, it probes every aspect of a dysfunctional nation and an overheated world hurtling toward potential endgame at an alarming speed.

After that fires you up, clear some time for Marty Baron’s riveting masterpiece, “Collison of Power,” on his tenure at the Post, Washington’s hometown daily, after Jeff Bezos piled money upon the legacy of Katharine Graham for better and worse.

Nothing I’ve read better sheds light on the essence and ethics of today’s “journalism,” a catchall noun that is fast becoming a dirty word. Its main message is captured in a famed retort to Trump’s epithet: enemy of the people. “We are not at war,” Baron said. “We are at work.”

Newspapers, whether in print or via electrons, remain the Fourth-Estate’s foundation. Nonstop cable TV and, to a far greater extent, riffs on social media rely heavily on what they provide.

Opinion pages are different, overseen by editors who answer directly to the publisher. News columns stick to verifiable facts. Reporters try hard to keep personal leanings out of their copy. Any good newspaper’s most important asset is credibility earned over time.

Baron refutes the widespread belief that journalism can’t be — or shouldn’t be — “objective.” He writes: “As journalists, we can never stop obsessing over how to get at the truth — or, to use to a less lofty term, ‘objective reality.’ Doing that requires an open mind and rigorous method.”

He edited the Miami Herald when Florida decided the presidency in 2000. Al Gore asked for a recount, standard procedure in a close race marred by apparent irregularities. But the Supreme Court declared George W. Bush the winner. Gore conceded without a fight.

The Herald spent a million dollars to tally the ballots by hand and investigate all suspected incidents of tampering. In the end, it determined Bush had won, confirming to its readers that the system works. Hard to imagine that today.

Trump assumed Bezos called the shots at the Post, which he didn’t. He organized a dinner with the publisher, Baron and other top brass to alternately lavish praise and complain. When he saw no quid pro quo for more favorable coverage, he rounded on Amazon with a vengeance.

He blocked a $10 billion technology contract with Amazon and tried to sharply increase postal rates for Amazon when, in fact, the company’s business helped make a major dent in the Post Office deficit.

Baron described a newspaper’s challenge to remain evenhanded when covering an aberrant president. The Post’s Fact Checker team tallied 30,573 lies and deceptions during Trump’s four years, increasing from six a day in 2017 to a peak of 189 on Aug. 11, 2020.

“That number alone, no matter how astounding, could not adequately capture all that was at stake,” Baron wrote. “A nation needs fact as its anchor. Trump was cutting that anchor loose.”

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With 10 months to go, revolution fatigue might set in. If it does, call up the attached ABC News “This Week” segment. Jonathan Karl interviews three women White House insiders who dropped the dime on Trump.

In December, Alyssa Farah Griffin quit her job as Trump’s communications director in disgust. The other two were angry at her at first for jumping ship, but that changed on Jan. 6.

Sarah Matthews, deputy press secretary to Kayleigh McEnaney, explained her abrupt departure: “I motioned up at the TV and I said, do you think it looks like we’re f-ing winning? Because I don’t think it does.”

Cassidy Hutchinson told how she has lived behind drawn blinds, fearful for her life, after testifying in Congress. All three said they would do it again with no hesitation.

“A second Trump term could mean the end of American democracy as we know it,” Griffin said. “And I don't say that lightly.”

In the end, she concluded, “It came down to, I want to be able to look my future kids in the eye and say, when history called for it, I did the right thing, and I had the courage to do it.” That ought to resonate with all of us, future kids or not. Aux armes, citoyens.

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https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/former-trump-white-house-insiders-call-2nd-term/story?id=105998679