Democracy Dies in Silence

Democracy Dies in Silence: A Warning

Matthew R. Bishop — August 12, 2021

Today is August 12th, 2021. It has been seven months and one week since the failed coup attempt of January 6, when the President of the United States orchestrated a direct terrorist attack against the United States Congress while it was in session in an attempt to subvert a coequal branch of government, dissolve the structures of American government, assassinate rival politicians, overturn the results of an election, and establish himself as the first dictator of a post-republic United States. This was the most horrific and high-profile terrorist attack against the United States of America since 9/11.

By every measure, the man at the top of this coup conspiracy should already be in Guantanamo Bay under full solitary confinement. Surely that would have happened for any run-of-the-mill terrorist. But that’s not the case for the failed coup of January 6th, 2021. The man at the top of this coup conspiracy was the President of the United States himself. So far, after betraying his own nation and devolving into a hostile domestic enemy of the United States, the former President has evaded any and all criminal accountability whatsoever.

The failure to hold Donald Trump and his close allies in Congress (and in the Executive and Judicial branches) criminally accountable for the insurrection of January 6th represents the gravest failure of American law enforcement within living memory. Our nation’s highest law enforcement authorities have voluntarily declined to arrest and prosecute the most dangerous terrorist living in the United States today.

The lesson of this deliberate failure is clear: Presidents can plan and execute attempted coups without any criminal accountability. The coup doesn’t need to succeed. Executive-level coup conspirators will not be arrested or prosecuted if their plans fail — only the brainwashed barbarians who storm the gates wielding spears and wearing buffalo skin hats will be arrested. None of the leaders will be prosecuted. This creates a clear invitation for future aspiring dictators to run the same play over and over again until it works. After all, if there’s no consequences for failure, why not simply try again?

In choosing not to act, the FBI, DOJ, and United States Congress are choosing a political side: The side of the insurgents, instead of the United States itself. They are surrendering democracy itself and also betraying their oaths to the nation all in one single choice — the choice to do nothing.

Apologists for this position explain that this is a careful choice intended to avoid fanning the flames of popular anger and widespread social division — which can also lead to a civil war just as easily as terrorism and attempted coups. Seen from this perspective, if their primary goal is to prevent the risk of another civil war, then our law enforcement agencies should be lenient on Donald Trump and the other coup conspirators from his Party and regime.

This argument is miscalculated and incorrect. Those who present this argument may or may not have any malicious intentions, but even those who harbor none still dramatically underestimate the danger of the fascist movement that has gripped this country, and they also underestimate the intelligence and maturity of the median American. Americans are not as dumb as politicians, journalists and scholars sometimes think. They’re not just ready for the truth about what happened on January 6th — they need, and deserve, that full truth. Without full truth — which requires criminal accountability for criminal actors — Americans will continue to disagree on and misunderstand the core events of January 6th and the years-long campaign against democracy which carefully and deliberately laid the groundwork for the attack to happen in the first place. In an environment without credible, verifiable facts and information, conspiracy theories and misinformation will flourish. This is the deliberate goal of the fascist movement, because fascism thrives in systems of chaos, high fear, high risk, and low information. By aiding and abetting these systemic elements, our nation’s leaders are ceding democracy’s floor to fascism. The risk they take in doing so is incalculably greater than the risk of pursuing criminal accountability.

The argument against criminal accountability also naively assumes that Donald Trump is an outlier, rather than a representation of what the American far-right has become. This assumption is dangerously incorrect. It clears the way for a more intelligent, more dangerous version of Donald Trump to stage a more elaborate coup attempt in the near-term future. This attempt will be far more likely to succeed. If it does, we will have no time to react, and democracy will be lost. The only time to act is now.

It must be our nation’s primary national security objective to prosecute all senior-level coup conspirators to the full extent of the law. This includes Senators and Representatives. This includes powerful multi-millionaires and even billionaires who have knowingly and willfully financed terrorism against the United States federal government. This includes organizing staff and complicit executives in every agency, at every level, and in every branch of government. But more than anything else, this includes the former President of the United States himself. All justice is a façade, and all law a form of tyranny, unless the highest officer of the republic can be held criminally accountable to that republic’s law.

Our intelligence and law enforcement professionals are nothing close to naïve. They regularly deal with some of the highest-priority security threats on the planet. They already know that it is past time for them to deal with the existential threat of Donald Trump and his coup-conspiring allies in all three branches of government. Now they need to do something about it. The survival of our nation depends on their immediate action.

Democracy doesn’t always die in the dark. Sometimes, democracy dies in broad daylight. It dies right in front of us, with millions upon millions of observers, all of them watching in real-time, privately wondering: Isn’t someone going to do something? Each of them hopes someone else will, trusting that someone will save democracy. But they keep their mouths shut. Democracy dies in silence, when we make the decision to do nothing.