President Donald Trump speaks after taking the oath of office in the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 20, 2025. (Kevin Lamarque/Pool Photo via AP)
The rise of Donald Trump from a widely publicized, if failed, business boss to a two-term president has taught us a great deal about our society. He will teach us even more as his dictatorial regime further unravels what is left of the civilized norms, our democratic institutions and the purported rule of law.
Democracy and the rule of law rest for their proper functioning on countervailing checks and balances and institutions that further a just society. Look at how these bulwarks of democracy have enfeebled themselves to permit the ascension of Trump and Trumpism operating above the law and securing a hard autocracy that is slouching toward fascism.
1. The utter failure of Congress to safeguard and use its exclusive constitutional authorities vis-à-vis the executive branch is shameful. These include the declare war clause, the appropriations power, confirmation, information duties, critical oversight of the executive and judicial branches, and the responsibility to provide wide access to the citizenry from whom it receives its delegated power by “We the People.”
The utter failure of Congress to safeguard and use its exclusive constitutional authorities vis-à-vis the executive branch is shameful.
The decline of Congress into a rubber stamp has reached a disgraceful depth where it will not enforce its subpoenas (over 125 Congressional subpoenas during Trump’s first term were defied with impunity) and will do nothing to curb rampant violations of statutes, the Constitution and treaties by administrations of both parties.
However, Trump’s defiance of Congress and his usurpation of congressional authority have been more overt, brazen and daily than that of his predecessors, and has included active and regular obstruction of justice by his White House.
2. The courts were taken out of the checks and balances equation by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 6-to-3 rogue opinions declaring that the president cannot be criminally prosecuted for crimes committed while performing his or her “official acts.” The majority opinion, severely denounced by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, chose not to define “official acts.”
Trump immediately seized on this opinion in Trump v. United States to further bolster his declaration in July 2019 that “With Article II, I can do whatever I want as president.” Another check against White House tyranny, with no constitutional basis, has been removed by six justices of the Supreme Court, collapsing several federal indictments against Trump from going to trial.
3. The crumbling of the Democratic Party, the sole opposition to Trump’s GOP in an enforced two-party duopoly, has had a decades-long history of decay. For over 50 years, the Democratic Party has allowed campaign money to increasingly erode its fealty to working families, distancing itself ever more from the working class — the base of FDR’s repeated electoral victories. This has debased the recruitment of party leaders to levels below mediocrity.
These “leaders” managed to turn a national party into a regional party, abandoning half the country (the red states) including six mountain and prairie states that used to have Democratic senators. It’s hard to win national elections for the presidency and workable majorities in Congress with such a decisive handicap.
This ditch that the party dug for itself has led to scapegoating its losses onto the tiny Green Party while telling its doubting voters that they have nowhere to go. “Don’t you know how bad the Republicans are?” goes the immolating refrain.
The Democratic Party has allowed campaign money to increasingly erode its fealty to working families.
4. The labor unions — weakened by job-exporting corporate globalization, automation and weak, entrenched leadership have tied unconditionally its fortunes to the corporate Democratic Party which gives workers little or nothing in return. No labor law reform to facilitate organization, no real push for a livable wage, no rigorous regulation of workplace health and safety, and little protection against corporate theft of private pensions. Lately, the AFL-CIO unions have been further inhibited by more of their members becoming Republican voters. Labor leaders have not developed a counter strategy.
5. The legal profession, its bar associations and law schools — ideally the first responders against lawlessness — have been compromised by lucrative corporate clientele and the prospects of such riches. We have tested these institutions with repeated challenges to step up against government illegalities, to no avail. To say they are AWOL is to engage in impermissible understatement.
6. The organized church has traditionally been the custodian of the norms and standards that bind members of society together. The “Golden Rule” is one of the greatest precepts ever dedicated to guide human and institutional interactions. The Ten Commandments have served a similar secular purpose, to the extent they are observed. Trump as the worst destroyer of norms in American history has chronically violated these principles in his personal, business and political careers.
When I asked the National Council of Churches why they don’t take the kinds of stands they took during the civil rights period in the 1960s, their reply was that they were deterred from such positions by the sizable minority of evangelical churches within their membership. Compare this to the approach of the courageous Baptist Jimmy Carter!
7. The citizenry, as the ultimate savior of a just, practicing democracy, has been neglected and exploited by corporate power and indifference. There is a toll exacted on people who were never given a civic education and civic experience in elementary and secondary school. The citizenry pays the price of powerlessness when up against abusive treatment from corporate employers and corporate lobbyists. These same corporations envelop people in consuming spectator sports, mass corporate entertainment on their screens and now fingertip addictions to various forms of gambling — not exactly the preconditions for a thriving town hall turnout or a smart voting citizenry doing their pre-election homework.
Couple these dulling interfaces with the desperate daily effort of many people to pay their bills, the constant indebtedness, so many chronic illnesses and the drain of home health care in the only Western country without universal health insurance and one sees how little discretionary time or self-regard is left to perform civic duties.
What local and national citizen advocacy groups there are in the fields of action are impeded by being largely ignored by the mass media and excluded by elected and appointed officials (See the Incommunicados report at incommunicadoswatch.org).
There is a toll exacted on people who were never given a civic education.
Now is the time for assessing the assets of the citizenry and putting them to work. We still have the sovereign power, still outnumber the opponents of democracy by a wide margin, still can rise to control those 535 members of Congress who can be summoned to citizen-shaped town meetings, still can see 1 percent of really active citizenry representing majority opinion, often liberal and conservative coalitions, turning tide after tide in Congress and much more.
For operating details, strategies and success stories, I can only refer you to three of my books: “Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State,” “Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier Than We Think” and “Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country that Works for the People.” (In addition, also see the unprecedented 2016 Constitution Hall proceedings at BreakingThroughPower.org).
Yes, friends, like other worthwhile endeavors, an operating democracy takes work, but when it works, its blessings are very impressive.