The U.S. has survived deeply divisive and damaging political periods before, but that doesn’t mean the consequences are harmless or automatically repaired. Leaders come and go. Institutions, laws, courts, elections, and the choices citizens make afterward tend to shape what remains.
So the more honest answer is: survival depends on what people protect, defend, and rebuild—not just on one person eventually leaving the stage.
Trump is a con artist and ordinary people are going to get hurt. That’s the all-encompassing story of the next four years.
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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
March 1, 2025
Heather Cox Richardson
Mar 01, 2025
John Simpson of the BBC noted recently that “there are years when the world goes through some fundamental, convulsive change.” Seven weeks in, he suggested, 2025 is on track to be one of them: “a time when the basic assumptions about the way our world works are fed into the shredder.”
Simpson was referring to the course the United States has taken in the past month as the administration of President Donald Trump has hacked the United States away from 80 years of alliances and partnerships with democratic nations in favor of forging ties with autocrats like Russian president Vladimir Putin.
On February 24, 2025, the U.S. delegation to the United Nations voted against a resolution condemning Russia for its aggression in Ukraine and calling for it to end its occupation. That is, the U.S. voted against a resolution that reiterated one of the founding principles of the United Nations itself: that one nation must not invade another. The U.S. voted with Russia, Israel, North Korea, Belarus, and fourteen other countries friendly to Russia against the measure, which nonetheless passed overwhelmingly.
Then, on Friday, February 28, 2025, Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance made clear their shift toward Russian president Vladimir Putin as they berated Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, publicly trying to bully him into agreeing to the ceasefire conditions that Putin and Trump want to end a war Russia started by invading Ukraine.
The abandonment of democratic principles and the democratic institutions the U.S. helped to create is isolating the United States from nations that have been our allies, partners, and friends.
After yesterday’s Oval Office debacle, democratic nations rejected Trump and Vance’s embrace of Russia and Putin and publicly reiterated their support for Ukraine and President Zelensky. The leaders of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the European Council, the European Parliament, the European Union, and others all posted their support for Ukraine and Zelensky.
In London today, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Keir Starmer greeted Zelensky with an enthusiastic hug and in front of cameras told him: "You are very, very welcome here…. As you heard from the cheers on the street outside, you have full backing across the United Kingdom. We stand with you and Ukraine for as long as it may take."
In the last interview that former secretary of state Antony Blinken gave before leaving office, he talked about the importance of alliances and the strong hand the Biden administration was leaving for the incoming Trump administration. Now, a little over a month later, that interview provides a striking contrast to the course the Trump administration has steered.
⛓️ It's the 4th of July, America's Independence Day.
🐘 Déjà Vu All Over Again – Nazi Germany Revisited
On this day in 1776, our Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence. Did the actions of Donald Trump and his supporters on January 6, 2021 violate the democratic principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence? Of course they did, in several ways:
Undermining Free Elections: The Declaration emphasizes the right of the people to choose their government. The attempt to overturn a certified election result contradicted the fundamental democratic principle of respecting the will of the electorate.
Attack on Democratic Institutions: The storming of the Capitol was a direct assault on the legislative branch, disrupting the peaceful transfer of power—a core aspect of democratic governance that the Declaration upholds by endorsing government accountability and representation.
Incitement to Violence: The promotion of violence and insurrection contradicted the Declaration’s ideals of lawful governance and civil order, challenging the foundational concept that grievances should be addressed through democratic processes rather than force.
These actions highlighted a stark departure from the values of equality, justice, and the rule of law that are central to the Declaration of Independence and a democratic society. ☮️ Peace… Jamiese
« We have held another successful election that has been free, fair and peaceful.
The Independent Electoral Commission has, despite many challenges, once more acquitted itself with excellence, professionalism and integrity.
[ … ]
Our people have spoken.
As the leaders of political parties, as all those who occupy positions of responsibility in society, we have heard the voices of our people and we must respect their wishes.
[ … ]
Over the course of the election campaign, parties and candidates have at times differed, often forcefully.
