The New York Times ran one of its bolder editorials about resisting Trump and saving democracy. As usual, I found it irritating. They still haven\u2019t internalized what\u2019s obvious to most people outside of power: Trump is the symptom, not the disease.<\/p>\n
The NYT Editorial Board says,<\/p>\n
\u201cIt pains us to write these words. Whatever our policy differences with other modern presidents, every one of them fundamentally believed in democracy. They viewed freedom, constitutional checks and balances and respect for political opponents as \u2018the bulwark of our Republic,\u2019 as Ronald Reagan said in the opening of his first Inaugural Address, while praising his predecessor Jimmy Carter.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Paragraphs like that underscore for me that I live in a world different from the editorial board at The Times.<\/p>\n They live in a world where the old lies didn\u2019t feel dangerous\u2014because they weren\u2019t the ones in danger. When the media, government, and corporations lie constantly, the truth becomes impossible to spot. And that’s where we find ourselves today\u2014in a world where flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, and 9\/11 inside jobbers are breeding like rabbits, while the mainstream media looks on with bewilderment.<\/p>\n That quote shows what happens when you confuse polite rituals with a functioning democracy. Reagan quoting Carter doesn’t make the system legitimate; it makes it polite. It’s the difference between a country club and a democracy: the first requires decorum, the second demands accountability.<\/p>\n And what we’ve had, for decades, is the former dressed up as the latter.<\/p>\n If you’re Black, poor, undocumented, disabled, or just unlucky enough to be in the wrong house at the wrong time, you already know the system doesn’t work the way they say it does.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ask\u00a0Courtney Price. She just moved to Elyria, Ohio, for a fresh start when the SWAT team burst into her home and lit up the place with flash-bang grenades, blew out the windows while her baby was in a swing by the glass. Her son, Waylon, was on a ventilator with pre-existing heart and lung conditions. After the cops realized they had the wrong house, they left a search warrant for someone who hadn’t lived there in over a year. Doorbell audio caught it clear as day: \u201cIt\u2019s the wrong house.\u201d<\/p>\n Now the police say the baby was fine. But that night, he stopped breathing. Turns out he had chemical pneumonitis\u2014inflammation from the flash-bangs\u2014and burns on his face and chest. But the official line? Nothing to see here. Move along.<\/p>\n This isn’t a one-off. This happens all the time. FBI raids, local cops, wrong houses, wrong people, dead dogs, injured babies\u2014and no one’s held accountable. It’s just another day of \u201cstandard procedure.\u201d<\/p>\n And it gets worse. Cops can straight-up take your property\u2014your cash, your car, your house\u2014without even charging you with a crime. It’s called\u00a0civil asset forfeiture. In 2014, police departments seized more property from Americans than burglars did. They don’t need to prove you’re guilty. They just need to say your stuff was \u201cinvolved\u201d in a crime, and then you have to go to court and prove your innocence. The Fourth Amendment? Fifth Amendment? Just suggestions, apparently.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s not forget\u00a0“free speech zones“<\/a>\u2014those fenced-off corners where you’re allowed to exercise your First Amendment rights far away from anyone who might actually hear you. Or the\u00a0surveillance state\u00a0built after 9\/11 that tracks your calls, reads your emails, and monitors your movements without a warrant. Or how we\u2019ve\u00a0locked up whistleblowers\u00a0who revealed war crimes while protecting the people who committed them.<\/p>\n So, when the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0clutches their pearls and says Trump is doing damage unseen since Reconstruction, I got to say: where have y’all been? And yeah, Trump is a dangerous menace, but he didn\u2019t put us in this position; he\u2019s taking advantage of it.<\/p>\n This country\u2019s been hemorrhaging democracy by a thousand legal loopholes for decades. Trump didn\u2019t invent the power grab. He just did it without the mask.