Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsexcellent historical summary of democracy and how to retain it
Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2023
The 2023 book entitled: “Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America” by Heather Cox Richardson (Professor of history at Boston College and author of the widely read newsletter: “Letters from an American”) is an excellent historical summary of democracy and how to retain it. The author dedicates the book to: “To the people who have joined me in exploring the complex relationship between history, humanity, and modern politics—this book is yours as much as it is mine.” Many readers may find this work an excellent summary of material that they already have read about or experienced, as such it is a good addition to ones library for future reference. Some might think that the book leans more to the left of the political center than to the right. The book recalls the history of Lincoln and the Republican party. The book is worth purchasing and reading.
By way of reference, the outline of the book is as follows: “Contents Foreword Part 1: UNDERMINING DEMOCRACY CHAPTER 1. American Conservatism CHAPTER 2. The Liberal Consensus CHAPTER 3. Bringing the Declaration of Independence to Life CHAPTER 4. Race and Taxes CHAPTER 5. Nixon and the Southern Strategy CHAPTER 6. Positive Polarization CHAPTER 7. The Reagan Revolution CHAPTER 8. Skewing the System CHAPTER 9. A New Global Project CHAPTER 10. Illegitimate Democracy… Part 2: THE AUTHORITARIAN EXPERIMENT CHAPTER 11. A Snapshot of America CHAPTER 12. A Shocking Event CHAPTER 13. Russia, Russia, Russia CHAPTER 14. The Streets of Charlottesville CHAPTER 15. The First Impeachment CHAPTER 16. Destabilizing the Government CHAPTER 17. Embracing Authoritarianism CHAPTER 18. Rewriting American History CHAPTER 19. January 6 CHAPTER 20. The Big Lie Part 3: RECLAIMING AMERICA CHAPTER 21. What Is America? CHAPTER 22. Declaring Independence CHAPTER 23. The Constitution CHAPTER 24. Expanding Democracy CHAPTER 25. Mudsills or Men CHAPTER 26. Of the People, by the People, for the People… CHAPTER 27. America Renewed CHAPTER 28. A Progressive America CHAPTER 29. The Road to the New Deal CHAPTER 30. Democracy Awakening CONCLUSION. Reclaiming Our Country Acknowledgments Notes Index”
The author, Richardson, writes: “Democracies die more often through the ballot box than at gunpoint. But why would voters give away their power to autocrats who inevitably destroy their livelihoods and sometimes execute their neighbors?... The key to the rise of authoritarians, they explained, is their use of language and false history.[ 3] Authoritarians rise when economic, social, political, or religious change makes members of a formerly powerful group feel as if they have been left behind. Their frustration makes them vulnerable to leaders who promise to make them dominant again. A strongman downplays the real conditions that have created their problems and tells them that the only reason they have been dispossessed is that enemies have cheated them of power… Once people internalize their leader’s propaganda, it doesn’t matter when pieces of it are proven to be lies, because it has become central to their identity. As a strongman becomes more and more destructive, followers’ loyalty only increases. Having begun to treat their perceived enemies badly, they need to believe their victims deserve it. Turning against the leader who inspired such behavior would mean admitting they had been wrong and that they, not their enemies, are evil. This, they cannot do.”
By way of history, Richardson writes: “in February 1939, in honor of President George Washington’s birthday, Nazis held a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. More than twenty thousand people showed up for the “true Americanism” event, held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas. [ 4]”
Richardson writes: “America took a different course in the 1930s not because Americans were immune to authoritarianism, but because they rallied around the language of human self-determination embodied in the Declaration of Independence… Whenever it looked as if marginalized people might get an equal voice, designing political leaders told white men that their own rights were under attack. Soon, they warned, minorities and women would take over and push them aside.[ 6]… But the thinking behind the Confederacy—that people are inherently unequal and some should rule the rest—persisted… In the four years of Trump’s presidency, his base began to look much like the one post–World War II scholars had identified: previously apathetic citizens turned into a movement based in heroic personal identity… Eventually, they tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election to stay in power. And even after Trump had tried to undermine the principle of self-government on which the United States was founded, his followers stayed loyal.”
