Quote of the Day (Theodore Roosevelt, Warning About 'Special Interests’ vs. Democracy)

"At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of freemen to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth.” —U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), “The New Nationalism,” speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, August 31, 1910

Joke of the Day (Jon Stewart, on ‘The Will of the People’)

"You have to remember one thing about the will of the people: It wasn't that long ago that we were swept away by the Macarena." — Comic Jon Stewart, quoted by Mark Dawidziak and Ted Crow, “Jon Stewart Blurs the Lines Between Jester and Journalist,” The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Apr. 11, 2009

For my younger readers (both of them!) and for older ones who’ve blessedly expunged certain trends from their memory, the Macarena was a dance sparked by a pop hit of 1993. Delegates even went wild for it at the 1996 Democratic Convention, believe it or not.

These days, a dance associated with politics dates from further back—the late Seventies hit “YMCA”—and the person moving improbably to it these days began segueing into the public consciousness in that decade, too.

Quote of the Day (Franklin Roosevelt, on the ‘War for the Survival of Democracy’)

“In this world of ours in other lands, there are some people, who, in times past, have lived and fought for freedom, and seem to have grown too weary to carry on the fight. They have sold their heritage of freedom for the illusion of a living. They have yielded their democracy.

“I believe in my heart that only our success can stir their ancient hope. They begin to know that here in America we are waging a great and successful war. It is not alone a war against want and destitution and economic demoralization. It is more than that; it is a war for the survival of democracy. We are fighting to save a great and precious form of government for ourselves and for the world.”— U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), Acceptance Speech for the Renomination for the Presidency, Philadelphia, Pa., June 27, 1936

That “war” continues, though in our country the prospects for victory look increasingly uncertain.

Quote of the Day (Archibald MacLeish, on Why ‘Democracy is Never a Thing Done’)

“Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing. What is necessary now is one thing and one thing only, that democracy become again democracy in action, not democracy accomplished and piled up in goods and gold.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet, playwright and statesman Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982), The American Cause (1941)

When MacLeish wrote these words, Americans would shortly unite in the most dramatic fashion possible: to defend their nation following the attack on Pearl Harbor, and in the process take up arms against dictatorships overrunning Europe and Asia.

But democracy depends on quieter moments, too—like voting. (Only, since the turn of the millennium, even this action has become unexpectedly fraught with tension.)

Nevertheless, it remains the case that, if this country desires to remain intact and to preserve what Abraham Lincoln termed “the last best hope of earth," performing this civic, and profoundly patriotic, duty in an informed, non-frivolous manner remains a prerequisite.

(The image accompanying this post, an example of a voting booth in the Old State House in Hartford, CT, was taken Dec. 22, 2023, by Kenneth C. Zirkel.)

Quote of the Day (Christopher Lasch, on Education, Persuasion and Democracy)

“If we insist on argument as the essence of education, we will defend democracy not as the most efficient but as the most educational form of government, one that extends the circle of debate as widely as possible and thus forces all citizens to articulate their views, to put their views at risk, and to cultivate the virtues of eloquence, clarity of thought and expression, and sound judgment.”— American historian and social critic Christopher Lasch (1932-1994), The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (1994)

Quote of the Day (Abraham Lincoln, on ‘Faith in the People’)

“I have faith in the people. They will not consent to disunion. The danger is, that they are misled. Let them know the truth and the country is safe.” —President Abraham Lincoln, to the Boston (MA) Journal, July 1864, quoted in “President Lincoln Had a Presentiment of Death,” Sandusky (OH) Register, Apr. 29, 1865

Quote of the Day (Dahlia Lithwick, on Covering Democracy Subversion Before the Next Election)

“If we learned anything from 2016 and 2020, it is that you can’t start covering democracy subversion two weeks before the election. It can’t be, ‘Oh, wait, now I’m starting to realize that they’re closing polling places in minority precincts’ or that people are planning to terrorize election workers with guns. All these democracy subversion questions are kind of invisible to us—they are structural, they are system-wide, they are not interesting. So we just keep erring on the side of covering battles between good guys and bad guys. This is a rich, nuanced conversation about efforts to both subvert the vote and then make the country itself a more fragile, authoritarian place. We are just very bad at covering systems and structures of democracy in the press. It is always going to be more interesting to cover a one-off case and do a breathless account of what happened in oral argument. But we need to be covering entire systems and structures. I don’t think we can tell it as a background story.”— Slate Senior Editor and Supreme Court expert Dahlia Lithwick, quoted by Kevin Lind, “Q&A: Dahlia Lithwick on the Colorado Case, The Election, and the Press,” Columbia Journalism Review, Feb. 7, 2024

Keep this in mind as you watch or read about oral arguments, this week and (maybe) later, concerning Supreme Court rulings related to the 2024 election.

