When Chris Minns and Dominic Perrottet squared off at the NSW election, there was something missing – bitterness, arrogance, and trash talk. The type of stuff one expects from a Scott Morrison or Donald Trump.
The latter recently held a rally in Waco on the 30th anniversary of the violent Waco Siege where 80 people including four FBI agents were killed; he called on his supporters to be mean and consider taking “back the country.”
The NSW leaders by contrast chose a path of civility and respect. The concession speech from the outgoing LNP Premier was elegant. He praised his own supporters while readily extending a level of courtesy and respect that seemingly gets missed by others at that level. The favour was mutually returned by the new Labor premier who praised Perrottet.
This was a fine moment for our democracy, and it needs to be replicated.
As Athens displayed under a series of demagogues in the fourth century BC, we can lose the privilege if we don’t respect the institution of democracy.
In the United States, the democratic process has devolved into a bitter circus of divisiveness, led by the MAGA Republicans who support former President Trump.
It is disappointing to see a nation that has produced great leaders such as Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant (both Republicans, by the way), Franklin Delano Roosevelt, JFK and Barack Obama now reduced to turning opponents into enemies of the state.
The crassness from the biggest threat to democracy, Donald Trump, has placed a strain on democracy
The spread of baseless lies about a stolen election and deep state conspiracy, coupled with unchecked propaganda, has enabled individuals such as former President Trump and his supporters, including Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and George Santos, to deliberately and shamefully devalue democracy – a precious gift to the world from ancient Athens.
It’s time the MAGA Republican Party looked at the substance of a Mitt Romney or the late John McCain, rather than the bigotry and delusional lies of MAGA types.
It’s time we all considered moving on from Trump, and I say that as I watched an LNP supporter proudly wear his Trump attire on NSW election day at a local booth. Trump has a litany of failures to go along with the 30,573 fact checked lies which according to the Washington Post, he told during his presidency.
Trump has had six business bankruptcies which meant staff, contractors, creditors and customers all suffered. Trump ran a fraudulent university that was shut down by authorities and sued. He ran a fake charity which the New York State shut down and fined his board, which was made up of Trump family members. His flagship Trump Organisation was fined millions of dollars for fraud and his CFO went to prison for tax evasion crimes. Trump was twice impeached. He pays next to no tax in the USA though he pays his taxes in Turkey for businesses there, a cosy relationship with Erdogan.
Trump has had 26 allegations of sexual harassment and rape made against him including a current civil suit rape case. He also took away an estimated 110 classified and secret documents from the White House. Trump placed a call to the Governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, goading him to illegally find the right number of votes to give him Georgia in the Electoral College vote in 2020. He will likely face consequences for that in due course. Governor Kemp is a Republican who stood firm against the lies of the ‘stolen election’.
Trump fomented the attempted coup, on 6 January 2021 and the fake Electoral College electors scheme was also an attempt to overthrow the government. Almost 70 court cases including in front of Republican appointed judges, proved that the ‘stolen election’ was a stunt based on no known facts or evidence. This undermined faith in democracy, yet as the then Republican controlled Homeland Security pointed out, the US election of 2020 was the most secure in history. Every agency under the Republican Administration concurred.
Our democracy can’t afford to support the Trumps or Morrisons
By supporting Trump and Morrison type politicians we will end up being another version of Athens at the end of the ancient epoch. Athens did not recover for a long time. Has it ever recovered? The collapse of democracy in the US would leave us vulnerable to a range of authoritarian regimes poised to seize power. We would be in dire straits without the protection and stability that democratic governance provides.
The US is not a perfect democracy, and nor are they a nation that embraces all its people, especially minorities thanks to the modern Republicans that oppose universal healthcare and free education even at the community college level. Five million people born in the USA are not allowed to be given citizenship as their parents came into the US illegally decades ago, these people are called ‘Dreamers’ and the meanness of the MAGA Republicans means they are not granted citizenship. Despite all that, the US remains a leading light for the evolution of democracy almost by default. Unlike the British or most Western nations, they don’t have an unelected House of Lords or a Monarchy as Head of State.
Trump is about to face the music of the illegal payment made to Stormy Daniels and he too can see a sticky situation arising from the porn star payment. I watched his former lawyer Michael Cohen give testimony to Congress, hours of testimony and he was right that Trump is a grifter, a crook and a liar. As a side bar, Scotland and Australia had concerns that he has links to organised crime when he applied for casino and business licences.
Trump has been chaotic for democracy and he, not Putin nor Xi, is the biggest threat to democracy. The Mueller Report of 448 odd pages showed us proof of collusion between Russia and Trump’s campaign. We know Russia interfered in the 2016 election, as outlined by Mueller, a registered Republican former FBI Chief. He should have been stopped there. His racist rhetoric against Bragg is shameful and misses the niceness we saw in NSW or from people like the great Republican McCain. We need to Build the Wall to keep Trump out, or as Hillary would like to say, ‘Lock Him Up.’
Trump lacks civility and respect. He has a history of attacking the spouses of fellow Republicans who challenge him for leadership. He is no Minns or Perottet. In 2017, Obama facilitated a peaceful transfer of power to Trump. However, when Trump lost the 2020 election, he behaved more like a deposed dictator than a democratically elected leader, attempting to stage a coup.
If his efforts had succeeded, the very foundation of democracy in the US would have been shaken to the core.
This year, the legal pressure on Trump is likely to increase, but given his privileged status in the US, I fear he may escape the consequences of his actions. It’s clear that a person of colour would not have been afforded the same leniency. It’s my hope that the US can move past Trump and select a more suitable Republican candidate for future leadership.
Those living outside the country should also distance themselves from Trumpism and demagoguery to protect democracy from the pitfalls of ancient Athens.
We owe it to ourselves to uphold the values of democracy and respect its tenets.
Billy Cotsis is a writer and documentary filmmaker, a supporter of democracy and has a Master’s in International Studies