To Defeat Trump

As much as the courts and the critical press play their essential role, it is the American people who must defeat the president.

In Concord, a small, picturesque town in New England, there is such strong historical memory that it is not uncommon for the proud locals to describe it as “the epicenter of political liberalism.” It has a certain charm, as one can see with the bias of a European, in that a place can be used as a metaphor for that institutional and ideological machinery in which the incessant movement of public conversation takes place. You can understand, then, why the country that made its first constitutional amendment about freedom of the press recognizes that discussion is as important as the framework that makes it possible.

The framework is as simple as it is extraordinary; if the power of the president originates directly from the people, then freedom of expression is essential for exercising control of the power that the people grant them. This is the ethical sense that forces the press to demonstrate to the public how deception is forged. In a country whose identity is reflected in many of its town squares, to contemplate the buildings, monuments and commemorative plaques is to confront the icons that hold traces of the oldest democracies; the freedom of expression, the Constitution, federalism, respect for personal autonomy and religious tolerance.

Here, enthralled in the middle of the square, you wonder whether Trump represents the decadence of this seemingly perfect mechanism or rather an endurance test of it. You can finally understand why 350 newspapers have united to reclaim the first of their liberties, and why the judiciary asserts its independence in cases like those involving Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort, the president’s shady men. But it is now, when American democracy revolts against the intruder with its best weapons, that the decisive moment arrives: the midterm elections. It is there where the Democrats do not appear to be doing their homework, while the Republicans are not even expected to have done that much. Because as much as the courts and critical press play their essential role, it is the American public which must defeat their president.