Richardson writes: “This is a book about how a small group of people have tried to make us believe that our fundamental principles aren’t true. They have made war on American democracy by using language that served their interests, then led us toward authoritarianism by creating a disaffected population and promising to re-create an imagined past where those people could feel important again. As they took control, they falsely claimed they were following the nation’s true and natural laws.”
Richardson writes: “In the 1920s, Republicans had taken control of both Congress and the White House from Progressive Era Democrats. They turned the government over to businessmen, believing that they would reinvest their money as only they knew… best, providing jobs for workers and exciting products for a new middle class. At first, as the nation’s new glossy magazines advertised refrigerators and radios, stockings and speedboats, those policies seemed miraculous. But then the Great Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed it revealed how poorly distributed the nation’s paper prosperity had been. FDR, then the Democratic governor of New York, warned that the Republican system worked only for those at the top. “Democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself,” he later explained. “That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.” He told the American people they deserved a “New Deal.”[ 1]”
Richardson writes: “Frances Perkins… had spent significant time in a small town in Maine. In 1911, she had witnessed New York City’s horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, in which 146 workers, mostly young women, leaped to their… death from a burning building after their bosses had locked the doors to keep them from sneaking breaks on the fire escapes. The catastrophe inspired Perkins to bring the idea of old-fashioned community responsibility to the government, addressing the working conditions in rapidly growing cities, with their immigrant populations and their unregulated industries… FDR named Perkins to his cabinet as secretary of labor. The first woman in a presidential cabinet, she served from 1933 to 1945, making her the longest serving labor secretary in U.S. history… Congress regulated the stock market and limited the ability of bankers to use depositors’ money to speculate in stocks. It also set maximum weekly hours and minimum wages for workers—forty-four hours and twenty-five cents an hour—and prohibited child labor. It guaranteed workers the right to join unions. It provided jobs for the unemployed, and it raised tax rates on the wealthy… the centerpiece of which was Perkins’s Social Security Act—for women and children and workers out of a job from unemployment or retirement… “Conservative” meant, literally, conserving what was already there, without reference to an ideology. Those in charge of government should make changes slowly, according to facts on the ground, in order to keep the country stable.”
Richardson writes: “By 1865 the party of Lincoln had put into practice their conservative position that the nation must, at long last, embrace the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence: that all men are created equal and must have equal access to resources to enable them to work hard and rise.”
Richardson writes: “on the sunny Sunday morning of December 7, 1941, in a surprise attack, 353 Japanese aircraft bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, in Honolulu, Hawaii, killing or wounding more than 3,500 Americans and destroying U.S. aircraft and ships. Two hours later, Japan declared war on the United States. The next day, the U.S. declared war on Japan, and on December 11, 1941, four days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, both Italy and Germany declared war on America… Mussolini
came to believe that some men were better than others… This hierarchical system of government was called “fascism.” Italy adopted it, and Mussolini’s ideas inspired others, notably Germany’s Adolf Hitler… FDR and the media reminded Americans again and again that democracy, based on the principle that all men are created equal, was the best possible government.[ 2]… Thanks to armies made up of men and women from all races and ethnicities—a mixed population Nazi leaders disdained—the Allies won the war for democracy against fascism… Of the more than 16 million Americans who served in the war, more than 1.2 million were Black men and women, 500,000 were Latinos, and more than 550,000 Jews were part of the military. Native Americans served at a higher percentage than any other ethnic group who fought—more than a third of able-bodied men between 19 and 50 joined the service—and among those 25,000 soldiers were the men who developed the famous “code talk,” based in tribal languages, that Axis codebreakers never cracked.[ 3]… By 1945, most Republicans joined with Democrats to embrace a government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and promoted investment in infrastructure.”
