When Chauncey Gardiner is President

“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are ]wrong.” Voltaire

Never in America’s 250-year odyssey has Voltaire’s words rang truer. America is hamstrung by a one-ton anvil attached to its hind quarters. The primary culprit is an individual who specializes in reactionary megalomania.

America is collectively paying the price for having a maladjusted, incompetent narcissist occupy the Resolute Desk. He is the paradoxical paradox, flirting with a civil war and a world war, while decrying that he did not win the Nobel Peace Prize.

It is beyond the comprehension of reasonable people that this individual is qualified to operate a stove in his studio apartment unattended, let alone access to the nuclear launch codes. The nation’s mores are being systematically dismantled, those who could hold the wayward commander-in-chief accountable (The Republican majority in Congress) sit in mind-numbing silence.

There is not a single member of the Republican majority who would remain silent if similar behavior was conducted by a president in the opposition party. Their silence represents the binary choice between protection of democratic norms versus clinging to their position in Congress.

The mere fact that so many continue to choose the latter, disqualifies them to serve. By enabling this president, they are failing to uphold their pledge to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

Every president since George Washington has tested the limits of their authority. It is the responsibility of Congress to hold the Executive Branch in check, hence “checks and balances.”

But Congress does nothing as the president seeks to remove the virtue of dissent. Dissent is the oxygen of American democracy, without it, the nation would choke on the fumes of self-induced megalomania. This bedrock principle is enshrined in the Constitution’s first amendment.

Dissent is fundamental to its democratic foundation, fueling free speech, holding power accountable, driving social progress, and reflecting the nation’s revolutionary origins. It is no accident that the institutions best suited to holding the government accountable (legal, education, and the press) were the initial targets that the current administration placed in its crosshairs.

Without dissent, America isn’t America. It is a lurch towards authoritarianism—a two-bit fascists regime with a veneer of democratic coating. Specifically, without informed dissent, there are no tools to make those in power uncomfortable. According to the established authorities, if one cannot question, it is settled law.

Attempts to curtail dissent reflects America at its worst. As Voltaire also offered, “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Voltaire’s words embody the civic maturity that American democracy requires.

Informed dissent crossed the Atlantic, with those who sought a better life that would be free from religious persecution, and found a permanent home among the 13 fledgling colonies beginning in 1620. By 1776, it would become a hallmark in a country vying for its independence.

One shouldn’t assume that dissent equates to being correct, any more than the majority opinion represents the path forward. Lest one forgets, slavery, prohibiting women from voting, and the denial of civil rights at one time enjoyed majority approval in America. Dissent abets our democratic values. It was at the foundation of women’s suffrage, the Voting Rights Act, and marriage equality.

America is currently governed by those who cloak themselves in patriotic accoutrements, while they traffic in behaviors antithetical to the nation’s creed. In recent years the Republican Party has not been duly punished for activities outside the established democratic guardrails. They received a pass for not holding Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Merrick Garland 10 months before the General Election in 2016, but fast-tracked similar hearings for Amy Coney Barrett days before the 2020 General Election, establishing a 6-3 supermajority, eventually abolishing Roe v. Wade. For many Americans, January 6 was not a deal-breaker.

For decades, the Republican Party has realized “fool’s gold” by winning elections at the expense of governing. The have parlayed simplistic solutions to complex problems, titillating emotions with nativist rhetoric. As the familiar axiom holds, if it aint broke don’t fix it.

Would anyone be surprised to know the Republican majority in Congress clings to every word offered by Chauncey Gardiner in chief? They have transformed the satirical movie, Being There, into a real-life drama. Like the movie, America has a simple-minded protagonist who is vaunted to a position of influence through happenstance. Unlike the fictional Gardiner, though dim-witted, is kind, the nonfiction version is the intellectual equivalent, but lacking a moral compass, mean-spirited, having spent most of his adult life grifting and avoiding responsibility.

We can only hope, in the words of Martin Luther King, “that this tragic midnight of man’s inhumanity to man will soon pass and the bright daybreak of freedom and brotherhood will come into being.”

Chauncey Gardiner was never meant to be president.

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