In their questioning of the different counsels, the justices, whether right or left, struck me as concerned with the precedents and punctilios of the law. They seemed blissfully unaware that the candidate at the heart of the Colorado case cared nothing at all about either, or indeed of anything other than seizing power to avoid legal peril for himself.

In either words, they wanted to find a past legal guide to a crisis of a kind and magnitude not previously seen in American history.

They fear a ruling that could take power away from the American electorate, even as they miss the larger point that the appellant in this case was trying to do precisely that in the last two Presidential elections.

They fear a ruling that could involve them in deciding a Presidential race, even though one justice (Thomas) was part of the court majority that decided the critical Florida count 24 years ago and even though several others (Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett) were part of the effort to induce the court to come down in the GOP’s favor.

They fear the application of the Fourteenth Amendment in a realm not seen before, ignoring the clear language of this measure concerning those who foment an insurrection--even though they have long embraced the dubious notion that the amendment's reference to "persons" also applies to corporations.

It might help if the press starts reporting on the state-by-state battles going on right now that will determine if democracy will be subverted this fall. In the meantime, we might ask for a bit more skepticism as the justices practically beg to let this latest judicial c(o)up pass from their lips.

(For more on the Supreme Court justices' questions in the oral arguments on the application of the 14th Amendment in the Colorado primary cases, see Amy Howe's post yesterday on the SCOTUS Blog. It is a fine piece of its kind, but also, alas, illustrating Ms. Lithwick's point that "entire systems and structures" are not being covered by the press.)

Quote of the Day (John Lanchester, on Education, Economics, and Democracy)

“It would be a disaster for democracy if this divide [by educational level] were to become permanently entrenched. Democracy depends on an informed electorate; it depends on argument, and that in turn depends on having enough in common to be able to argue. Bankers and the financial elite can’t just talk to each other as if nothing has changed; as if the little people are just going to accept that they can’t follow the big words, so the rich should just keep running things in their own interest. The experts need to set terms for the debate that everyone can understand. So yes, when it comes to economics, language matters.” —British journalist and novelist John Lanchester, “On Money: How Economic Gobbledygook Divides Us,” The New York Times Magazine, Nov. 6, 2016

Quote of the Day (Pericles, on Democracy and Obedience to the Law)

“Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law; when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses. No one, so long as he has it in him to be of service to the state, is kept in political obscurity because of poverty. And, just as our political life is free and open, so is our day-to-day life in our relations with each other….We are free and tolerant in our private lives; but in public affairs we keep to the law. This is because it commands our deep respect.

‘We give our obedience to those whom we put in positions of authority, and we obey the laws themselves, especially those which are for the protection of the oppressed, and those unwritten laws which it is an acknowledged shame to break.”—Athenian politician and general Pericles (c. 495 – 429 BC), funeral oration, quoted by Greek historian and general Thucydides (ca. 460-404 BC), History of the Peloponnesian War, translated by Rex Warner (1916; revised edition, 1972)

We don’t know word for word what the Athenian leader Pericles said in ancient Greek—there were no speeches written down, let alone recording devices. But Thucydides provided the best sense of the occasion.

Pericles reminded his audience, in this justly famous homage to war dead, of the values present in Athenian democracy. This passage, during a week of headlines about a former American leader who violated his oath of office and “those unwritten laws which it is an acknowledged shame to break,” is especially worth keeping in mind.

But Thucydides, in narrating events after this zenith of ancient democracy, offered an equally important lesson about the fragility of that state—about how it crumbled following military reverses, the rhetoric of the demagogue Cleon (“the most violent of the citizens” and “by far the most persuasive with the people at that time”), and the corroded values produced by a plague.

One sentence from his essential history, however, rings most powerfully for me in understanding the loud and lamentable defiance of the law that lies behind the ancient and current threat to the transfer of governmental control in a democacy: “It is prestige, fear and self-interest that prevent men giving up power.”

