Real Patriots

The prevailing definition of “patriot” has changed profoundly since I joined the Army at age 19 and soldiered in the Vietnam war. In those days more than 50 years ago, a patriot was someone who recognized his or her duty to help the United States and its democracy be all it could be. Patriotism could be service in the military or the Peace Corps, in civic organizations, or philanthropic causes. Patriots put their safety on the line in civil rights demonstrations or were willing to be imprisoned for their conscientious refusal to take part in what they sincerely believed was an immoral and unnecessary war.

Today, many of our self-proclaimed patriots believe they serve the nation by trafficking in falsehoods, fantasies, conspiracy theories, intimidation, and violence. They find fellowship in militias, wearing Kevlar and brandishing military-grade weapons to show they are ready for insurrection. They appear as self-appointed marshals at legal demonstrations and voting places across the country, inviting the violence they pretend to prevent. Their desire to overthrow democracy may not stop with their attack on the Capitol last January.

Some are war veterans who returned home to an empty and unregimented life and want to recapture the brotherhood found in combat. They take up with misanthropes, racists, bullies, conspiracy mongers, and weaponized hotheads who believe their God-given mission is to turn America back into a whites-only nation. Or they may sincerely believe in the conspiracy theories so heavily trafficked these days.

In the main, these groups feast on paranoia. Because Donald Trump legitimizes them, they subscribe to his unsubstantiated fantasy that his opponents manufactured his defeat last year. They volunteer as the storm troopers of a discredited and disgraced former president, a pathological liar whose ego cannot accept that most Americans wanted him gone.

Trump lost a legitimate election, but so long as people are gullible enough to believe him in sufficient numbers, he is an autocrat in waiting. He already effectively controls Congress by intimidating enough Republicans to thwart majority rule in the Senate while the nation’s actual problems fester.

Trump would be a pitiful sideshow to what matters in America except the media continue allowing him to manipulate it for coverage, and conservative media continue to broadcast his lies. Incredibly, one in four Americans and more than half of Republicans still believe he is the “true president.” The Republican Party uses this stolen-election fantasy as its excuse to rig future elections by passing laws that make voting harder for the poor and minority Americans who traditionally support Democrats.

As of June, at least 14 states had created laws that make it tougher to vote, citing widespread voter fraud that does not exist. In reality, Republicans are doing this because they believe they cannot win honest elections, especially when minorities are becoming majorities in the United States. In fact, the GOP welcomes white supremacists and separatists into its exclusive tent because their bigotry aligns nicely with the party’s political strategy.

A few Republicans in Congress have shown the courage to speak truth — for example, acknowledging that the Jan. 6 riot was an insurrection, admitting that Trump instigated it, and agreeing the 2020 election was legitimate. Nearly all of them quickly backtracked. Those who didn’t, like Liz Cheney, put targets on their backs.

Here is the sorry state of American democracy right now:

• It is under the most severe attack I have witnessed in my lifetime. It is in genuine peril.
• Republican leaders are using the fantasy of a rigged election to justify actual election-rigging. With an ineffective counterattack and the support of the U.S.. Supreme Court, they are getting away with it.
• The goal of participatory democracy should be to make voting as convenient as possible. Republicans are determined to make it harder for certain Americans, principally minorities and the poor.
• A shocking number of Americans are easy prey for even the most ridiculous and provably false conspiracy theories and lies. The conservative media help falsehoods become epidemic whether they originate from professional conspiracy theorists, Trump himself, or the Soviet Union. In true Trump fashion, conservatives defend the lies by discrediting the messengers who correct them, including scientists, data analysts, and the legitimate news media.

Until genuinely patriotic Republicans find safety in numbers and tell their constituents the truth about Trump and his fantasies, he will continue to pervert American politics. Until we help combat veterans find positive missions and camaraderie in civilian life, they will seek out wars at home.

Thomas Jefferson believed correctly that the health of democracy depends on well-informed citizens. “Wherever the people are well informed,” he wrote, “they can be trusted with their own government, that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”

We need a coalition of true patriots to “set things to rights.” Perhaps the Lincoln Project could lead a relentless media campaign to wake Americans up from the spell Trump has cast and from the naivete with which they so readily accept falsehoods. We need a nation of healthy skeptics rather than sycophants and a nation of real patriots. The great American experiment in government by the people depends on it.