Once Upon a Time in America: Chaos at Every Level

As new fears surface about the aftermath of Nov. 3, riots are resuming to denounce social injustice. The final stretch before the election promises a lot of turbulence.

America’s democracy is sinking increasingly lower into obscurity with every passing day, and this week has been particularly slippery. First, there were Donald Trump’s words on Wednesday, which triggered a strong reaction, including one from within his own party. In response to a question from a journalist asking if he was ready to ensure a peaceful transition of power to a successor in the event he loses on Nov. 3, he did not respond. Or rather, he implied that he would not promise anything. “Well, we’ll have to see what happens,” he said. The reaction? Stupor, and a tremor.

He’s Preparing the Stage

Is this surprising? Not really. Trump is the champion of providing ambiguous answers; he does everything to avoid dispersing his base, and above all, has time and again asserted that the election will be “rigged” because of “massive fraud” that he blames on mail-in voting. He has thus been preparing the stage for weeks. Still, even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a faithful among faithful, had to reassure people on Thursday that the winner of the presidential election would be respected, and that an “orderly” transition was assured, “just as there has been every four years since 1792.”

He even submitted a nonbinding resolution, unanimously approved, reaffirming this process. Such is the state of things at the moment. Mitt Romney, an anti-Trump Republican, did not mince his words on Twitter: “Fundamental to democracy is the peaceful transition of power; without that, there is Belarus. Any suggestion that a president might not respect this Constitutional guarantee is both unthinkable and unacceptable.”

Then there was the weight that the images imposed. Those incredible images of Trump, masked, in front of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s coffin while demonstrators shouted, “Vote him out!” Motivated by political calculation, the president is in a hurry to replace the justice, so much so that he announced his nominee on Saturday before the iconic RBG was even buried.

In both cases, Trump would do better to draw inspiration from Abraham Lincoln, to whom he professes boundless admiration. On Aug. 23, 1864, when he feared he would not be reelected (he was mistaken), Lincoln wrote, “Then it will be my duty to so cooperate with the president-elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration.” That same year, Supreme Court Justice Roger Brooke Taney died a few weeks before the election, but Lincoln did not seek to replace him until after the election took place.

Meanwhile, new protests to denounce racial brutality and social injustice are shaking American cities. The family of Breonna Taylor, killed in March in Kentucky when three police officers broke into her home in the middle of the night, has just obtained a record $12 million in damages. But this week, only one police officer was charged with “endangering the lives of others,” because gunshots were fired through a neighboring apartment. Those officers whose bullets killed the young woman, however, got away without being charged. It is also this America which is about to vote.