Movie Quote of the Day (‘High Noon,’ on Refusing to Defend Order and Democracy)

Judge Percy Mettrick [played by Otto Kruger]: “In the 5th century B.C., the citizens of Athens, having suffered grievously under a tyrant, managed to depose and banish him. However, when he returned some years later, with an army of mercenaries, those same citizens not only opened the gates for him, but stood by while he executed members of the League of Government. A similar thing happened about eight years ago in a town called Indian Falls. I escaped death only through the intercession of a lady of somewhat dubious reputation—and uh, the cost of a very handsome ring which once belonged to my mother. Unfortunately, I have no more rings.”

Marshal Will Kane [played by Gary Cooper]: “You're a judge!”

Judge Mettrick: “I've been a judge many times in many towns. I hope to live to be a judge again. Why must you be so stupid? Have you forgotten what he is? Have you forgotten what he's done to people? Have your forgotten that he's crazy? Don't you remember when he sat in that chair and said, 'You'll never hang me. I'll come back. I'll kill you, Will Kane. I swear it, I'll kill you'?”—High Noon (1952), screenplay by Carl Foreman, adapted from the short story “The Tin Star,” by John W. Cunningham, directed by Fred Zinnemann

I wish I could simply put up a straight, idealistic post this Fourth of July about the brilliance of the Declaration of Independence and rest easy about the state of the nation it brought into being. But the survival of this country and its institutions has always been tested, and never so much in my lifetime, anyway, as in the last several years.

The American western is a genre adaptable enough to explore all kinds of conflicts, but few were done so searingly as High Noon. As I explained in this blog post from 11 years ago, on the 50^th anniversary of this classic film’s release, many in Hollywood interpreted it as a veiled allegory against McCarthyism.

Although I accept that as the motive for the screenplay by Carl Foreman (who, for his own refusal to “name names” about past Communist associations, was blacklisted by Hollywood after the movie’s release), I believe now that it’s a mistake to view it in such limiting terms.

Nearly 70 years after the Senate finally mustered enough votes to censure Joseph McCarthy for behavior “contrary to senatorial traditions,” and more than 65 years after the Senator from Wisconsin died, alcoholic and ignored by the press corps that fueled his rise, High Noon’s message about the danger to American democracy posed by the exploitation of fear rings more loudly now than ever before.

I tried unsuccessfully to find a film still I could use for the above dialogue between Gary Cooper and Otto Kruger, but maybe it was all for the best. The one I chose powerfully illustrates one of the major themes of High Noon: the overwhelming loneliness of a single man who tries to save a once-bustling community that has suddenly, catastrophically lost the desire to save itself.

Look again at Judge Mettrick’s exchange with Marshal Will Kane. Surely you’ve heard recently about a lawbreaker who somehow slipped through the clutches of civil authority, now vowing “retribution” against those who dared to stop him? About a bully that those who crossed him before now want to avoid encountering at all costs? About his repeated threats made with impunity, just daring the authorities to act against him again—a challenge they are reluctant to accept?

For Marshal Kane, the man who must be confronted is Frank Miller; for contemporary American democracy, it’s Donald Trump.

The good citizens of the New Mexico frontier town of Hadleyville (with its faint echo of “Hollywood”) shirk Kane’s urgent request to join his posse against Miller and his three confederates.

Among the pleasures of the film that I’d forgotten was the absolutely apt dialogue for each character—not only deftly capturing their motivation but also their class, educational level, and other defining socioeconomic and psychological features.

The lines that screenwriter Carl Foreman crafted for Judge Mettrick differ markedly in tone from every other character. They seem almost to have been ripped from the typewriter of Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the All About Eve writer-director famous for his polished, sophisticated, caustic dialogue spoken by well-educated, cultured characters.

You won’t find any other figure in High Noon besides alluding to ancient history—nor one copping, like a man among men, to his sins of the flesh.

The judge should have been the type of person that Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he advocated for “the incalculable advantage of training up able counselors to administer the affairs of our country in all its departments, legislative, executive and judiciary.”

But when a crisis comes, Mettrick—who had officiated at the wedding ceremony for Kane and his bride Amy—now reveals himself to be cynical and craven. Having previously sentenced Miller to death, he can’t wait to pack his precious law books and gallop off—and even insults Kane for not being similarly guided by self-preservation. If he can’t serve as a judge in this town, he’ll find another.

