America At Risk

still on indictment watch for Donald Trump. But regardless of whether or not we see the indictments later this week, next week, or beyond, what is really amazing, and by amazing, I mean absolutely breathtaking, is the fact that Republicans, particularly those in the House being led by Kevin McCarthy who led I used that in air quotes, are just hell bent on staking their career, staking the parties, staking their legacy,

on defending Donald Trump. You have Kevin McCarthy sitting down for views and saying, you know, this is something that happened seven years ago. He used his own money. And I'm just like, dude, you are sitting down as a speaker of the House talking about your presidential candidate who is twice impeached, using his quote unquote own money to pay a porn star hush money. How do you justify this?

But you see, the thing is, particularly with reporters, and this is why I get so consistently pissed off with the way that these people are allowed to just have airtime, no real questions, no real pushback, no real follow up. If I were a reporter and I'm sitting down with Kevin McCarthy and he offers up this, oh it was seven years ago, and the statue of limitation and blah

blah blah, and he used his own money. I'm saying to you, Speaker McCarthy, regardless of Donald Trump, like, let's say you're right, and we actually need to go through the legal process in order to recognize or find out if in fact your assertion is correct. One you claim to be the law and order party, but it seems that with every time that there is a member of your party that is caught up in legal woes, you actually don't want to see the legal process through and

feel like there should be some way to sidestep. Someone's political affiliation has nothing to do with whether or not they have broken the law. Right, So I'm confused about your assertion on one hand. Around let's say your party's desperate desire to quote unquote lock her up as it pertained to Hillary Clinton, which had no factual evidence or basis thereof, because if it did, wouldn't have Donald Trump have tried a case or pushed his Department of Justice

to investigate. I mean, he had both Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr and neither one of them opened up any type of investigation into Hillary Clinton. And he claimed that she needed to be locked up, and that was the

first thing that he was going to do. So if Hillary Clinton can sit for in a eleven hour browbeating committee hearing, surely Donald Trump can go through the legal process and then when he comes out, you know, maybe innocent and found to be innocent and victorious On the other end, wouldn't that be the process that you'd want to go through? Just sit there and wait. Also, following up, you claim to be the party that cares about family values. So let's put all the hush money and illegal payments

and campaign finance stuff aside. Donald Trump is a married man who slept with a porn star. How does that align with the party's family values? And just wait, I'm so confused about why these easy moves and questions can't happen. Similarly, you had over the weekend, Mike Pence give an interview on ABC. Now. Mike Pence is the weakest of the week I mean, honestly, he makes Kevin McCarthy look like Arnold Schwarzenegger back in his prime during you know, total recall.

I just aged myself. But nonetheless that was a good movie.

But Mike Pence sits down with ABC and you know, talks about how this legal mess with Donald Trump is just you know, a political witch hunt, and I'm thinking to myself, dude, you wouldn't get into your own fucking vice presidential motorcade on January sixth, So can you speak to why you decided not to get into your motorcaid because it has been reported that you were one afraid to get into your motor caden, two because you didn't know where you would be taken and who was driving

the car. What did you mean by that? Right, if those assertions are true? And also, Mike Pence, you bring up the fact that the district attorney should be dealing with quote unquote, you know, a crime wave that is happening in New York City. But that's actually factually untrue because we have data here pulling out the receipts showcasing that New York's crime has actually been on the decline. But if you look at places like Florida, which is ruled you know, with a heavy hand by Ron De Santis.

And you look at places like Ohio that just you know, gave up a Senate seat to a Republican JD Vance. You look at those areas and their crime wave is way higher than New York City. So what is the talking point about New York City's crime wave that actually doesn't exist? And just wait, I just don't understand why we allow Republicans to hijack a microphone whatever the fuck they want, not to be asked any type of follow up questions, and that these reporters don't show up with

any of their fucking homework done. I don't get it. So when we think to ourselves that our democracy is hanging on by a threat, it isn't just because of the likes of Donald Trump. It isn't just because of the grifting criminal last Republican party right. It isn't just because they are a bunch of white supremacists, evangelical Christo freshist. It is because we have a media that wants more to do with access than they do accountability. They want to be able to get these people in the chair

for their ratings, but not actually hold them responsible. For any of the hot shit that comes out of their mouth, and that is just unthinkable, particularly looking at the last seven years and think to yourself, did you fucking learn anything? And clearly by the last several interviews in the last several years, the answer is no. Coming up next, friends, I'm very excited to welcome to woke f Daily Ellie

Merrit whose new book How to Save Democracy. It has been released now, and he's also going to be talking about the twenty twenty three Summit for Democracy, which will be taking place on March twenty ninth, And you'll learn more about the twenty twenty three Summit for Democracy in our conversation that is coming up next, folks, I am very excited to welcome to woke f Daily for the very first time doctor Eli Merritt, who is a political

historian at Vanderbilt University and writes a newsletter for substack called American Commonwealth, and is the author of a new book entitled How to Save Democracy. I am very excited to have you here because, as you know, Eli, I spend probably way too much time having conversations about our democracy, about whether or not we have the ta merit, you know, to save it because I think that we're spending a lot of conversation and a lot of time right now wondering,

pontificating on do we think it's really at risk? Is this over you know, close to two hundred and fifty year project. Can it really crumble under the weight of one incredibly bad presidency? And you know this force called Trumpism? And Magadam, I want to start off with asking you know what has alled you to believe that our democracy is currently at risk? At stake? It's good to be with you, to start with, thanks for the work you do. I think you've already made some important allusions to what

was a wake up call for me. And you know, I'm on my second career. I practice psychiatry for twenty years, and only in twenty and eighteen, after witnessing in a somewhat traumatic way like others, the presidency of Trump, did I begin to feel acutely that our democracy was at

risk and that really set me about. I was already researching a history book at that time, but that set me about deep research into demagogues and that you can use a lot of terms for Trump, but the most significant from the perspective of researching and understanding what happens to democracy is the demagogue. Democracy in the Western tradition at least was born in Athens and the fifth century BC. And so at the same time was the word demagogue. That gives us an idea of what we're dealing with.

And so, as I researched in history but also watched Trump, I saw in real life this phenomenon that's well documented happening, and that is something happens in the political system, so that we allow a demagogue to become a head of state. And that's bad enough, as we all know, dude, simply to the divisiveness, fear mongering and hate mongering and racism and xenophobia, which is characteristic of demagogues. But then something bad happens. Once a demagogue gets the power of the presidency.

They convert. It's well known in history. You just get worse. All principles are power corrupts. Absolute powercrupts. Absolutely. So all of this happening, and then the Republican Party already had its problems, shall we say, but it got much worse with Trump. So democracy is fragile. Human beings are fragile. So yes, we have to do what you stand up and do every day is fight hard for a democracy,

and it starts with understanding actually how democracy works. I thought five years ago I understood, and I started to studying, and I'm still studying and learning new things about democracy every day. So we our democracy is categorically at risk. Now. We have de Santis Rising, who I will just people can use an invective or whatever they want, but he is practicing something down to political science to be constitutional ball.

That is his stock and trade. He's good at it, and unfortunately, even when it's constitutional hardball, it is a harbinger of worse forms of authoritarianism. So there's a lot to be done, and we just need to get more people involved in the fight and kicking one corner of democracy to work hard on. That's what I've done. What has really been troubling me is trying to put into context the perfect storm that we find ourselves in. Right.

I often talk on Woke af about the late author Octavia Butler, who wrote the series Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents and Impowable of the Sower. You open up into this dystopian American present, it's actually the time that we're living in now. She wrote it in nineteen ninety three, and it opens up in the twenty twenties, because it seemed the twenty twenty seemed thirty plus years

into the future. And what she surmises in this science fiction novel is that this perfect storm of economic calamity, climate change, and arise in white Christian nationalism was going to overtake America. She was writing science fiction, and I see her as a soothsayer, somebody that was actually able to read the tea leaves and put it into a fictational context. And we're living in that future that she imagined.

What do you see as the perfect storm that has allowed a figure like Trump to go from the margins of the Tea Party and birthsm right Birthism. What I like to remind people is what Booie Trump into the political stage. He was a reality TV star, hiring and firing people on NBC. Right Barrocco Obama, the first African American president, becomes president birthsm The Tea Party is born out of that, and at the time it stays on

the margins. What is it do you see that allowed it to move from the margins to the mainstream and now become the absolute cancer on our democracy that it is. Yeah, that's a very good question, and you know, there's a lot of factors, but it is important to zero in on some of the most important of those factors, and to pick one. It is very clear to me that Donald and so many other people who have looked at it from this perspective, that Donald Trump is a direct

descendant of Russia Limbaugh. And less importantly it's still importantly New Gingrich but Rush Limbaugh. Under the Reagan administration there was the abolishment of the fairness doctrine in media. Rush Limbaugh became this cancer, absolutely pernicious cancer that you're talking about, and that's in the late nineteen eighties. So this has been growing, so to speak, in the Republican Party for

some time. So I think the irresponsibility and lack of ethics that we have in our media is profoundly important in this whole process of Trump coming about. And I guess a couple of months ago written about that on my subject that you brought up American Commonwealth pointing to three causes of the rise of Trump, and one is the loss of ethical codes within the media, and another is the failure of our education system to I don't

blame the people for voting for Trump. Actually, I blame all of us for having such a terrible educational system when it comes to education about democracy and civics. But the most important and the most addressable is actually in the early nineteen seventies, we reformed our presidential nominating system from a system which had checks and balances to prevent someone like Trump from being nominated in the national Convention,

the Republican national Convention. We've gone from indirect primaries to direct primaries, and I hold that one thing to be the most responsible if we understood more deeply that democracy is first and foremost about the will of the people and voting. But that's not all it is. Direct democracies throughout history have been demonstrated to implode. So that's why representative democracy and republican forms of government are far more superior.

