It is increasingly apparent that ideology is threatening to overcome our democracy. The right is currently in the driver’s seat, but the left could just as well be there, and may well be in the future.
As we have become more and more fragmented and compartmentalized socially and politically, a vacuum has been left in our national fabric. It’s a vacuum that ideologies are eager to fill. We know and encounter one another on increasingly impersonal and functional terms, and are less able than in the past to match faces to the names of people with whom we interact. One sign of this is the unacceptable and offensive habit of talking on a cell phone will paying for purchases. There is apparently no need to acknowledge the human being who is serving you when you’ve got your own little circle of friends and family to attend to. Online shopping regularizes our indifference to people who are different than us, and makes such indifference acceptable.
Ideology categorizes people, problems, and solutions according to impersonal standards. Its success depends upon blindness to the rich variety of humanity and of human experience. The more we know about and understand one another, the harder it is for us to speak and think in discrete categories about one another. Ideology subverts democracy, which functions because we are individuals who participate with one another in public, civic activities (such as voting), by shaping us into compliant cogs in someone else’s ordered machine. That machine depends upon adherence to particular laws and rules which cannot be broken without threatening the entire machine. Democracy, by definition, is messy…the way life itself is messy.
Earlier this week our all-powerful immigration folks deported a man to Mexico who had been living illegally in the United States since 2001 but who has been, by all accounts, a contributing and responsible member of our society. You can say (as some of you will) that they were only enforcing the law, and you would be right to a point. But not to the point of justice, which should be the goal of all law and its enforcement. When Jesus was criticized for breaking Sabbath regulations, he told his accusers that the Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath. Laws and rules should serve people and human flourishing, not stifle or exclude them.
What does President Donald Trump have to do with all of the above? As a narcissist, he is the perfect leader in an era of ideology over democracy because is actually interested in neither. His primary and consuming interest is in himself and (perhaps) in a very, very tight circle of immediate family members. People who are driven by ideology (think Steve Bannon) can run roughshod over him because he cannot see how their plans affect anyone other than himself because he cannot see anyone other than himself. I believe he is, in fact, being used by extreme right-wing/alt-right forces to place America under lock and key. Then, they’ll throw away the key.
Yesterday I read that Trump’s Chief of Staff came very close to suggesting they are “looking at” the First Amendment, perhaps to find ways to “protect” the President and other political leaders from criticism. Today’s headline is that Trump is wondering if he might be able to pardon himself. This is narcissism run amok with political power, and one can only wonder how long and far it will have to go before the whole nation figures it out.
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