Time to Choose Between Truth or Tribe – Freedom or Autocracy

 

Time to Choose Between Truth or Tribe – Freedom or Autocracy

Rick Olson
March 18, 2024

In this year’s elections, we will have the chance to vote for a multi-racial democracy or risk losing our democracy altogether.

We cherish our rights to say what we want, see and hear what we want on whatever media we want, to believe and practice (or not) any religion we want, to go wherever and whenever we want, to love and marry whomever we want, to meet and gather with whomever, whenever and wherever we want. But these rights mean nothing unless they can be enforced – by the rule of law. I learned back in the 70’s from the JC’s that we were “A nation of laws and not of men.” This means that decisions about these rights are made based on laws, not on the whims of individual authoritarians or even growing pressure groups.

I can’t stay silent. Can you?

First, for democracies to survive, losers of election must respect the outcome of free and fair elections - win or lose.

65% of Republicans polled in Iowa just before the caucuses said “yes” to the question “if Trump is convicted, is he fit to be President?”

61% also said “no” when asked if President Joe Biden was legitimately elected President.

Again in South Carolina, in the GOP Primary exit poll, when asked the same questions, Trump voters answered similarly.

I can’t stay silent. Can you?

Second, we must unambiguously reject violence (or the threat of violence) as a means of achieving political goals.  Trump wants us to be afraid. He wants us to be intimidated and has intimidated many politicians who afraid of resisting trump for fear of losing support of the Trump base of the Republican Party and risk destroying their political careers. Last week on social media, Trump wrote that if elected he would free people convicted over their role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, whom he called “hostages being wrongfully imprisoned.”

Violence only destroys, it does not build.

The fear and the intimidation by Hitler and the “brown shirts” fit the same pattern that Hitler used in the 1930’s. In fact, MAGA uses the same tactics as the Nazis did in the 1930s: 1. Aim for the heart (appeal to feelings of losing something), 2. Divide (demonize and scapegoat, seduce with nostalgia blaming the loss to “others”), 3. Conquer (muzzle the media, bully the bureaucrats, condemn the courts, put down protesters), 4. Stoke violence and 5. Create an image of a “superman” to cure all ills. I wonder how many Germans (those who survived) later regretted not speaking out before it was too late.

What would any of us have done had we been in their shoes and gone against a charismatic demigod supported by the multitude in what seemed to be an inevitability? How many of them could see the evil as it was occurring? Who has the courage? Oppose something that makes you feel better about yourself, part of something bigger than yourself that you have been primed to believe? Yet tens of thousands who knew better simply stood by - silent. We need to take action to avoid the same result.

I can’t stay silent. Can you?

Third, people from within the rising faction who dislike the support for authoritarianism must break with the antidemocratic forces, i.e., speak out in opposition. We need to take a stand individually and also demand that our politicians (including our local officials and state legislators) do too. We need more courageous office holders than Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, and Adam Kinzinger to speak out, regardless of their political careers and aspirations. History shows that those who remain silent out of political expediency fearing losing votes play a vital, if hidden, role in democratic collapse. Many of the people who preside over democratic collapse are ambitious careerists trying to stay in office or perhaps win a higher one.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Not to decide is to decide. Not to act is to act. Not to speak out is to condone what we see unfolding before our eyes.

As a Republican since high school and a former elected Republican State Representative in Michigan, I feel it is my duty to our country to “speak out”.

I can’t stay silent. Can you?

"[Y]ou also had people that were very fine people, on both sides." Donald Trump, responding to questions from reporters regarding the violent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017.

From my long experience in the Republican Party, I can concur with that comment, as most of the people I have known in the party are and have been good people.

Most people do not like change. We are accustomed to and feel comfortable with the way things are. We feel unsafe when we encounter things or even people who are different. (Probably from an evolutionary reaction based on our “reptilian brain” composed of the brainstem (medulla, pons, cerebellum, midbrain, globus pallidus, and olfactory bulbs) which triggers our “fight or flight” reactions.)  Thus, the projection that the U.S. will become a white minority nation by 2045 due to our population aging, low birth rates among whites and immigration makes some people feel threatened. This fear of loss of white Americans’ long-standing social dominance leaves many with feelings of alienation, displacement, and deprivation, generating a sense of unfairness and injustice.

We are all biased, as we subconsciously react based on our past experiences much quicker than thoughts are generated by our cerebrum or prefrontal cortex - the “thinking part of our brain”. We all have biases, including the “affirmation bias” that seeks out information (or sorts out of the barrage of information hitting us) data that confirms our preconceived ideas and beliefs and shields us from disconfirming data.  When constantly fed misinformation (propaganda) often and consistently enough, people begin to believe what they are hearing. With the misinformation from Fox News (often the only “news” source of many of the right) and the echo chamber within social media, many of these “fine” people become believers of thoughts and “facts” that are unmoored from reality. They become unwittingly victims of the “alternate reality’ we see many immersed in today. It is understandable that many good people come to believe things that are not true and/or have their biases intensified. However, facts matter.

I know, and I am sure you do too, many conservatives or leaning conservatives, Republicans or leaning Republicans, MAGAs or leaning MAGAs who are “good people”. Heck, even many of my relatives who I know are “good people” are Trump supporters.

Yes, among the crowd at Charlottesville, undoubtedly there were many “good people” there who were there because they were either curious or wanted to belong to something. But, there were also many racists at Charlottesville that need to be called out and not encouraged by pandering to them.

In October 1978, Pope John Paul II defied the Nazis as part of the Polish cultural resistance when he urged nearly three million Poles who showed up for his final appearance in his hometown city of Krakow to “Be not afraid”. This gave rise to Solidarity which ultimately freed Poland from the Soviet repression.  If Poles under the thumb of murderous Soviet Union can speak out, can’t we? If Navalny can speak out against Putin, can’t we?

Yes, it takes courage to stand up and be counted against what is believed and felt by even many of our friends. If you speak out, you may lose “friends” (but not real friends who really know you) but they will likely privately admire you. We must choose between “truth” vs. “tribe”.

I can’t stay silent. Can you?

About the author:

I have been a Republican since high school. After graduating from Stanford Law School in 1978, I was an attorney for the Republican Caucus for the 1981, 1982 and 1984 legislative sessions of the Washington State House of Representatives and managed several of its members’ reelection campaigns. I was a Republican State Representative in Michigan in 2011-12 and a Republican candidate for Congress in 2020 for the Minnesota Second Congressional District. However, I believe facts matter and found myself at odds with my Michigan colleagues and got redistricted out of the legislature by my own party. I simply did not fit the MAGA group that dominated the Second District “Republicans” and did not survive the party endorsement process. Trump’s incitement of the January 6 insurrection, the MAGA support for it and the Republican office holders’ cowardice in not denouncing it are the last straws. I can no longer be a Republican or be silent.

Rick Olson
3051 202^nd Ct. E.
Prior Lake, MN 55372
320-248-9933
olson48176@gmail.com