Even so, Mettrick has a ready-made excuse to avoid confronting Miller and his increasingly extortionate demands: “This is just a dirty little town in the middle of nowhere. Nothing that happens here is of any importance.”

Audiences in the aftermath of WWII would have recognized in that rationale an echo of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s explanation that he wouldn’t back Czechoslovakia when threatened by Adolf Hitler because it was all “a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.”

Marshal Kane is his polar opposite: stubbornly committed to sticking to his guns come what may, even though he can only express his reasons why with minimal words (“There’s not enough time,” “I just can’t”), and even though he knows the likelihood is high that he’ll be killed.

Incredibly, it is the forthright Kane who finds himself on the defensive rather than the murderous Miller when he asks for help at a town church service. In anticipating the “What about”-isms that MAGA supporters often hurl at critics of Trump, a parishioner asks why Kane hadn’t jailed the “three killers walking the streets bold as brass.”

But Mettrick’s is an especially egregious abdication of responsibility. By virtue of his education and office, he’s supposed to act differently. But his decision to flee is more hasty, more cowardly and more resounding a civic and moral failure than almost anyone else’s in the community.

During the postwar Red Scare that Joseph McCarthy used as a springboard to influence, Hollywood executives—and more than a few lawmakers on Capitol Hill—reacted in a manner similar to the judge’s, as the senator abused the powers of his office and insulted even members of his own Republican Party.

That scenario will seem oddly familiar to observers of the current Presidential race, as Donald Trump demands the absolute loyalty required of a mafia kingpin and publicly degrades anyone who falls short of that standard.

(Witness his treatment at a South Carolina rally of his almost slavish ally Lindsey Graham, with the bachelor senator smiling and squirming nervously as Trump observed, “You know, you can make mistakes on occasion. Even Lindsey down here, Sen. Lindsey Graham.”)

In Michael Tomasky’s roundtable discussion with four former Republicans printed in the June issue of The New Republic, MCNBC commentator Nicolle Wallace cited Ohio Senator Rob Portman as “the best avatar for why the country is at risk”:

I don’t know of anybody who knows better than Rob Portman. He was George W. Bush’s OMB [Office of Management and Budget] director. He also wore a second hat as sort of wise man and an adviser. And I knew the country was fucked when he didn’t walk away from Trump after good people on both sides did, when he stayed with it after grabbing the you-know-what.

If we are to surmount the legal and political crisis engulfing our republic, we will have to act collectively like Will Kane—counting on years of experience, bravery, and sometimes guile, to defeat the bad guys, even as we fear that much of what we once loved in our community’s institutions and spirit might be irretrievably damaged by a bully with utter contempt for norms.

Quote of the Day (J. William Fulbright, on Abusive Public Men vs. Democracy)

“When public men indulge themselves in abuse, when they deny others a fair trial, when they resort to innuendo and insinuation, to libel, scandal, and suspicion, then our democratic society is outraged, and democracy is baffled. It has no apparatus to deal with the boor, the liar, the lout, and the antidemocrat in general.”— J. William Fulbright, U.S. Senator from Arkansas (1905-1995), speech in the Senate, Feb. 2, 1954

This is what is at stake this Election Day, all across the country. Remember this as you vote.

Quote of the Day (Walt Whitman, on an Earlier American Crisis of the Spirit)

“I say we had best look our times and lands searchingly in the face, like a physician diagnosing some deep disease. Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present, and here in the United States. Genuine belief seems to have left us. The underlying principles of the States are not honestly believ'd in, (for all this hectic glow, and these melodramatic screamings,) nor is humanity itself believ'd in. What penetrating eye does not everywhere see through the mask? The spectacle is appaling. We live in an atmosphere of hypocrisy throughout. The men believe not in the women, nor the women in the men. A scornful superciliousness rules in literature. The aim of all the littérateurs is to find something to make fun of. A lot of churches, sects, &c., the most dismal phantasms I know, usurp the name of religion. Conversation is a mass of badinage. From deceit in the spirit, the mother of all false deeds, the offspring is already incalculable. An acute and candid person, in the revenue department in Washington, who is led by the course of his employment to regularly visit the cities, north, south and west, to investigate frauds, has talk'd much with me about his discoveries. The depravity of the business classes of our country is not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater. The official services of America, national, state, and municipal, in all their branches and departments, except the judiciary, are saturated in corruption, bribery, falsehood, mal-administration; and the judiciary is tainted. The great cities reek with respectable as much as non-respectable robbery and scoundrelism. In fashionable life, flippancy, tepid amours, weak infidelism, small aims, or no aims at all, only to kill time. In business, (this all-devouring modern word, business,) the one sole object is, by any means, pecuniary gain. The magician's serpent in the fable ate up all the other serpents; and money-making is our magician's serpent, remaining to-day sole master of the field.” —American poet-editor Walt Whitman (1819–1892), Democratic Vistas (1871)

