An American Autopsy
On living in the ghost of a democracy.
Again I looked up and saw a flying scroll. And he said to me, “What do you see?” I answered, “I see a flying scroll; its length is twenty cubits and its width ten cubits.” Then he said to me, “This is the curse that goes out over the face of the whole land, for everyone who has stolen, as is forbidden on one side, has gone unpunished, and everyone who has sworn falsely, as is forbidden on the other side, has gone unpunished. I have sent it out, says the Lord of hosts, and it shall enter the house of the thief and the house of anyone who swears falsely by my name, and it shall abide in that house and consume it, both timber and stones.”
Zechariah 5:1-5 (NRSV)
What I am about to say will be devoid of joy, but full of hope. It may take a while to see that, but I’m asking you to trust me on this.
The America we’ve been sold is dead, and we are living in her ghost.
On November 5, 2024, Donald J. Trump was elected to serve as the President of the United States of America. Again.
This piece will not argue about his qualifications or temperament.
It will not harp on him being an adjudicated sexual abuser.
I am not here to relitigate his well-documented history of racism.
To date, the longest piece I’ve ever published in this space has clocked in under 2,000 words. I do not have the space to rehash those things, and they are largely irrelevant to my point.
Instead, I will focus the last time he ran for President. And lost. I will draw your attention to the last time we held a presidential election. The votes were counted, and he came up short. In the popular vote. In the electoral college. He lost.
And he refused to admit that.
Perhaps you remember the scene. An estimated 2,000-2,500 Trump supporters went to the U.S. Capitol at the behest of the (outgoing) U.S. President to try to disrupt the certification of the electoral votes that would put him out of a job in a couple of weeks. They then broke into the capitol, assaulting police officers, and even getting one of their number (Ashli Babbitt) fatally shot.
These are the types of scenes we see happening around the world as we shake our head about how a healthy dose of democracy would do them well.
If that wasn’t enough, he spent the next four years doubling down on the claims that led to that shameful day in American history.
And he was just rewarded with a resounding victory at the polls.
Regardless of the emotions that you feel when you see or hear the words “Donald Trump,” one thing cannot be denied: Democracy is over in America.
It may look like we still have democracy. But we do not. Yes, we just carried out an election (where the loser conceded like in the good ol’ days). But America has called the legitimacy of democratically elected leaders around the world into question for decades. Because, deep down, we know that an election is not the only ingredient required for democracy. How things happen is important.
And, in a functioning democracy, when losers lose, they shake hands with the winners, they dust themselves off, and they try again next time.
Do you think Donald Trump was the first candidate who felt cheated? In my lifetime alone, I’ve seen two candidates win the popular vote and lose the election. This (his third try) is the first time Donald Trump has even bothered to win over a majority of voters. But each time, the loser grits their teeth, shakes hands, and moves on so that we can at least pretend to be a proper country.
But not this loser.
This loser lost and cried about it for four years straight. He didn’t even have the dignity to stew in private. He threw his tantrums in public.
And he found a receptive audience! Throngs of losers to whine with him instead of doing what people in functioning democracies do when they lose. They bought flags and memorabilia to insist that they weren’t losers!
We’ve only seen one other group of losers in the history of the USA lose with less dignity.
They could not accept the fact that they were losers. They insisted that they had been cheated. But this is one of those accusations that is, in fact, a confession.
Because cheating to win is how America works.
Truth be told, we’ve only known democracy since 1965.
Y’all remember all those marches we hear about from the Civil Rights Movement? A whole lot of them were about the right to vote. A right that in theory should have been conferred on Black citizens after Emancipation and the Reconstruction Amendments of the 1860s.
In fact, Black people were voting in the 1860s. They were even serving in Congress! Imagine that! Enfranchising people actually makes the government look more like the people whose consent they govern with.
Which is a HUGE problem if your desire is for the government to look… well… white.
Perhaps you’re aware of what happened next. White people who’d been defeated at the polls and on the battle field took up arms to storm courthouses and capitol buildings around the southern United States—tossing duly elected representatives out and preventing Black people from voting and registering to vote in future elections.
They cheated. Even before they changed the rules. They cheated.
The project of Reconstruction—building a more just and fair America—lasted for all of 12 years (by the most generous estimates).
After that, Black Americans were relegated to second class citizenship in their own country. For the next almost 90 years, most of them were legally prohibited from voting.
Until the Civil Rights Act of 1965.
Here are some fun facts about political alignment among Black & white voters:
Black people were once heavily Republican, as Republicans (led by one Abraham Lincoln) were the party that most loudly advocated for the abolition of slavery.
That solid support began to crack when the compromise that landed Rutherford B. Hayes (a Republican) in the White House after the election of 1876 led to the end of Reconstruction. Black people felt betrayed. But it’s not like they had anywhere to turn. (That’s pretty much the story of America, by the way.)
The Democratic Party began to make noticeable inroads with Black citizens (even though most of them couldn’t vote) during the Democratic administration of Franklin Roosevelt —which helped build a middle class (that many Black people could not participate in).
