For people of conscience in a democracy, the work is always just beginning. ...
This, to me is the key passage, and is repeated in the conclusion. It is, I believe, an optimistic and clear-sighted view. The work of democracy is always beginning.
But the work of securing and sustaining a democracy begins again every day. And let it begin again now, with the knowledge of what has happened, and who was responsible.
"What happened Saturday in Austin" is not an end; it is what democracy always is, a failure that leads to the work of democracy "just beginning" again.
The soul, "the animating principle" of a thing, is malleable, I have written. It can turn evil and it can turn back again. But it is not unbreakable. The Republican Party can change; conservatism can change, from the autocracy and corruption of Paxton and Trump, back to democracy. Democracy and Republican conservatism in Texas can survive the failure to impeach a corrupt attorney general.
But
it is clear-sighted to recognize that there is a “civil war” among
elected Republicans in Washington, as Hakeem Jeffries said today. There is a civil war among elected Republicans in Austin. It is a civil war for the soul of the Party. “We have come to a place of great danger”, in Texas and in the country. The
soul is deep down and the civil war in the Republican Party is not just below the surface among elected Republicans. It is at the bedrock of democracy, voters. It is on this critical point that the Dallas paper is not clear-sighted: "The
conservatism that we believe the people of this state want is one that
is rooted in the search for truth and justice. It is one in which people
live honorably and honestly." The editorial board knows the Texas politic far better than I but Texas voters did not choose that conservatism when they chose corrupt, autocratic, law-breaking chief Texas law enforcement officer Ken Paxton again and again and again, nor the Texas senators who voted to acquit him.
When once a voter chooses law breaking over the rule of law that choice “changes the voter in ways that are not small”, as was written in The Bulwark. It changes the voter’s soul, and crucially, it makes it easier to keep voting for anti-democratic law breakers again and again. Voters can change back to democratic, rule of law candidates but they also can not. They did not change their voting behavior in Texas on Paxton.
“There comes a time”, there comes a time when there are no new beginnings for democracy, when it is “broken”. What is broken once can be fixed, to continue this on-the-other-handedness. Or it can not be fixed. One of those “not” times happened in Germany in 1938 after a decade of failures like we saw in Austin on Saturday, like we saw in the Catastrophe of 11/8/2016. Democracy in America survived the Catastrophe. It will not survive the Leader's resumption of the presidency on 11/5/2024. The soul is malleable but not unbreakable and that will be The End.
