In the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency all hell was breaking loose. A friend, equally alarmed at what seemed on the surface to be a national break with reality and severe psychosis, recommended Four Threats by Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman. It was a good read and I don’t regret the time spent with it. The publisher’s blurb is a solid summary of what the book attempted to present:
In Four Threats, Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman explore five moments in history when democracy in the U.S. was under siege: the 1790s, the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Depression, and Watergate. These episodes risked profound — even fatal — damage to the American democratic experiment. From this history, four distinct characteristics of disruption emerge. (1) Political polarization, (2) racism and nativism, (3) economic inequality, and (4) excessive executive power — alone or in combination — have threatened the survival of the republic, but it has survived — so far. What is unique, and alarming, about the present moment in American politics is that all four conditions exist.
Despite its promise to get to the root of our democratic rot, Four Threats could not bring itself to name the primary cause of economic inequality — capitalism. Four Threats could not bring itself to indict the Constitution itself for the gridlock, frustration, dysfunction, and attenuated democracy that perpetuates political polarization. Mettler and Lieberman acknowledge unequal representation of the Senate, the undemocratic Electoral College, but then they just throw up their hands:
“These and other features of the Constitution certainly do make American politics less democratic because they render elections less fair and discourage accountability to the majority of citizens. Many have made cogent calls for them to be changed. But such changes are unlikely to happen. Amending the Constitution is difficult under the best of circumstances, and probably next to impossible in today’s polarized climate. Moreover, those in power are the beneficiaries of current constitutional arrangements, so they have little incentive to change them. As beneficial as some of these reforms might be for American democracy, we need to look elsewhere in the short term to restore democracy’s promise.”
The book never takes us to that “elsewhere.”
In their impassioned plea to save democracy, the authors cite a Pew opinion survey showing that Conservatives and Liberals both share a strong commitment to democracy. But they ignore the glaring fact that today’s Conservatives have quite a different notion of democracy than the rest of us. Conservative “democracy” more resembles Margaret Atwood’s Gilead than the Iowa caucuses.
In order to deal with polarization, Mettler and Lieberman argue, we need dialog. We need to talk openly about issues that really matter, with the preservation of democracy in mind, and cognizent that we have not yet extended democracy to all. It’s a sweet, noble — and damned naive — sentiment. One wonders if the authors have personally ever tried to argue for democracy for everyone with a white supremacist, listened dispassionately to conspiracy nuts hoping for a “storm” to usher in mass executions, or tried to agree on facts with people who don’t believe in science or in protecting fellow citizens by using face masks?
Four Threats was empty of the pragmatic prescriptions promised when discounting more radical solutions. Changing the Constitution? Why not? Letting the South secede? Bringing down the entire corrupt system through national strikes or protest in order to rebuild something that actually works? Again, why not? We’re long past the point that we need to place a “do not resuscitate” notation in the patient’s chart. Software is periodically refactored, shacks are bulldozed to make way for more solid structures. We even change our underwear. Why the hell not government?
An especially glaring omission in Four Threats was its failure to address American imperialism — a factor responsible for much of 20th and 21st century executive overreach. The Bush administration’s dismantling of Constitutional laws and norms, for example, were not sufficiently covered in the book, as they were in Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side. We are still living with global surveillance, an American gulag, secret courts, and violations of several of the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution.
While Four Threats to its credit spends time on Reonstruction and touches on Jim Crow, it never really indicts White America itself for white supremacy. Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law provides a similarly dispassionate look at the institutions of white supremacy. But we [white folks] created this system, and if you really want to understand where it came from Carol Anderson’s White Rage will gladly hand you a mirror.
To truly understand the Capitol riots, read Carol Anderson. White America can never stand for an improvement in the status or power of Black Americans. So when Georgia turned the tides of the 2020 presidential election and thwarted control of the Senate by America’s openly white supremacist party, that was a bridge too far for White America. It was White Rage we were witnessing at the Capitol, threatening to bring down the entire national project. It very well could have, and they’ve promised to bring their guns next time.
Mettler’s and Lieberman’s blindness to the profound perversity of America’s citizens is possibly the book’s worst deficit. Why do snake oil and bible salesmen repeatedly prey upon — and originate in — White America? We fancy ourselves a nation of dreamers and builders, but in fact we are a nation of deranged, self-destructive, science-denying, racist, hating, religious fanatics. Kurt Andersen’s Fantasyland: Who America Went Haywire makes the case that this insanity is embedded in our national DNA. So if you think the violent mobs you saw on the news on January 6th were something new and unexpected, just read Andersen’s profiles of those who built this country.
This is who we are.