Democratic President Harry Truman desegregated the military, which further helped wipe the bad taste of an extremely racist Democratic Party out of their mouths after Republicans sold out Reconstruction to win an election.
But it wasn’t until Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that we began to see the trend that we currently see today, where Black people are now reliably Democratic voters.
In every single election since LBJ signed those two bills into law, the Republican candidate has won the majority of white voters. Every. Single. One.
To sum this up: Black people have always aligned with whichever party was most prepared to use the powers of a Federal government (strengthened by the Fourteenth Amendment during Reconstruction, by the way) to empower and protect Black people from disenfranchisement at any given point in time. AND ever since Black people have had the same legal right to vote as white people, white people have reliably voted for Republican candidates.
When we look at these facts, what we see is:
The United States of America existed as something aspiring to be a democracy from from 1789 until it very famously fell into a violent Civil War a mere 72 years later.
In the wake of that Civil War, they tried multiracial democracy for 12 years. It was imperfect, but it worked, until…
Political compromise with violent white supremacy made racial apartheid the law of the land for 88 straight years.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is the first time we’ve allowed Black citizens across the country and women to vote at the same time. That’s the first time we’d classify as anything we’d be comfortable with calling a democracy nowadays. BUT…
Politicians and lawyers have been actively trying to undo democracy since 1965.
They were mostly unsuccessful. The Voting Rights Act was the strongest piece of legislation since Reconstruction as far as the federal government checking the blatant racism of local and state governments is concerned.
But then we had to go ahead and elect a Black dude for President. Twice.
And violent white supremacy went into overdrive.
That is when democracy in America died again. Not January 6, 2021. Not November 5, 2024. On June 25, 2013, democracy in the United States died a quiet death. Its first in 48 years.
That decision opened the door for violent white supremacy to go back to building the white nation it always wanted.
What we saw on January 6, 2021 was not the death of democracy, but the newest iteration of violent white supremacy coming into adolescence.
In a country that valued democracy, we would have loudly rejected the man at the center of that tantrum.
But we are not a country that values democracy. We are a country where violent white supremacy rules the day.
Violent white supremacy tore this nation asunder in 1861, less than 75 years after its inception. And Black people weren’t even the main targets that time! The Civil War remains the deadliest war (in terms of American casualties) in the history of this nation.
A (barely) more subtle, violent white supremacy put a stick in the spokes of Reconstruction in 1876, halting our first attempt at multiracial democracy after barely more than a decade.
An increasingly subtle, violent white supremacy attacked the laws put in place to protect multiracial democracy the second time around.
So when Donald J. Trump cries about a stolen election, he is crying about the wrong elections. The only elections that violent white supremacy views as legitimate are the stolen ones.
The accusation is a confession.
On November 5, 2024, the United States of America resoundingly affirmed the confession as preferable to democracy.
We’ve been living in the ghost of a democracy since that SCOTUS decision 11 years ago.
Four years ago, we watched that democracy’s wake, as violent white supremacy stormed the US Capitol on live television. We saw it happen with our own eyes.
On November 5, 2024, we visited its gravesite.
If you’ve made it to this point in the post, you may be wondering why I included a scripture at the top if I wasn’t gonna touch it.
I’ve been trying to tell you: I am always theologizin’.
“This is the curse that goes out over the face of the whole land, for everyone who has stolen, as is forbidden on one side, has gone unpunished, and everyone who has sworn falsely, as is forbidden on the other side, has gone unpunished. I have sent it out, says the Lord of hosts, and it shall enter the house of the thief and the house of anyone who swears falsely by my name, and it shall abide in that house and consume it, both timber and stones.”
We live in a land where theft and dishonesty are not only tolerated, but rewarded.
We all saw how Donald Trump regards democratic processes. And we rewarded him with the highest office in the land anyway.
We have authored and invited the curse on the land.
This is who we are.
The America we were told to be proud of—the “leader of the free world”—is dead.
All that is left to do is try to abide the stench.
However, I was not lying to you when I said that I am writing this from a place of hope.
Because, each time that America has crumbled in the past, citizens and neighbors alike have tried to build something better—something more beautiful and inclusive—in its place.
After the Civil War, we tried Reconstruction.
After Jim Crow, we tried Civil Rights.
Violent white supremacy has “taken America back” again. It did what it promised.
But what a time to be alive!
The question before us is: what will we try next?
Ball up top!
I like playing with words. So that’s what I do. Whether it be with tweets, videos, essays, sermonic presentations, Bible studies, podcasts, or speaking engagements of other sorts, I’m always trying to figure out how to provoke an image in a seeker with some combination of words.
If you’ve enjoyed any of the words I have to offer, check out my book Theologizin’ Bigger: Homilies on Living Freely and Loving Wholly wherever books are sold!
Not a lie told. This is a beautiful word of hope. Thank you, Trey.
I am not at the place of hope that you are. I am not ready for the darkness that is being promised by those about to gain power (though, I am hopeful for the overall ineffectiveness last time). But, that is why I have been following you for 4+ years... I appreciate the example you set for me and others.