The Cost Of Silence

     In college I had a professor who called himself a Communist. He loved to denounce the American system. That is, he loved to denounce the system that protected his freedom to denounce the system. He thought he was bold and progressive. I thought he was a fuzzy-minded prat.
     He would surely be startled to hear me accuse him of  being in company with today's fundamentalist right. Beneath cosmetic differences they share a naive notion: That a system conceived to shelter divergent doctrines would be improved if one doctrine were elevated and empowered to discourage the rest.
      Religious fundamentalists aligned with Donald Trump are headed down a rocky road. They have sought to advance their principles by embracing a man who has none. They have imagined that they can safely dance with the devil. With others who have indulged this form of delusion, they will find that the cost is high.
     Secular fundamentalists have found a haven for now in the United States Congress.  This stands as a major irony of the 21st Century. A great deliberative body has become hostile to honest disagreement.  The Congress has become a hothouse of absolutism.  It has institutionalized intolerance.
     That's the genie now loose in American life: The idea that differences among us are inherently disreputable. Racism and homophobia are only two ugly symptoms.
     In this climate we arrive at the two big questions facing the nation:
     -- What is the settled meaning of this presidential election?
     -- What can we expect from a Trump administration?
     To the first question, one offered answer has been that it represents an angry uprising by working-class whites. While this is certainly an ingredient, it is not the whole recipe of the gumbo. Quite possibly the controlling pronouncement in this election cycle has been not uprising but silence. Trump's nomination was made possible by the huge majority of Republicans who didn't bother to vote in their party's primaries. Hillary Clinton's defeat was made possible by the statistically significant number of Democrats who stayed home in the general election.
      In the primaries and in the general election, most of those who actually cast ballots voted against Donald Trump.  After he's taken office, will they assert themselves politically? We don't really know.  And if all those who remained silent at the ballot box begin to assert themselves politically, what will they assert? We don't really know.  The settled meaning of this presidential election very much remains to be seen.
     Thus any answer to the second question involves rank speculation.  Here's mine: I think there's a lively possibility that what we can expect of a Trump administration is impotence.
      He will learn that he cannot govern the country -- much less lead the world -- with strut and bluster. Any plan B will have to surmount his having made himself an object of widespread fear and ridicule.
      He might not have much help in the work. Democrats in Congress likely will replicate the obstructionist tactics refined by Republicans in eight years of working to undermine President Obama.  Across the aisle, even the moral dwarfs in leadership may be unable to stomach Trump's capacity for corruption.  And in any case they've long shown they value partisan self-interest above their higher obligations. Partisan self-interest may not include trying to save a manifestly unfit president from himself.
     Thus the basics: Most of the voters didn't want Trump in the White House, and Congress could have many reasons for being content to let him run in noisy circles.
     This melancholy state of affairs won't last, because neither the election of Trump nor the tactical success of the fundamentalist right reflects in any coherent way the character of the American public.  The duration will depend on how soon the rest of us realize that if we are not to be ruled by self-interested factions we must be consistently attentive to the glamourless work of citizenship.
      And come to think of it, perhaps that will turn out to be the settled meaning of this elections.