<\/p>\n I keep hearing the calls for saving rather than restoring democracy. For all the panic about Trump \u201cthreatening our elections,\u201d both parties have been undermining genuine democratic representation for generations. Gerrymandering has created districts so mathematically twisted that\u00a0politicians choose their voters, not the other way around. The Supreme Court has gutted the\u00a0Voting Rights Act\u00a0piece by piece. Voter ID laws, polling place closures, purged voter rolls\u2014these have been used to suppress minority votes long before Trump appeared.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Electoral College\u00a0has handed the presidency to the popular vote\u00a0loser<\/strong>\u00a0in 40% of this century’s presidential elections. In the\u00a0U.S. Senate<\/a>, Wyoming\u2019s 580,000 residents have the same power as California\u2019s 39 million. The filibuster blocks\u00a0overwhelmingly popular legislation\u00a0on everything from healthcare to voting rights. None of this started with Trump.<\/p>\n The problem isn\u2019t just that a would-be autocrat is attacking democracy. It\u2019s that the democracy he’s attacking has been dysfunctional for decades. Lying down on the tracks to stop Trump without addressing these failures is a band-aid on a bullet wound. Our foundation is cracked\u2014and until we rebuild it, we\u2019re just decorating a condemned building.<\/p>\n So yeah, people are skeptical. They hear something from the FDA, the Fed, the New York Times, or the White House and instinctively don\u2019t believe it. It ain\u2019t mass hysteria, it\u2019s lived experience.<\/p>\n And we\u2019re talking big lies here. Lies that killed millions of people and caused immense suffering. The Grey Lady, at it again, told us\u00a0Saddam Hussein had WMDs (weapons of mass destruction),\u00a0helping to sell that war. Turned out, Dick Cheney and his office were feeding them lies off the record, then Cheney would cite the Times pieces based on his lies to justify the war on TV.<\/p>\n Later, the Times admitted their reporting \u201cwas not as rigorous as it should have been.\u201d Too late. Thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were already dead, and we’d spent trillions on a war based on bullshit.<\/p>\n We were told\u00a0opioids weren\u2019t addictive. Purdue said it. The FDA nodded. Then some of those same regulators went to work for Purdue. Hundreds of thousands of people died. No one went to prison.<\/p>\n We were told the\u00a0lab leak theory\u00a0was racist nonsense. Then suddenly, it was \u201cplausible\u201d again. What changed? Not the science. Just the politics.<\/p>\n We\u2019re told we have the best healthcare in the world. But\u00a0our life expectancy<\/a>\u00a0is lower than other rich countries. Most of our gains came from\u00a0fewer kids dying young<\/a>, not miracle drugs. But the myth persists because it keeps the billing system intact.<\/p>\n The Fed says wages have risen. But most people feel poorer, not richer. They\u2019re right.\u00a0Productivity has soared\u00a0while wages have stagnated. Our main tool to curb inflation?\u00a0Increase unemployment, even though we know it kills.<\/p>\n And we\u2019re told our foreign policy is built on human rights. But for months now, we\u2019ve watched\u00a0Israel kill tens of thousands of Palestinians, bombing hospitals, blocking aid, and targeting journalists. Holocaust survivors have called it genocide. Historians have called it genocide. It is genocide. But most U.S. media still won\u2019t say the word. Because saying it would mean admitting complicity.<\/p>\n This is why trust is gone. This is why people roll their eyes at the phrase \u201cprotect our institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n The real crisis isn\u2019t Trump. It\u2019s belief. People don’t believe this system works anymore\u2014and they’re not wrong.<\/p>\n So, when the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0says it \u201cpains them\u201d to write that democracy is in danger, what they really mean is: we liked it better when the system failed more quietly.<\/p>\n They want us to go back to pretending. Pretending that checks and balances still check. That Congress hasn’t been handing power to the executive branch for 40 years. That the courts are neutral. That the press is objective. That the problem is the orange man and not the broken machine.<\/p>\n But as long as we treat Trump as the disease, instead of the symptom, we’re going to keep prescribing the wrong medicine. And the next mutation could be even worse.<\/p>\n Until we face what actually led us here, we’re not defending democracy. We\u2019re just defending the illusion of one.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Corbin Trent w\/ America’s Undoing <americasundoing@substack.com><\/strong><\/p>\n\n