The Greek democracy lasted about one hundred years really, or maybe one hundred and eighty, and the Roman republic, much more sophisticated form of government, lasted almost five hundred years. So we reformed our presidential nominating system, and so in both of the parties, the conventions cannot stop a demogogue or authoritarian because their hands are tied behind their backs.

So I would keep democracy in our primary system, but I would probably have the people elect the delegates, and the delegates go to the convention and pick candidates after selecting the platform, so that the president has to follow the party platform, not the president come in as Trump did destroy the party platform and completely take the entire party by hostage. So those media and the presidential nominating system I hold accountable for Trump's entry into the White House.

I love where you started as well, which is a broken education system. Right. I'm a former educator. I worked as a first and second grade early childhood educator, and that I moved into education policy when I went to work on the Hill. And the thing that I have consistently said is that if you want to disrupt democracy, you create an under educated citizentury. We're seeing this play

out with the Santists that you mentioned you before. De Santis is gutting Florida's curriculum, which was pretty much trashed before four In rankings. If you look at the way that Florida ranks as a public school K through twelve education system, it is hovering in the thirties and in the forties, right, particularly if you go into math and

science and writing and what have you. He's doing even worse to drive the good teachers out of the classroom, to make people fearful so much so that they're covering up books right in their classroom for fear of criminalization. When you see a Desantist who, in my opinion, is much more maniacal eli than Trump is at all. But yet the media is normalizing de Santists and the actions

that he's taking. I'm seeing headlines in the New York Times and the Washington Post and other credible outlets that are talking about, let's get inside the mind of Ron de Santis, Right, what democrats can learn from Ron De Santis. Does that trouble you more so than Trump to think that maybe the media hasn't learned anything over the last seven years. Well, you're saying a number of things, and one there, you know, is that the media has for decades.

It's not a recent phenomenon intended towards sensationalization. And that's happening with regard to the Santis a bit like you know, Trump became the darling of the press for very different reasons. To Santis has becomes darling of the press, and I think the press needs to exercise more critical thinking about de Santis, And I'm thinking of doing some writing, you know, about him that is not hyperbolic or there will be

a little alarmism in it. But I think a big question a lot of people's mind is I mean, plenty of people, every one of the Democratic Party and some people in the Republican Party probably don't want to Santis or Trump. But the question on a lot of people's mind is, will wait a minute, if we had to choose one, who would you choose? Because the idea behind Trump is, yeah, he's dangerous, but he's a bit of a bumbling idiot, is the way people think about it.

And DeSantis, however, is smart and firm and sharpens his arrows and moves forward. I feel very nervous about both of them, certainly, and but Trump is already a proven entity, extremely dangerous, extremely unpredictable. The Santis I feel very nervous

about as well. But at least he has some history in his past of being a true constitutionalist, believing in the Constitution, and so one important thing to recognize is he is playing to the base right now That's another challenge or problem we have with our primary system is when someone liked de Santis comes out, he has to play to the base, and that's what he's doing. Certainly, I think DeSantis has the ability, and I don't know whether any internal ethical gyroscope to come board to the

middle if he does in the Republican nomination. So I'm not sure if that was your question or what you were looking at. But I don't want to pick either of them for the Republican nominee. But if I had to pick one, I would prefer to Sciantists, you know, And there is a risk in the future or something, you know, all that power I could go to his head and things could get more chaotic. You can have a terrible economic procession like you're describing. Society could explode

into chaos, and he could become more authoritarian. I think it is a risk. But Trump, I just can't. I can't. He would be my last person on the planet, I think, to become the Republican nominee. I mean, I don't want either of them either, you know, Neither of them to me are bode well for our democracy, bode well for people of color, for queer people in this country. For women, I think that they both present an existential threat. Where I want to pivot now is to the Summit for

Democracy and to your book and Save Our Democracy. You have inspirational quotes and figures of ninety five leaders for us to look at and kind of glean inspiration from. Talk to us about you know, how you went about choosing these folks and why they should be models for how we look to save our democracy. Yeah, and so it's called how to Save Democracy, Advice and Inspiration from

ninety five world Leaders. And as you said, they're all derived from the First Summit for Democracy, and we're approaching at the end of marks the second Summit. And what happened for me and pulling together this book of quotations is as we you and I've been talking about a lot today. I'm constantly trying to learn more about democracy. So at the end, at the end of December of twenty and twenty one, I began to listen to some

of the speeches. Many of them are only five minutes, many go up to ten minutes, and I just really found out I was really learning quite a bit about democracy that I didn't understand, and very from leaders from all across the country, and really the most inspiring remarkably to me quotations are those that come from the leaders of small island democracies in the Caribbean and some other island.

Democracy was fascinating. You know, there's a hard side in the soft side of democracy, and it seemed to me that the only folks willing to talk about democracy from the perspective of the soft side were these again, these leaders of island democracies, and they would talk. They would say important things like, you know, have you better get up and defend our democracy because there is no other system of government which stands there for us, inviting us

to come in in pursuit. And these are all small quotations from the book Pursue Self Realization, self actualization, the pursuit of human fulfillment and dignity. So I started off trying to learn more about democracy, and after I'd listened to If You, I did begin to hear some real poetry and some of the quotations. I would say, half of them are quite poetic and beautiful to read, and the other half that aren't as poetic, they still provide

instruction or warning. There's a section about threats and menaces to democracy. And I've always been someone who has found reading personally to be quite therapeutic and helpful to me, finding my grounding and my strength and my courage to speak up against conformity. The quotations and speeches by Lincoln have been important to me. Very important also is the speeches and writings of Martin Luther King. What's the name of the wonderful book of his collections, a Testament of Hope.

I mean, everyone should have a Testament of Hope at their bedside along with this new book here called How to Say Democracy. But no, it's really beautiful. I mean we all need all the help we can get, both from the maybe three perspectives, figuring out how democracy works, figuring out what we can do, and then finding the inspiration to get involved. That's one of the most important messages of the summits end of the book is to

get involved. But I do know when you say that to people, they think, well, I'm busy and I don't really know how if somebody wants to know, you know, how do you begin possibly to get involved with democracy work. I think the best way is to just start learning about democracy. Just don't really assume that you know and understand what democracy is, whether it's through some well selected YouTube videos or a book like this or another book, just start to dive in and understand democracy more deeply.

And I think that's the only way I began to found my direct to find my direction was by being curious and wanting to understand how democracy works and what the heck is going wrong with ours now, what needs to be done to fix it, and then what tiny thing can I do to be helpful. I think that the scariest thing about the moment that we're in, both in this country and globally, because what we're seeing globally is a rise in fascism and a rise in authoritarianism.

You can look to Hungry, you can look to Italy, you can look to Brazil. Thankfully, you know, elected a person that believes in democracy, but then we watched as

they did a insurrection two point zero. And so what I think is really startling about this moment is that these leaders, what they have in common is their ability to zap hope, right, to drain hope from the people, and in its place instill this sense of fear, fear of self and fear of the other right to create this illusion that they alone can fix it, right, that you just want somebody to come in and make things better because they have created this illusion that everything around

you is terrible. And so you know, as we wrap right now, I just want to give you another moment to talk about the power of hope, the power of hope and inspiration, particularly in a moment that is filled with a lot of despair. That's a great question, and I find a great amount of hope and the reading

of history and building community with others. Then I have something to say that might not sound very helpful to people, but it is to me, and that is this is work that we should do with direction and hope, certainly, and the objective to restore democracy and to safeguard our democratic values. But we should also do the work because simply it's important. We want to keep what's described as the spirit of liberty alive even if times get worse

in the future. You want to hand that down to the next generation, to children and to grandchildren, so that they don't forget what liberty and freedom is and even how to build a democracy. So if something more catastrophic happens to our democracy in the next fifty years. That doesn't mean that democracy is not going to undergo a resurgence. So we will need people who are carrying that flame onward. And so some of my writing, I'm not sure what to do to make sure people read some of it

in fifty years. But these ideas are everlasting and far and away. As one hundred out of one hundred of the world leaders said at the last summit, and they'll say again at this summit, there is no better system of government than representative democracy. It is wonderful. Even if we lose it for a spell, it is wonderful. And so if you lose it, you just have to figure out how to go about finding it again or building it anew That's hopeful to me. That is hopeful to me.

Doctor Eli and Merritt, thank you so much for making the time to join will Gate F folks again. His newsletter on sub stack is called American Commonwealth and his new book is How to Save Democracy Advice and Inspiration from ninety five world leaders. Thank you for making the time for woke F and I hope to have you back again on in the future. Thank you, Danielle. Great to talk to you. That is it for me today, dear folks on woke f as always, Power to the

people and to all the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.