I think that right now, no matter where we find ourselves on the various intersections of the political and religious landscape, we feel like we are going somewhere unpleasant. . I also think that many of us have an idea of why we are in the mess that we are. Further more, I think that most of us are wrong about why.

How Did We Get Here?

Like most things, the answer to this important question lies in our shared history. In the United States, different, and often contradictory, opinions are built into the fabric of our culture. This is perhaps best described in a fairly well known quote from the late activist Howard Zinn: “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” The divisions we talk about in our nation are not new, and in fact were part of what built it in the first place. How we got here is that we took what was intended to be a healthy and free exchange of ideas and opinions and turned them into fights about opposition.

The founders of the United States brought forth a Republic as the form of government that America would have. A famous quote would arise out of this founding by Benjamin Franklin: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy – A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.” (James McHenrys journal) A republic, put simply, is a governmental form where representatives are elected by the people with a president or similar, as opposed to a monarch. Citizens do not rule the country, but rather representatives of the citizens do. With our last several elections, we have seen a rise in populism, which is the bane of the republic. Populism, put simply, is a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns have been ignored by the elite.

Populism Rears It’s Ugly Head

The 1920 census is the first place we can look for the seeds of populism being planted. For the first time in history, more of the population of the nation lived in cities than in rural communities. Rural legislators feared, perhaps rightly, that they would lose legislative power, and that rural communities would suffer under what would amount to rules made for the city that would not work in rural areas. This sentiment has continued. In the sate of Colorado where I currently reside, if you ask people on the Western Slope (primarily rural and small communities) if they think that the people in Denver care what they think, you will get a resounding “no” from nearly every one of them. In Ohio, where I was born, if you ask farmers in the northeast of the state if Columbus even knows if they exist, you would get the same “no”. Over the next 60 years, rural communities had less and less of a say in state and federal politics, and the disconnect grows.

In 1980, the term “fly over state” appeared in the dictionary. In general, this term has been used to describe the mid-west and often the southern states in a pejorative way. Presidential candidates began to largely ignore the states. Republicans because they would, by and large vote Republican anyway, and Democrats for the same reason. After the Iowa caucuses, little else went on. Certain so-called swing states would get attention (Ohio comes to mind), but the rest were ignored. A sentiment starts to rise that the coastal elite (both east and west coast), combined with their allies in the big city, not only don’t know or understand those of us who live in rural communities, but look down on us as well. That wasn’t helped by the constant barrage of overemphasized at best, and plain malicious at worst, portraits as rural Americans as uneducated, bigoted, backwater idiots who are the exact opposite of their refined and educated liberal counterparts who just want what is best for everyone.

Enter former POTUS Donald Trump. Mr. Trump had flirted with politics several times in the past and has, notably, changed party affiliation several times in the past. Despite flirting with politics, he is seen as a political outsider. He highlights concerns that many people have had for decades, but that no one has listened to for the same amount of time. He does what very few before him had done, and not only does he listen, he visits. He manages to unite several diverse groups, some admittedly unsavory, and unites them under the now famous, or infamous depending on your point of view, banner of “Make America Great Again”. All of the sudden, the concerns of these previously ignored rural communities not only have a voice, but a loud voice. Trump is plain spoken and says what he thinks. Even if you disagree with what he is saying, this is a value in rural America. He isn’t afraid to offend. He stands up to all the people rural America has been ignored by. His rise to the presidency makes perfect sense in the climate that was, and is, America. After the first term of POTUS Trump, a challenger emerges in the shape of Joe Biden, who is just a different brand of populist. It looks as if we are headed for another showdown between the two, and we are likely to continue to see it continue in the near future.

Can It Be Fixed?

The truth is that I don’t know. My hope was that populism would be the corrective lens that snapped American back to its sense, but it does not look that way now. I have written before about the damage that the 17th amendment did, and repealing it would be a good start. If there can be any hope, it would have to start with restoring the ideas of liberal democracy such as personal freedom, economic freedom, and actual tolerance (not the modern perversion of it), as the counterbalance to populist tendencies. This is what our founders intended. In a nation that is geographically so large, we would do well to limit the reach and scope of federal government and empower state and local governments to make more of the decisions that affect their geographical areas. More than that though, we, as a society, have to stop being so mean spirited and opposition minded and start figuring out what the goals we are trying to work toward are. Once we had shared goals. We had admittedly different ways of trying to achieve them, but the end destination was the same. Now, we are not even moving in the same direction.

A Warning

In the late Roman Republic, there were two opposition groups, the Populares and the Optimates. Both were aristocratic and members of the “upper crust”. The Populares sought to shake up the system by providing more direct power to the people focusing on the poor and the plebeians. The Optimates desired the continued authority of the senate. The antagonism between the two would be a defining cause of the senatorial system that gave rise to Roman Imperialism.

Trump is not Hitler. Neither is Biden. Let’s be clear about that. Our current situation is similar to the climate in The Weimar Republic (Germany) after WW1. The populace, increasingly poor and destitute, facing high inflation, increasingly contentious relations with other political powers, threats from paramilitary groups, and other similar issues, gives rise to two competing populist movements. Granted, in Germany, one was a socialist movement and one was a communist movement. The current situation here is not as bad as it was in the Weimar Republic, but it is eerily similar in many ways. In both of the above instances, not to mention the French Revolution and the English Peasant’s revolt, all have remarkable similarities to the current situation in the United States. One other thing that all of these examples, including ours, has in common, is that there were numerous opportunities to stop the decline toward authoritarianism. We should be looking for those opportunities ourselves.