They have expressed a wide variety of views that are often at odds with each other.
This is a welcome and necessary feature of a robust democracy.
Yet, throughout the election campaign, parties and candidates have held fast to the fundamental principles of democracy.
Parties and candidates have affirmed the right of voters to participate in an election that is free, fair and peaceful.
And now, we are all called upon to recognise that the results of the election reflect the will of the people. »
— South African President Cyril Ramaphosa Sunday upon learning of the official results of South Africa's national election which left his party, the ANC, without a majority for the first time in 30 years. From the office of the Presidency of South Africa.
Whether you agree with his politics or not, it was a classy and appropriate statement by the leader of a democracy.
No temper tantrums. No attempt to disparage the results. No false and unsupported claims of election stealing. No coup plotting.
In short, this is similar to how elections used to end in the United States before the era of crybaby sore loser Donald Trump.
As for President Ramaphosa, his ANC still has the largest number of seats in the National Assembly. The 400 member assembly elects the president by a simple majority vote. It is probable that Ramaphosa will remain as president but as head of a coalition government. The National Assembly meets two weeks after the official certification of results to pick the president for the next term.
I was watching the livestream of the announcement of results by the IEC and took this screen picture.
Here's a closer view of the leader board from South African media. President Ramaphosa made his remarks in front of it (after being introduced by an election administrator) which shows his party ending up with just 159 seats. It's science fiction to imagine Donald Trump making a concession speech in front of a 2020 Electoral College map.
Restrictions on reproductive rights, voting access, and partisan gerrymandering are connected efforts to consolidate political power rather than isolated policy debates. Its central claim is that limiting public participation and personal freedoms reflects a fear of majority rule—the core principle of democracy.
In Bush’s naïveté about the magic of elections, he ignored a crucial point about democracy.
The biggest benefactor to Hamas in the US is not the radical chic fringe but Republican former President George W. Bush.
Because of recency bias, many people have forgotten what an awful president George "Dubya" Bush was. But in addition to two recessions (including the Great Recession), two rounds of tax breaks for the filthy rich, neglecting national security which led to 9/11, and starting an unnecessary and destabilizing war in Iraq, Bush helped to bring the terrorist group Hamas to power in Gaza.
Gaza has not had an election since 2006 – one which was instigated by George W. Bush. That election turned out to be a disaster.
It was in January 2006 that the Palestinian territories held what turned out to be their last parliamentary elections. Hamas won a bare plurality of votes (44 percent to the more moderate Fatah party’s 41 percent) but, given the electoral system, a strong majority of seats (74 to 45). Neither party was keen on sharing power. Fighting broke out between the two. When a unity government was finally formed in June 2007, Hamas broke the deal, started murdering Fatah members, and, in the end, took total control of the Gaza Strip. Those who weren’t killed fled to the West Bank, and the territories have remained split ever since.
In other words, Hamas’ absolute rule of Gaza is not what the Palestinians voted for back in 2006. In fact, since the median age of Gazans is 18, half of Hamas’ subjects weren’t even born when the election took place. Since they have known no alternative, have absorbed little information but Hamas propaganda, and have witnessed periodic outbursts of violent conflict with Israel throughout their lives, it is impossible to know what they really think about their rulers.
But we need to ask another question: Why did the 2006 elections take place? The explanation lies in the political ideals—or, more correctly, the naïveté—of President George W. Bush. (Much of this comes from the reporting for my 2008 book, Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power.)
Bush entered his second term, in January 2005, convinced that his mission was to spread democracy around the world. He assumed that democracy was the natural state of humanity: Once a dictator was toppled and the people could vote for leaders in elections, freedom and liberty would bloom forth. For a moment, it looked like he might be right: The world was witnessing the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, the first parliamentary elections in post-Saddam Iraq. More pertinent, the Palestinian National Authority held its first election, and Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party—which had recognized Israel’s right to exist and supported negotiations for a two-state solution—won handily.
