Mereja Forum

[Naga Tuma]

Would it be wrong to say that democracy is an idea? Would it be wrong to say that a smoothly functioning democracy is ideal? Would it be wrong to say that pursuit of a functional democracy is ideological?

I think that arguably the right answer to these questions is: No, it is not wrong.

Many capable experts have analyzed and continue to analyze Donald Trump's speech of January 6, 2021, as President of the United States. As a layperson and with no training in political science, I have little value to add to the analyses of that speech by various experts.

As a layperson and with no training in political science, I was ready with an open mind to listen to the speech of Donald Trump on June 16. 2015, which he gave as a citizen of the United States.

I still vividly remember where I was standing to listen to him on TV and how I turned away from the TV not too long into his speech. I still remember my feeling about it: ትልቁ ዳቦ ሊጥ ሆነ።

His speech of January 6, 2021, has become the subject of many discussions and legal actions since then as it relates to the consequential riot on the legislative branch of the U.S. government on the same day.

Since then, I have been asking myself if his speech on January 6, 2021, as President of the United States is qualitatively different from that which he gave on June 16, 2015, as a citizen of the United States.

I tried to draw a parallel between his implicit freewheeling on Mexico, a sovereign State, while he was still a citizen of the United States, and his explicit freewheeling on the legislative branch of the U.S. government, an independent branch of the United States while serving as its President.

I would imagine that a President is compelled to be more responsible than a free citizen about the provisions of political entities and institutions, whether it is a sovereign state or an independent branch of government.

It has been reported that more than 159 million eligible citizens of the U.S. voted in the 2020 Presidential election. More than 81 million of them favored one team to lead the country for the next four years whereas more than 74 million of them favored the other team in the competition. The margin of votes favoring one team over the other is more than seven million.

Like millions of other observers, I remain convinced that these expressed votes were done freely and fairly. If I weren't convinced, I wouldn't hesitate to express my view about why they weren't done freely and fairly.

I view the totality of the results of the free and fair competition as an eventuality of it in terms of the mandate to lead the country for the constitutionally predetermined time.

Like in other competitions, political competitions by two teams eventuate in one side winning and the other side losing for that particular competition, in this case for a mandate to lead the country for four years. As intelligent individuals, voters express their preferences for leadership after observing each team's offered capacity to lead. It is arguable that the team that demonstrates a better capacity wins and that which has shortfalls loses. The eventuality of who wins or loses in a free and fair election is not determined by the teams but by the voters.

The team judged by the voters to win or lose has the choice to accept the judgment of the voters gracefully, the winning side by reaching out to the other side in order to lead and for those on the other side to be led, and the losing side to reciprocate and to prepare itself to demonstrate a better capacity of leadership for future rounds of the competition.

Some people conveniently focus on the total number of votes on one side, which is an expedient way to ignore and forget the total number of votes on the other side, including the margin of difference in those numbers. A sober capacity to reflect should only reveal that this kind of convenience and expedience is to insult the intelligence of all those voters on the other side. It is when that capacity is revealed that losing gracefully comes naturally. The alternative to the losing side eventuated by the judgment of voters is losing shamefully.

It has been and is my understanding that in various parts of the world, riots follow the failure of democracy because of misappropriated expressed votes or the lack of expressing votes freely and fairly. The 2021 riots in the U.S. evidently followed the winning of democracy.

So, one might ask: What is America without the supremacy of its democracy? I do not think that anyone can explain this question away without exhibiting a fallacy of evolutionary proportion.

Even if millions of citizens have naturalized the exercise of democracy in the U.S., it doesn't take a genius to observe that many in its ranks sound alien to the very idea of democracy. The clash between the nurtured democrats and those that find themselves alien to the very idea of democracy lead to various observations, including one that led to authoring a book titled Gaslighting America. With all due respect to all the adults in the room of the Republican party, that gaslighting now appears to be engulfing the party partly because of those that stood indifferent to those early observations.

The terms Plato's Republic and America's Republican Party share the word republic. However, what do Plato's Republic centuries before BC and America's Republican Party of 2021 have in common? This may be another question that calls for expert analyses.

My intuitive observations fall far short of that kind of analysis. Before 2015, I wasn't even observing American politics that much. I was a passant listener and seldom expressive about it during the time of President Barrack Obama. I only understood the amount of work he did when I started counting how many things Trump was running to undo after he became President. When I wanted to listen to him with an open mind, it did not occur to me that his mantra was of exclusionist lace. So, if I ever get the chance to meet him, I should be saying pardon me Obama that I failed to pay attention to the mantra.

Democracy has its own way of working and the progress toward its ideals has an appointment with time. I do not think that I would be wrong to say that many in various parts of the world believed for long that America had one of the best, if not the best, democratic process in the world. I do not think that this impression will remain the same after Donald Trump became its face for four years. The 46th President may think that this kind of characteristics can be erased overnight with the stroke of a pen. If it were that easy, one would imagine that Mozart would be remembered forever and Hitler would be forgotten overnight in Germany or that Da Vinci would be remembered forever and Mussolini would be forgotten overnight in Italy.

I hope I am making some sense in my long scribble here. Remembering how I reacted to Trump's speech on June 16. 2015, and learning how many others also reacted to his speech on January 6. 2021, as President of the United States, I can't help wondering if there is a qualitative difference between the two speeches.