Quote of the Day (George Bernard Shaw, on Elections as ‘A Moral Horror’)

“An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.” —Anglo-Irish playwright and Nobel Literature laureate George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Back to Methuselah (1921)

So it was, again, this year, a century after Shaw wrote these words. And it wasn’t even a midterm election, let alone a Presidential one.

Shaw was correct about the shamelessness and self-abasement displayed by those running for office. But he could not conceive that, by the time he died nearly 30 years later, a worse kind of “moral horror” would be triggered in vast stretches of Europe, by Fascists and Communists—intimidation of candidates and interference with the right to vote—or that now, similar blights on democracy would crop up on both sides of the Atlantic.

Quote of the Day (Walt Whitman, on the Greatest Danger to America)

“Of all dangers to a nation, as things exist in our day, there can be no greater one than having certain portions of the people set off from the rest by a line drawn—they not privileged as others, but degraded, humiliated, made of no account.”—American poet-essayist Walt Whitman (1819–1892), Democratic Vistas (1871)

Quote of the Day (Jane Lubchenco, on How the U.S. Can Move ‘Beyond Polarization of Science’)

“A vibrant democracy requires informed citizens. Decision makers will typically consider a range of factors—values, economics, politics, and opinions of peers or family. But science should also be at the table. Opportunities to participate in science can help demystify science and make it more accessible. Seeing how it is used in making decisions can help the nation move beyond polarization of science. Messages and actions from the country’s leader matter.”—Oregon State University environmental scientist and marine ecologist Jane Lubchenco, “Restoring Expertise: Four Ways President Biden Can Bring Expertise to the U.S. Government,” Scientific American, February 2021

Quote of the Day (Woodrow Wilson, on Maintaining the World’s Faith in America)

“All mankind deem us the representatives of the moderate and sensible discipline which makes free men good citizens, of enlightened systems of law and a temperate justice, of the best experience in the reasonable methods and principles of self-government, of public force made consistent with individual liberty; and we shall not realize these ideals at home, if we suffer them to be hopelessly discredited amongst the peoples who have yet to see liberty and the peaceable days of order and comfortable progress. We should lose heart ourselves, did we suffer the world to lose faith in us as the champions of these things.”—Princeton Univ. professor (and future New Jersey Governor and U.S. President) Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), “Democracy and Efficiency,” The Atlantic, March 1901

Quote of the Day (Harry Truman, on How ‘The People Are Responsible for the Government’)

“The country has to awaken every now and then to the fact that the people are responsible for the government they get. And when they elect a man to the presidency who doesn’t take care of the job, they’ve got nobody to blame but themselves.”—U.S. President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), in Where the Buck Stops: The Personal and Private Writings of Harry S. Truman, edited by ‎Margaret Truman (1989)

Quote of the Day (E.B. White, on Democracy, ‘An Idea Which Hasn't Been Disproved Yet’)

“Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right, more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths; the feeling of communion in the libraries; the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is the letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn't been disproved yet; a song, the words of which have not gone bad.”—American essayist and children’s book author E.B. White (1899-1985), On Democracy (2019)

Thirty-five years ago today, E.B. White, a writer and editor who heavily influenced the early New Yorker Magazine, passed away. You can sense his civilized, urbane voice from the quote above. That same tone was sadly missing at Tuesday night’s Presidential debate.

In another month, we are going to see whether America’s progress towards democracy will be disrupted, or even destroyed. The warning of Benjamin Franklin as he left the Constitutional Convention is as prophetic as White’s is hopeful. Asked about the form of the new government by a group of citizens, he supposedly replied, “a republic—if you can keep it.”