Richardson writes: “Truman… called for “the elimination of segregation, based on race, color, creed, or national origin, from American life”… In Johnson, the civil rights movement now had a powerful congressional voice, but even with the support of Democrats like Truman and Johnson, the movement could not overcome the power of racist southern Democrats… It fell to Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, whom voters elected in 1952, to find a way around the racist rump… the Brown v. Board of Education decision declared the same about segregated schools. Relying on the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court declared racial discrimination unconstitutional. The decisions were unanimous… In December 1955, Rosa Parks refused to move to the Black section of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and for the next year, Black Montgomery citizens and their white allies organized carpools, taxis, bicycles, and even horse-drawn buggies to enable Black Americans to stay off segregated public transportation… In December 1956 the Supreme Court ruled that state laws segregating public transportation were unconstitutional… The Civil Rights Act passed with a bipartisan vote of 285 to 126 in the house, and 71 to 18 in the Senate.”
Richardson writes: “The use of the word socialism by those opposed to the liberal consensus had virtually nothing to do with actual international socialism… International socialism is based on the ideas of… Karl Marx, who believed that as the wealthy crushed the working class during late-stage capitalism, people would rise up to take control of the means of production: factories, farms, utilities, and so on… In America the use of the word socialism came long before the Bolshevik Revolution. In 1871, during the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War, white supremacist southerners seized on a word that had been a general term for utopian communities and gave it a political definition that was specific to the United States… President U. S. Grant’s attorney general set out to destroy the Ku Klux Klan… In 1970, Nixon had directed U.S. military hospitals to perform abortions regardless of state law… Worried that Nixon would lose reelection… the president in 1971 reversed course, citing a personal belief “in the sanctity of human life—including the life of the yet unborn.”… He won the 1972 election… After the election… the Watergate break-in gradually came to light… On August 9, 1974, Nixon became the first—and, so far, only—president to resign.””
Richardson writes: “The Reagan Revolution… six years after Nixon resigned, Ronald Reagan would travel the road to the White House that Goldwater and Nixon had paved… Reagan’s people argued that cutting taxes on wealthier Americans would free up capital for them to reinvest in businesses… It was an extraordinarily attractive theory, but when the computers at the Office of Management and Budget projected
rather than balancing the budget, Reagan’s proposed cuts would create budget deficits of up to $ 116 billion by 1984,… By every measure, 1981 marked a dramatic change in the distribution of American wealth.
The national debt tripled from $ 738 billion to $ 2.1 trillion, turning the United States from the world’s largest creditor… nation to the world’s largest debtor nation… Republicans had created an underclass of Americans increasingly falling behind economically. And, crucially, they had given that underclass someone to hate.””
Richardson writes: “In March 2010, Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act, popularly dubbed “Obamacare.” It was the most significant overhaul of health care regulations and the largest expansion of health care coverage since Congress enacted Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. It expanded coverage through subsidies so that individuals could afford to buy health insurance in the market. The law went into effect in 2014, and by 2016 the number of uninsured Americans had been cut in half, with twenty million newly covered.”
Richardson writes: “Trump straight-up lied, and he demanded that his loyalists parrot his lies… This rhetorical strategy, called gaslighting, takes its name from a 1944 Ingrid Bergman film, Gaslight, in which a husband tries to convince his wife she’s crazy by manipulating the lights… in the house and insisting that what she is experiencing is not, in fact, real… Gaslighting forces subordinates to agree that the person in charge gets to determine what reality is. Victims must surrender either their integrity or their ownership of their own perceptions; in either case, having once agreed to a deliberate lie, it becomes harder to challenge later ones because that means acknowledging the other times they caved… Many people turn to a strongman who promises to create order. Others will get so exhausted they simply give up… It was not a coincidence that McCarthy and Trump had shared a legal advisor, Roy Cohn, who designed the kind of approach they took… The chief architects of the plan were Stephen Miller and Stephen Bannon. “My two Steves,” Trump called them… Determined to enforce their vision of a hierarchical white Christian America, Miller and his allies simply worked around existing laws and officials until they found compliant ones.”
