“The Ship Is Turning Toward Democracy”–Historian Heather Cox Richardson

Man, oh man!

I stumbled on to a Facebook live video with Heather Cox Richardson the other day—and became so engrossed that I watched for the full seventy-plus minutes.

If you’d care to watch, you can do so here.

In a conversational tone, with nary a note or computer to refer to, she moved us from the darkness of the real and growing threats to our struggling democracy to the dawning of the more equitable and fairer America that so many of us long for.

Nothing Richardson said here was new to me, but she wove it all together with a coherence that I found encouraging. In her writing, she is careful to back up her opinions.

This discussion was more free-flowing, as she expressed the “sense” she is getting based on her observations. “I could be wrong,” she acknowledged.

Her premise—which many others have stated, including me on my better days—is that the far right hysteria we hear so much about is occurring because they see their forty-year effort to reverse progress in this country failing.

A Look Backward to Explain the Present

The “illiberal ideas” for the first time have surfaced with one of the two major parties “openly saying we need to get rid of democracy.” These ideas are not themselves new, of course. Although they’re held by “relatively few people—perhaps tens of thousands—those individuals are extremely well placed.”

She referred to “Catholic intellectuals,” including former Attorney General Bill Barr. Though she didn’t clarify, I understood this reference to be to a certain school of far right thinkers such as Leonard Leo, the guy who gave us today’s Supreme Court majority.

Its adherents find common cause with the evangelical position—long present in our history—which was brought to the Republicans in the 1980s by Pat Robertson. He saw dividing people on the basis of “virtue” as a way to gain political power.

Proponents of this virtue dogma insist that the Constitution’s framers were vested in a religious structure. Richardson’s response was: “BS! Madison wrote about the freedom of individual conscience.”

The radical view of virtue finds every advance toward equity to be an abomination. “When everyone is equal before the law,” we are living in a “world without virtue.”

Thus women’s rights to abortion, among other issues; minority rights; LGBTQ rights—all are simply bad. This attitude permeates “freedom of the press and academic freedom, books, the FBI, the Justice Department, and the federal government itself.”

Voting rights? “Certain people are not virtuous enough to have a say in government” is the sentiment.

All these far right elements have moved into high gear as a result of Trump’s indictment in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, which Richardson called “huge.”

“They went off the charts in their willingness to embrace misinformation”—trying to minimize Trump’s actions, for example, by claiming Biden has taken bribes from Russian oligarchs, a recycling of a previously debunked Rudy Giuliani story.

The freaking out is apparent in Ohio Senator J.D. Vance’s efforts to prevent all judicial appointments until the DOJ “stops persecuting Trump.” Vance is arguing that he needs to destroy a justice system that is “corrupt” and feeds a corrupt modern democracy.

Similarly, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, probably the Senate’s least intellectually endowed member, is holding up military appointments until the Department of Defense agrees to stop permitting service members to have abortions. The result is that the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs can’t retire.

Tuberville isn’t acting independently, Richardson observes; this is a piece of the larger effort to destroy liberal democracy.

And in the House of Representatives, where the Freedom Caucus was originally created to bolster religion and generally push government toward the right, today’s far right devotees have essentially brought governing to a halt at the moment.

Augmenting these moves among the grass roots are events such as the Turning Point USA Young Women’s Leadership Summit, where women are told by speakers such as Lara Trump and Laura Ingraham that their role in helping the movement is to stay home and be mothers.

I’m all for women who want to be with their young children to be able to do so. In fact, I think the government should support that option as one decision women can make. This is not that approach at all. The message at this convention, Richardson quips, was “Become a player by not playing.”

I listened to a snippet of a speech by Charlie Kirk, a talk show host and activist who’s the right-wing organization’s president. Among the messages: contraception is bad. Day care is bad.

Trump’s authoritarianism links all the above with white supremacy and sexism. To Richardson, it looks like the 1850s Confederacy.