Quote of the Day (Sarah Kendzior, on the Urgent Need to ‘Be Your Own Light’ Now)

“Write down what you value; what standards you hold for yourself and for others. Write about your dreams for the future and your hopes for your children. Write about the struggle of your ancestors and how the hardship they overcame shaped the person you are today. Write your biography, write down your memories. Because if you do not do it now, you may forget. Write a list of things you would never do. Because it is possible that in the next year, you will do them. Write a list of things you would never believe. Because it is possible that in the next year, you will either believe them or be forced to say you believe them.”— Anthropologist and journalist Sarah Kendzior, “We’re Heading Into Dark Times: This is How to be Your Own Light in the Age of Trump,” The Correspondent, Nov. 18, 2016

Four years ago, as has happened so often in the past, this warning might have seemed alarmist. But anyone following the news runs the danger of becoming inured to the nightmare scenario outlined in the last four sentences in the above quote.

What is at stake is nothing less than the same values of civilization held up in Pericles’ “Funeral Oration” to his fellow Athenians, according to Greek historian Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War:

“Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbor for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book, or belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace.”

Each day brings another assault against what Pericles called “our chief safeguard.” After four years, none of us can say any longer that we do not know the threats we face: nothing less than the protection of the individual citizen, even the most disadvantaged, from harm; the notion that no man is above the law; and the fate of the republican experiment itself.

Democratic Athens did not endure. We shall see, over the next few months, if democratic America will.

Essay: The Parallel Transatlantic Crises

“I’ve so far resisted these comparisons, but now Britain’s political crisis [i.e., Boris Johnson 'proroguing' Parliament for more than a month, in an unprecedented move to short-circuit discussion of his 'no-deal' Brexit] really does resemble the parallel crisis in the United States. A ruthless executive is pushing the outer bounds of what is constitutionally possible in order to achieve unpopular outcomes. A ruling party that is afraid for its own electoral future is shamefacedly supporting him. A divided opposition seeks to block him but doesn’t have a popular leader itself. A conservative party is using populist slogans that undermine national institutions. Old precedents and customs are being abandoned at great speed, leaving only a vacuum in their wake.”—Anne Applebaum, Washington Post, Aug. 29, 2019

There are even more parallels not mentioned by Ms. Applebaum between Boris Johnson and Donald Trump: 

*Both are tonsorially challenged clowns with neither executive ability nor respect for truth, perpetrating breakdowns in their country’s essential legislative function.

*Both Trump and Johnson lead a base worried by deteriorating order and challenges to traditional values, despite these "populists" own extremely untidy personal lives.

*Both came to power by emerging from the socioeconomic flotsam of the 2007-09 Global Financial Crisis, exploiting the fears of foreigners left in its wake.

*Both found their causes aided by trolls and bots associated with Russia (yes, the British are investigating how Putin propaganda aided the Brexit campaign, according to this NPR interview with Jane Mayer; as for Trump, not one of the President’s most raucous defenders can explain the extraordinary coincidence of Russia releasing the Wikileaks files on Hillary Clinton less than 24 hours after The Donald urged it to do so).

*Both are calling for stronger trade ties between their countries, as a seeming counter-move against the Economic Union (EU)--a strategy that plays into Putin's hopes of undermining economic and military alliances. 

*Both the Trump and Brexit campaigns used Steve Bannon as their scurvy strategist.

*Both leaders have created a ruckus over border security: Trump, by squawking about a wall with Mexico (and even transferring Defense Dept. money for other projects to try to speed its construction); Johnson, by ignoring concerns that lack of a EU “backstop” would doom the fragile tranquility prevailing in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement two decades ago.

*Both have crashed through unwritten rules of law and conduct that restrained predecessors in their countries’ highest office.

*Both have a penchant for insult: Johnson derided opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn as “you great big girl's blouse," while Trump has insulted someone on Twitter pretty close to every day.

*Both now pose a fundamental threat not just to the economy and governance of their countries, but to the faith that other nations place in the U.K. and U.S. as birthplaces of liberty.

So far, only one major difference exists in the ascent to power of Trump and Johnson: In the latter’s first week in office, a coalition of 21 Conservative Party Members of Parliament—including former Cabinet ministers—allied with the opposition to force him to make a Brexit deal or request another extension till early 2020. No such public, principled cohort has emerged to restrain Trump. 

Over the years, I have been critical of much British governmental policy (including its misbegotten colonial legacy), but this week, I have to tip my hat to a legislature that, unlike ours, has enough members who refuse to be bullied into meekly abdicating their time-honored responsibilities.

(Photo of Boris Johnson taken as an MP, July 27, 2016.)