Richardson writes: “Russia, Russia, Russia… in early January 2017, Director of National Intelligence… released a report… concluding that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump… Using Manafort’s signature methods of demonizing opponents, Yanukovych won the Ukraine presidency in 2010… In 2014, the Ukrainian people threw him out. Putin then invaded Ukraine and claimed Crimea… With Yanukovych’s removal, Manafort was out of a job, and he owed about $ 17 million to allies of Yanukovych and Putin. His longtime friend and business partner Roger Stone was advising the floundering presidential campaign of Donald Trump, and Manafort stepped in to help. He did not take a salary, but immediately after getting the job, he did reach out to a Russian oligarch to whom he owed millions, asking him: “How do we use [this] to get whole?” [2]… And on November 8, Trump won. Immediately after the election, the FBI caught Trump national security advisor Lieutenant General Michael Flynn assuring Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak that the new administration would change U.S. policy toward Russia… Soon after taking office, Trump asked Comey to drop the investigation of Flynn, and when Comey refused, Trump fired him.”
Richardson writes: “Republican lawmakers stayed behind Trump so long as he was delivering their wish list. And he was doing that, for sure.
Trump admitted that on July 25 he had called the new president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to enlist his help against former vice president Joe Biden, who was beating Trump in most polls going into the 2020 election season… Trump indicated… he would release the money only after Zelensky announced an investigation into the actions of Biden’s son Hunter”
Richardson writes: “Trump set out to get rid of the fifty thousand nonpartisan civil servants who are hired for their skills, rather than their politics.[ 3] Since 1883 those federal workers have been protected from exactly the sort of political purge Trump and McEntee wanted to execute.
April and May 2020, Trump slashed oversight of his administration. He fired the inspectors general of the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, and Transportation—all of whom were “acting”—and of the State Department and the Intelligence Community…. In their place, Trump appointed inspectors he believed would be more compliant.[ 7]”
Richardson writes: “Trump’s ally Steve Bannon told a private audience that Trump was going to declare that he had won the 2020 election no matter what.
Trump took to the airwaves at about two-thirty the next morning and declared he had won, although ballots were still being counted and several battleground states had no clear winner… Trump publicly insisted the election had been rigged, although his own attorney general, William Barr, who had been a steadfast defender, said the election was legitimate and the conspiracy theories his team was advancing were “ridiculous.” But Trump refused to let go of the lie that he had won and, crucially… was able to find allies in Republican leadership willing to help him overturn American democracy, either by actively helping or by staying silent… Trump or his surrogates filed and lost at least sixty-three lawsuits over the 2020 election, most of which were dismissed for lack of evidence… Trump himself got on the phone with Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger and told him: “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”[ 3]… Trump fell back on the old tactic of spreading a false narrative through an investigation. He plotted to name Jeffrey Clark, a lawyer for the environmental division of the Justice Department, as attorney general… Only… the threat that the entire leadership of the Department of Justice would resign made Trump back down.”
Richardson writes: “Trump continued his behavior, falsely telling his supporters that he had been cheated out of a landslide victory by thieving Democrats… Far from retreating, Trump had moved to the stage that scholars of authoritarianism call a “Big Lie,” a key propaganda tool associated with Nazi Germany. This is a lie so huge that no one can believe it is false. If leaders repeat it enough times, refusing to admit that it is a lie, people come to think it is the truth because surely no one would make up anything so outrageous. In his autobiography, Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler wrote that people were more likely to believe a giant lie than a little one, because they were willing to tell small lies in their own lives but “would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.””
Richardson provides additional material and analysis worthy of the attention.