But “Things Feel Different…”

Something’s changed, Richardson said. “Americans who were not previously engaged are saying ‘No!” She concurred with Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin that “the wind is shifting.”

One strand is that she finds the media is giving more due to Joe Biden.

Richardson said she’s often accused of being a “shill” for the President.

“I was not a Biden supporter. I was relieved when he won because I worried Trump would end our democracy. I really thought Biden would be a caretaker for four years.”

As a historian, however, she says she has seen something vastly more impressive.

He’s put “more earth-shattering legislation in place since LBJ…more foreign alliances since Eisenhower. He has changed the trajectory both of this country and the globe. That’s not a small thing. The bottom quarter of society has made huge gains in his first two years. The economy is booming, workers are making more money.”

And his programs are working. The Chips and Science Act and American Investment Act have provided billions of dollars to private industry.

Republicans have said since 1981 that priming the pump doesn’t work: only the unregulated private sector can succeed.

Biden has proven them wrong, and the numbers are “huge.”

And then there’s Ukraine, she said. “Extraordinary!”

She expressed the frustration I often feel about the media’s failure to follow through with stories after something bad happens.

For example, the dearth of infant formula in 2022 was due to various factors. Richardson mentions stock buybacks, but I’ve also read about pandemic hoarding, supply chain delays, and a formula recall by Abbott, one of the few major manufacturers.

The Biden administration took a series of steps to address the problem, including Operation Fly Formula, which enlisted the Departments of Health and Human Services, Agriculture, General Services Administration, and Defense to transport safe infant formula from overseas to getting it to store shelves.

And they kept at it, while the press was on to other things. In other words, good governing is happening—day by day.

What’s more…

“I’m a Big Fan of Kamala Harris”

In the matter of VP Harris, too, we aren’t getting the information we need. Part of that is due to the traditional role of the VP, which is to stay out of the limelight.

Richardson said she’s been a Harris admirer since watching her in the Senate, where her intelligence was obvious.

She’s observed Harris blanketing the US, speaking to smaller groups: Women on the topic of abortion; minorities on areas of concern, the SEIU on labor issues. Clearly, there are political reasons for these speeches, but they are also designed to firm up people’s belief in democracy.

Biden has given Harris some big responsibilities. I felt bad for her when he made her the point person on the impossible border issue, which can only be resolved by Congressional cooperation that doesn’t seem likely while the Republicans use it as a scare tactic.

Harris received considerable criticism, but Richardson said she did very well in relating to and negotiating with Central American leaders.

To Richardson, Harris’s Africa trip should have gained more attention. As a Black woman who had visited some of these countries during her childhood, she brought a new dimension to the credibility of her high office.

The vast, diverse continent with its young population is seeking to figure out its future. While Trump was dismissing the “shit-hole countries,” both Russia and China were making inroads, and mercenaries continue to kill off Africans who are attracted to democratic values.

Biden is trying to strengthen America’s ties with countries in both the Indo-Pacific region and Africa. The message is “We care about you, and we want you to have a seat at the table.”

How better to deliver that message and to emphasize that we mean to be equals rather than colonizers? He sent VP Harris, one of our top leaders and a person of color.

Richardson said Harris had a “spectacular trip that was an extraordinary triumph for the US and I hope for Africa.”

But it got very little coverage.

All the above suggests to Richardson that things are looking better for the restoration of democracy. She added that the surprise Supreme Court ruling on gerrymandering will also help voters in several southern states.

Richardson concluded her video talk by giving her audience a homework assignment:

“Keep pressure on the public sphere. The Ship is turning. The reason you’re hearing such crap and threats of violence is that they know our resistance is working.”

Ahead of us will be “one hell of a bumpy ride,” but

“We have the numbers and the ability to restore American democracy, expanding the idea that we are all equal under the law and we all have a right to have a say in our government.”

Do you find Richardson’s optimism persuasive?

Annie