If you’ve been paying even the slightest bit of attention, you know that the American Experiment took some gut punches over the last week.
Joe Biden – long considered the best hope for preventing another disastrous Donald Trump term – had a shockingly bad debate performance, looking and sounding every minute of his 81 years.
The tainted supreme court then declared, in essence, that a president is above the law, at least when acting in an official capacity. And that came on top of other high court decisions that have blasted away at the foundations of democracy in the United States.
And much of the mainstream news media continued their campaign of false equivalency – treating the president’s age as a worse problem than Trump’s criminality and authoritarian intentions.
But on this Fourth of July, I haven’t given up hope that we will right ourselves. And I’m far from alone.
There is encouraging news in every one of these troubled spheres – politics, justice and media.
I asked one of my favorite thinkers, the author and scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert in how democracies can wither under authoritarian rule, for some help. I talked to others, too, especially those who are protecting the vote, fostering good journalism and working for justice.
Here’s what Ben-Ghiat told me: “Part of the reason for so much aggression from the GOP and the courts to take away our rights, including the right to free and fair elections, is because America is becoming more progressive, and Republicans cannot win without lies, threats and election interference, including assistance in that area from foreign powers.”
She sees the US participating in “the global renaissance of mass nonviolent protest against authoritarianism” and notes that, in 2017, we saw the biggest protest in the nation’s history – the Women’s March against Trump, which was then surpassed in 2020 by the Black Lives Matter protests, which involved more than 20 million people in multigenerational and multiracial demonstrations.
“These mass protest movements had electoral consequences in the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections,” she added, as many women, non-white and LGBTQ+ people were elected to office.
Ben-Ghiat is convinced that we are ripe for another round – and the stakes are higher than ever.
On the justice front, I’m not suggesting that we somehow set aside the terrible and hugely consequential decision that gives a president – guess who in particular? – immunity for his official acts.
But at the same time, the courts, including the jury system, are often functioning admirably, if not flawlessly. Just over a month ago, Trump became the first former US president convicted of felonies. Trump allies who wanted to charge that the courts have been weaponized found it harder to make that argument less than two weeks later when Hunter Biden, too, was convicted in a jury trial.
Mainstream journalism, as noted, often disappoints. The moderators of the CNN debate clearly should have been empowered by their network bosses to challenge Trump’s barrage of lies in real time. The stunning New York Times editorial calling for Biden to set aside his campaign for the good of the nation may have been well-reasoned, but it struck me as another example of targeting the president and letting Trump off the hook. To my knowledge, only the scrappy Philadelphia Inquirer has written a similar editorial about Trump.
Too much of the politics coverage is out of whack with reality. The media is baying for Biden’s head, but – with some exceptions – seems mostly bemused by Trump or at least habituated to how dangerous he is.
But there’s good news in journalism, too. Consider ProPublica’s essential reporting on Justice Clarence Thomas’s rotten ethics. Or the way many news outlets have revealed the threats of Project 2025 – the alarming and detailed plan by Trump allies to dismantle democratic norms should their leader win a second term.
I’m also heartened by young journalists who are making their way in a difficult career field.
“No matter what problem we’re talking about, good journalism is part of the solution,” said Jelani Cobb, the dean of Columbia Journalism School (where I run a journalism ethics center). “The young journalists whom we have the privilege to work with here are some of the sharpest, most committed and talented that I’ve ever seen.”
Their work “will be a ballast for democracy”, Cobb told me, “even amid the giant challenges in front of us right now”.
Most of all, I’m moved by the valiant efforts of many ordinary citizens. One friend, active in voter protection efforts, praised “all of the grassroots volunteers working to preserve democracy who I am sure will continue in all the ways possible if Trump wins”. She mentioned the flood of small-dollar donations that followed Biden’s debate debacle, and credited “the courageous judges, court personnel, jurors et al who are working, despite the risks to themselves, to see that justice is served in the cases against Trump”.
Will any of this matter when so much is going wrong and when the threats are so great? The screenwriter and former journalist David Simon offered a dour view this week: “Our American experiment is so over.”
More aligned with Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s big-picture view and the others quoted here, I remain hopeful, if not optimistic about the future of the United States.
On 4 July, at least, let’s remember that we’ve come a long way, and the journey isn’t yet complete.
