Profiles in Courage or in Cowardice—please choose, America

In Andrew Robert’s brilliant biography of Winston Churchill (a thousand have been written, including the official multivolume tome by Martin Gilbert), Roberts spins a tale of the overwhelming and crushing challenges faced by arguably the greatest political individual of the 20^th century.

Facing derision for most of his career, and blundering by advocating for an invasion on the Gallipoli peninsula during World War I, as derided as well as upon  many domestic issues,  Churchill faced insurmountable problems on the path to the vindication of his wisdom during the  1930s when he was in the “wilderness,” pitting himself against the appeasers of Nazi Germany and the sentiment of a war weary British public with his calls for rearmament.

The story has been well-told and often, but it made me think of those Republican members of congress who sat in a hearing this week, during the testimony of Michael Cohen, who themselves had nothing to say except remind the public that Cohen was a liar and soon to go to prison for lying to the American public for his boss, the lying liar, Donald J. Trump.  They mounted not a word of condemnation for their rogue president.

America, including the Trump base, have we, as did the appeasing British public during the years when Hitler was arming himself to the teeth in order to gobble up fledgling European democracies, taking the Rhineland, annexing Austria, taking the Sudetenland as part of Chamberlain’s deplorable bargain, are doing similarly in order to remain loyal to a president whose vision of loyalty is an abject lesson in the opposite.

Is there a point to the lessons of history that tell the tale of appeasing nations or leaders who deserve far less?   What of character and morality?  Do our new times abrogate such sentiments?  Is the easier path simply to stare blankly into our little screens, abjuring the thundering storm of potential totalitarianism and deceit?

Franklin D. Roosevelt labored very hard, using much of his political capital during the great depression, enduring the scorn of his own class,(“I welcome their contempt”)the hatred of the America Firsters, the underlying anti-Semitism of America in the 1940s, the isolationist congress, to join the battle against fascism.

Edward R. Murrow used his courage as a journalistic icon to battle the evils of Joseph McCarthy and quote Shakespeare, “Brutus, the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves,” driving home the jeopardy to the Republic presented by the demagogue from Wisconsin.

Walter Cronkite announced to the American Public, the misanthropy of the Viet Nam war and the disinformation of our own government in perpetuating the “Bright and Shining Lie,” as David Halberstam wrote in his book.

Martin Luther King spoke out about the injustice of segregation and the evils of discrimination in the American South, still the victim of a government that disemboweled the reconstruction as intended by Abraham Lincoln, himself slaughtered by racial hatred.

I have read recent articles in respected publications, seeking to understand how our nation has reached so low a plateau, so vituperative, so intensely polarized.   Articles are being written about whether there will be a new civil war in the event the President loses the election and must be forcefully evicted from the White House after the results, refusing to concede to the will of the people.

We labor under an increasingly dysfunctional electoral college, originally conceived to perpetuate slavery, in order to compromisingly ratify the constitution, and which college has become an increasingly undemocratic institution, by magnifying the power of  a small percentage of the voting population.

We labor under the partisanship of members of congress who fear the loss of their jobs more than the diminution of democracy.  

Racism has no place in an America becoming increasingly diverse; “Make America Great Again,” exhibits a profile in cowardice, not courage, a thinly-veiled siren call to days of yore no longer possible, economically, demographically, or socially.  People who rail against the tide of History, including President Trump, will be swept aside, eventually, but at what cost?