Escape Velocity from the Arc of Hate
"The Enemy Within" is the final chapter of Gingrich's Contract on America. Let's End it.
It’s been coming for a long time and I, sadly, have watched as we have ridden the wave of hatred that began in 1994, the year I ran for Governor of New Hampshire, and has ended up directly targeted at all of us.
At each stage, the institutions that should have protected us from this moment have failed us.
In 1994 Newt Gingrich and his “Contract with America” began the process that has brought us to today. Until then, Democrats and Republicans were considered to be the “the loyal opposition” to one another.
Sure, we debated and disagreed vigorously - that’s what Democracy is all about, after all. But most members of the governing institutions in America lived in relationship with one another: sometimes contentious, sometimes cooperative. But always committed to the American idea.
Of course there were always the “skunks at the garden party”, the Ted Cruises and Matt Gaetz’s of the world, but both parties were pretty good at marginalizing them to the benefit of an ongoing national consensus that allowed us to continue moving forward, albeit sometimes at a painstakingly slow pace. The wingnuts were, for the most part, not able to get purchase.
But then along came Newt.
Newt introduced the poison of political hate into the national dialog and it raced through our political bloodstream like a pandemic. He may have given it a name that sounded patriotic and non-threatening, but his 1994 “Contract with America” really was a Contract ON America.
Ever since our founding, our struggle to nurture a nation where pluralism was the superpower that ultimately bound together a nation of dreamers, doers, and revolutionaries has relied on a fragile consensus built around an ongoing national debate over the twin challenges of policy and culture.
This fragile consensus, developed through what American author, journalist, and activist Jonathan Rauch calls “The Constitution of Knowledge”, has been strengthened by a bilateral set of imperatives: First driven by a shared vision of freedom and agency as the driving force behind our own personal American dream and a far more fragile consensus around policies that represent constant efforts to create common ground and our collective story. To “ form a more perfect Union. ”
In a historic blink of an eye, Gingrich twisted a nearly 200-year history of hard-learned lessons, grudging respect, and gradual social evolution into an inverted social contract based on antithetical outcomes instead of shared ideals.
Where rigorous debate had served to mold public policy into a coherent path He counseled Republicans to use the language of hate when discussing the opposition. He warned against friendships, casual dinners, shared religious affiliations, even weekends in Washington where golf or bowling or other casual associations might infect the body politic with something approaching civility.
I suppose that James Madison and others among the “Federalist Papers” authors might have expected that such a movement would begin in the House. After all they were aware that passions would run much more powerfully in the governing body that was temporily closest to the people. But they expected more of the Senate.
They had purposefully structured the Senate to be more deliberative; not dispassionate, but cognizant of the words of the great conservative thinker, Edmund Burke, who counseled us to be aware that our representative owes us the promise of his or her judgment, even when that means swimming in opposition to the tides.
But then there was what Ira Shapiro, chronicler of the Senate since the last constitutional crisis, Watergate, calls “the Betrayal”. The United States Senate, the “world’s greatest deliberative body.” (Buchanan) and the “saucer that cools the tea of controversy” (Franklin), was added to the list of institutions that failed to stem the tide of fascism in our country.
Until the Dobbs Decision, followed by the Chevron Decision and the coup de grace - appropriately called “Trump vs the United States", granting the President almost complete immunity for his actions, some of us had not given up hope that the Supreme Court would hold strong, even as the other institutions crumpled, but even that it was not to be.
Added to these failures the corporatization of the media that has exacerbated the divisions between us - the space that separates us from one another. Not because they are aggressively pursuing truth or the public interest, but because they have made a financial bet on the tribe that they believe will most benefit their own.
. . . and so here we are.
From Newt’s poisonous prescription in 1994 to Trump’s “Enemy Within”. A thirty-year cascade.
In 1812 U.S. Navy Master Commandant Oliver Hazzard Perry penned a famous letter to Major General William Henry Harrison, before a naval engagement, in which he confidently declares “We have met the enemy and they are ours”.
One hundred and fifty years would pass before the passage would be resurrected by Walt Kelly in his famous Pogo cartoon to describe humanity's tendency to create our own problems. and so the quote became “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
In barely more than a generation, the quote has morphed once again, this time with no changes to the words but a complete change to their meaning. From that initial confident cry of freedom to an affirmation of our common challenges and now, sadly, to a tyrannical declaration directing the finger of blame at “We the People”.
In a single, simple, declarative sentence, Donald Trump has declared “We the People” to be the enemy within.
All of the institutions that the founders designed to act as a check on the system have failed us, save one.
With the wolf at the door, it is finally up to “We the People”.
It matters not that one political party bears the lion’s share of the blame for this. There are patriots in both parties and we must be defiantly protective of them to a person.
As sad as it is that the great political institutions of this country have caved to the despotism of Donald Trump; As sad as it is that corrupted institutions including our land’s highest court have abandoned our principles; I still believe in “We the People” .
If Americans stand together against the storm of fascism attempting to mount the parapets of democracy and vote to defeat Donald Trump, then the poetic justice of the power of “the people” will resound through history.
Our first revolution, waged before political parties existed was purely an act of “We the People”.
Back in 2018 Former Republican operative Steve Schmidt described the bi-partisan election results that had swept back the previous election’s gains of Donald Trump as a “victory of the Coalition of the Decent”
In the months to come; after the votes have been cast; when this election is over, there will be much to debate about what remains of the American political system and what we must do to rebuild it. But for now we must stand strong for the rights of “We the People”. We must use the power of our voices and our votes to achieve escape velocity from the arc of hate that threatens the greatest idea ever conceived for human freedom and dignity.
Before you cast your vote in the coming week, think about what you will say in the years to come when your children and grandchildren ask you what you did when democracy was on the line.
I hope you will be able to tell them “I joined the coalition of the decent.”