Around this time, Israel was withdrawing from the Gaza Strip—not just pulling out troops, but evicting some 8,000 Jewish settlers (most of whom were paid to resettle in the West Bank). Suddenly there was a vacuum of local authority. Bush thought democracy would fill a vacuum, so he urged the Palestinian Authority to hold parliamentary elections.
Create a power vacuum and the most determined group, not the most appropriate group, will rush in to fill the void. That happened to be Hamas.
One problem, though: Radical parties—notably Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which had boycotted the 2005 presidential election—decided to compete in the 2006 parliamentary contests.
Six weeks before these elections, Dennis Ross was on one of his frequent trips to the Middle East. As the Middle East envoy for Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, Ross had more experience negotiating with Israelis and Palestinians than any American. He was no longer in the U.S. government, but he knew all the relevant players.
Ross was leery about holding elections. He thought that if there were elections, militias such as Hamas should be banned from participating; they should have to choose between joining the system and waging violence against it—they shouldn’t be allowed to have it both ways.
Members of Fatah, fearful that Hamas might win, approached Ross and asked if he could quietly urge the Israelis to block the election. An odd alignment was taking shape. “What’s wrong with this picture?” Ross asked himself. Fatah and Israel were against holding the elections; Hamas and President Bush were in favor.
Ross communicated all this to Robert Zoellick, a former colleague from Bush Sr.’s days who was now deputy secretary of state. Like Ross, Zoellick worried the election could be disastrous. He urged his boss, Bush Jr.’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, to urge Israelis to do some things to improve Fatah’s prospects—for instance, to ease up on border crossings in the Palestinian territories and let Abbas take credit for the gesture.
Rice refused, saying that the U.S. shouldn’t put its thumb on the scales. A former hardheaded adherent of realpolitik, Rice had recently adopted Bush’s view of the world: She thought, or at least acted as if, elections were a magic potion for curing political ills and that the U.S., having delivered or blessed them, should sit back and let the historical forces flow naturally.
To her (and most American observers’) surprise, Hamas won. It proved to be only the first yank in the unraveling of the Bush-Rice dogma. Civil war broke out between Hamas and Fatah, leading eventually to Fatah’s expulsion from Gaza, Hamas’ total dictatorship there, and a resumption of rocket fire from the enclave into Israel—prompting the Israeli blockade on Gaza’s northern border (which Egypt, whose leaders hated and feared Hamas as well, reinforced with a blockade on the southern border).
The bottom line...
[T]he election that put Hamas in power was not inevitable; it was premature. Israel and the leaders of the neighboring Sunni Arab nations, who inveighed lavish rhetorical support for the Palestinians but did very little to back it up, could have done more to help build the elements of a civil society and negotiate a peace. But ultimately, they didn’t want to. Elections only tightened the bonds of conflict and lent it a veneer of legitimacy. Hamas’ murderous assault on Oct. 7, the subsequent escalation of violence, and the possibility of a widening war—these are the latest and most bitter fruits of the elections’ legacy.
At best, Bush and Condoleezza Rice were foolish and naïve. They felt that elections in countries with little in the way of democratic institutions would solve all their problems.
Bush, Rice, and Vice President Dick Cheney also repeatedly fawned all over what they called the first election in Afghanistan in 5,000 years. Afghanistan, like Gaza, had no background in democracy and we know what good those elections did Afghanistan in the long run.
Fred Kaplan, the author of the Slate article which is excerpted above, recently spoke with Brian Lehrer at WNYC. You can hear their conversation here...
Every day there are a huge range of radical options open to us. Every day history could go one direction or another. Our societies could be on a road to steep decline and disaster – or we could recover, and America will lead a new democratic coalition and we’ll create a better world. But neither one of those outcomes is for sure. And both of them depend on the decisions of many different people.
Journalist and historian Anne Applebaum at New Statesman.
Contrary to what a lot of people claim, history has no definite direction. It’s up to people living now to influence that direction.
Ms. Applebaum concludes the interview with an observation which also serves as a challenge:
“It’s up to people in their 20s and 30s. What’s the world going to look like in 2050? They’ll decide.“
