We give Donald Trump way too much credit. Since his inauguration, I have read countless editorials on how he is ending democracy.
Trump is just the cough of a virus, the pus of a boil. He may be an asp on the veins of democracy. But he did not cause its downward slide, even if he accelerated its pace.
Before Trump took the oath of office, democracy was already an illusion for those relegated to the margins of society. Accusations of him masterminding the demise of democracy are overblown.
They mask the deeper truth: this country never truly had a democracy due to the complicity of Euro-Christians in preventing it from ever taking root. White Christian nationalism and democracy are mutually exclusive, incongruent and unreconcilable.
Throughout most of U.S. history, democracy only existed for white men. White women were included after 1920 and persons of color after 1968. But even then, the law maintained and sustained white supremacy.
Gerrymandering and voter suppression laws are just some of the repressive policies that continue to this day. Not only are they geared to disenfranchise voters of color, but also many Euro-American voters.
Think of the white conservative Republican in Massachusetts or the white liberal Democrat in Wyoming. Their votes for president don’t count.
Only a handful of states determine who the president will be. Out of the 156.3 million ballots cast in the 2024 election, only 31.9 million (20%) voters in seven states decided the outcome.
The votes of those outside of battleground states simply do not count during presidential elections. This is a result of the holdover slavocracy mechanism known as the Electoral College, which has prevented the winner with the most votes from ascending to the presidency twice in this century.
Democracy picked up steam after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, allowing the racial and ethnic minoritized to head to the polls and exercise their constitutional right. But the 2008 occupancy of the White House—which was assumed to always remain white—by a biracial man unleashed a ferocious white-lash.
Take back our country! Make America Great Again! White rage gave rise to the Tea Party and the alt-right.
Before Trump, white supremacists mastered the language of political correctness. After Trump, Euro-Americans were given permission to be as unapologetically racist, as anti-intellectual, as misogynist, as transphobic, as Islamophobic as they want.
Conservatives’ odious gaslighting cast them as racism’s true victims. Meanwhile, liberals remained adept at expressing white guilt while confessing hope to do better, all while maintaining racist and ethically discriminatory policies and political structures.
Liberal Democrats are just as damning as conservative Republicans. While the latter deflect their racism, the former lack the will to implement solutions. In the final analysis, we are really left with a choice between bad and worse.
When Biden spoke about Trump’s first term when he was a candidate in 2020, he often pronounced, “It’s not who we are, not what America is.” But Trumpism is exactly who America is when we consider he received the most votes, in a fair election, by those agreeing with his anti-DEI and anti-immigrant rhetoric. The Trump phenomenon mirrors the national psyche.
Contrary to Biden’s assessment, this is who America is. Trump just rode U.S. racism and ethnic discrimination to the White House, as people of color who supported him continue to believe they would be exempt from white supremacist tendencies.
Biden, after returning from his first European jaunt as president, proclaimed, “America is back.” At the time, this was reassuring for those who had experienced four years of Trump trauma. But for many relegated to the margins of whiteness, Biden’s proclamation was heard with a heightened degree of uneasiness.
An unchanged America was not good news for the historically minoritized. Returning to a pre-Trump America does not offer salvation.
Hence, when we shout, “Defend Democracy!” as our battle cry, I must ask: Whose democracy? And why is it worth defending?
Trump’s loss in the 2020 election was not a balm for America’s ailments. Failing to renounce and rebut Trumpism stunted the establishment of democracy, maybe for the first time.
Democracy can never flourish until white supremacy is repudiated and recognized for the evil it is. Democracy can never be established until white Christian nationalism is systematically purged from the dominant Euro-American value system.
With Trump back in the White House, white Christian nationalists continue to operate with heightened anxiety and angst. Just consider the recent shift in focus of the Justice Department Civil Rights Division to pursuing anti-Christian bias instead of racial discrimination.
No doubt, Trump’s ineptness, demonstrated in his first four months back in office, will lead to America’s failure on multiple fronts. Maybe it’s what it will take for white folk to learn the word ¡basta!
Opportunity might arise in four years to explore possibilities for a more multicultural, justice-based social order. Or it might not.
A lot will depend on whether we repeat 2020 and attempt to return to a pre-Trump democracy-for-some or use the chaos Trump will have wrought to finally establish and live into a democracy that is beyond the rhetoric.
Electing another Biden may be an appealing reprieve from four years of PTSD—a moment to breathe before the rise of another Trumpish figure. The resilience of white supremacy and its sibling Christian nationalism is enough to make anyone hopeless. If history is any guide, the future is bleak.
Some of my African American friends are responding to the recent protest marches with: “Sit your Black ass down.” Maybe I need to sit my Brown ass down?
All too often, people of color are expected to rise to the occasion and bring about liberative change. But why do we constantly expect the abused spouse in the relationship to provide the solution for their abuse?
White people, especially Euro-Christians, created this abuse. They favor the abuse because, like all abusers, it provides the weak in character with allusions of superiority.
If democracy is going to work, then it’s up to white folk to move their asses and fix this mess they created.
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Professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, and a contributing correspondent at Good Faith Media.
