The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Gerald Farrington
Fire the federal workforce and replace them with “politically correct” appointees loyal to the president. That’s exactly what King Andy Jackson did when he was elected in 1828. “To the victor goes the spoils.” Government workers not working but getting paid was commonplace. Known as the “spoils system,” the thoroughly corrupt practice continued until it ended with an assassin’s bullet in 1881.
A frustrated “loyal” office seeker didn’t get the job he expected, so he killed President James Garfield. His successor, President Chester A. Arthur, ended the corrupt system and replaced it with the Pendleton Act of 1883. A Civil Service System based on merit was born, replacing the spoils system based on “pay for play” and “bribes.” Trump promises to end the civil service system. Return to the “spoils system” from a century and a half ago. What a really good idea. Turn back the clock and Make America Great Again.
Take away the reproductive rights of women because the new Supreme Court super-majority (with the three right-wing ideology-driven Trump appointees) said that women should not have a right to an abortion since women historically didn’t have that right. 19th-century attitudes about and anti-abortion laws restored, a constitutional right to conception will soon be gone. Turn back the clock and Make America Great Again.
Take away the Civil Rights gained by African Americans by the mid-twentieth century — wiping away gains made by ending discriminatory Jim Crow laws that endured for three-quarters of a century. Declare “affirmative action” programs to be reverse discrimination against others. Gut the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 as no longer necessary because racism and racial discrimination have largely disappeared. Attack and limit the anti-discriminatory features of the federal civil rights laws for the same reason. Determine all racial gerrymandering of legislative districts to be constitutional (unless “proven” to have been intentionally drawn on the basis of race). Turn back the clock to the late 19th-century legacy of slavery redux and Make America Great Again.
Let’s turn the clock back even further. In Trump v. U.S. (the presidential immunity case), the “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for “official acts” and many, if not most, “unofficial acts” has restored America to its pre-Revolutionary War status when America was ruled by mad King George III.
What do Donald Trump and King George III have in common? Both compete for the label “the mad king who lost America” because both started a revolution that ended badly. Both thought they were kings — perhaps one more than the other. Both behaved as though they were certifiably “mad” — according to their contemporaries, and both have lacked any formal psychiatric evaluation. One notable difference between the two — “madness” of only one of them seems to have been managed by courtiers. Turn back the clock to pre-1775 America when King George III ruled the American colonies and Make America Great Again.
Let’s turn the clock back even further to the roots of Western Civilization and to the flowering Roman civilization as heirs of the incredible legacy of Ancient Greece. Let’s stop the clock on the disintegration and demise of the Roman Republic in favor of Imperial Rome and its emperors. The Roman Republic and representative democracy came first only to be replaced by the expansive and powerful Roman Empire and its dynasties of autocrats. Republican Vice-Presidential nominee J.D. Vance invoked this analogy when he is reputed to have said that the “Republic” phase of the American experiment was near its end. What did he have in mind for the next phase? Empire? Emperor Trump — then Emperor Vance? MAGA autocracy awaits!
Is it better to dither and wait? Let others decide your fate. Or embrace your role and see. Your so-called fate is not to be. The seeds of autocracy are cultivated in the rancid soil of procrastination and watered with the turbid wastewater of anguish and despair.
The seeds of both democracy and autocracy are in the soil of our culture — just as the impulse to share and care about others, and the impulse toward selfishness and self-interest both seem to coexist in human nature. I like to think of our democracy as the flowers in a garden and autocracy as the weeds that spring up to try to overtake the garden. As I have previously written, “if you cultivate a garden, you’ll get some weeds; if you cultivate the weeds, you’ll never get a garden.”
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