I have been wrong about a lot of things over the last five years.  I believed Donald Trump would eventually cross a line over which other elected Republican officials would not sacrifice their own futures.  WRONG!  I thought Democrats would maintain their huge majority in the House of Representatives and retake the Senate with at least 52 Democratic seats this year.  WRONG!

However, on one thing I was right.  Every time someone told me they were worried voter suppression would result in a second Trump term, I replied, “People will walk through fire to vote this year.  If nothing else, 2016 proved elections matter.”  And vote they did, for both candidates.  2020 was just one more example of the adage, “People do not realize how precious something is until it is taken away.”  In this case, they only needed someone to try and take it away.

And without meaning to, the first president of the United States who openly advocated a coup d’etat saved American democracy by intervening in the natural order of things.  As mentioned in previous blog entries, the United States is living on borrowed time according to Alexis de Tocqueville, who, based on history, theorized the average life of a great civilization was 200 years.  Pushing 244 years since declaring its independence, America is playing with house money.

But closer examination suggests de Tocqueville’s prediction, though delayed, was still highly probable, if not already underway.  The fact our national downfall was happening at a slower than average pace also meant it was more incremental and not as apparent.  America had become the proverbial frog in a kettle of water rising in temperature little by little, not realizing it would soon die having boiled to death.

Scottish philosopher Alexander Fraser Tyler developed the paradigm by which the destructive heat which dooms civilizations rises incrementally over time.  His description of the rise and fall of geopolitical societies consists of the following eight stages.

From bondage to spiritual growth.
From spiritual growth to great courage.
From great courage to liberty.
From liberty to abundance.
From abundance to complacency.
From complacency to apathy.
From apathy to dependence.
From dependence back to bondage.

By no means is the time period between each stage to the next equal in length.  In the case of the United States, one can argue the first four stages lasted three and a half centuries spanning from the arrival of the Mayflower to the post-World War II era, ending in the mid-1960s at the juncture of the Great Society and the Vietnam War.  The only argument I might have with Tyler is the description of stage five, substituting “arrogance” for “complacency.”  Was it not a feeling of infallibility which seeded missteps in international events such as Vietnam, 9/11 and the second Iraq war?

This period of complacency/arrogance quickly led to apathy, characterized by the decline in interest in government and politics most evident in the constant decrease in percentage of Americans who exercised their right to vote.  Until finally, in 2016, enough voters to carry the electoral college, turned to a candidate who claimed, “Only I can fix it.”  The very definition of dependency revolves around the notion of reliance on others who tell you to stand down.  They will handle everything for you.

Which brings me back to the title of this post.  Donald Trump, by turning up the temperate so high, so abruptly, alerted the frogs in the kettle to what was happening.  They recognized the danger they were in and committed to do whatever it required to change the all but certain outcome.  Trump may brag about the 74 million voters who cast ballots for him, but more importantly, he awakened more than 81 million American who declared, “America is not ready to give up on democracy.  Not on our watch.”

The only remaining question?  Having come so close to stage eight of the cycle, from dependence to bondage, has America been given a second chance to start over at stage one, advancing from near-bondage to spiritual growth? Based on the 2020 outcome, when Americans turned to a candidate who made the centerpiece of his campaign “a fight for the soul of the Nation,” a spiritual mantra even an agnostic can believe in, perhaps there is a chance.  And for that, we owe Donald Trump.  Without him, politics in America over the last five years would have been business as usual, most likely in an incrementally advancing direction which, in time, would have proved the validity of both de Tocqueville’s and Tyler’s predictions about the path the United States otherwise might have taken.

The media keep referring to America as more divided than any time since the War Between the States.  To continue the analogy, the structure on the West Capitol steps will become the modern equivalent of Appomattox on January 20th.  And the Biden administration will be responsible for the next Reconstruction.  To avoid the mistakes and lingering animosity of bringing a nation back together for the second time will take spiritual growth and courage by both sides.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP