Roger Marshall is a computer scientist, a newly minted Luddite and a cynic
DH Illustration
If you were watching the US presidential election results on TV just a few days ago, you couldn’t possibly have missed the sea of American flags and a plethora of placards in praise of god and Trump. That Trump’s election has paved the way for the establishment of a constitutionally guaranteed Christian white nation once called the US of A is now a real possibility.
The quote “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross” is often attributed to author Sinclair Lewis, the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1930. His most famous novel was Main Street, a timeless indictment of the prejudices and complacency of small-town god-fearing America. The same small towns which exist even today and whose denizens were more than happy to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 to stop Joe Biden from assuming the presidency after legitimately defeating Trump in the 2020 elections.
Also timeless but extremely prescient is one of Lewis’ lesser known works, It Can’t Happen Here. This 1935 novel traces the ascent of Berzelius Windrip, a demagogue who gets elected as President of the United States, after stoking fear in the minds of citizens of an out-of-control liberal press, crime, sex, violence, cheats and freeloaders, and promising to institute draconian economic and social measures. In establishing his fascist state, Windrip resorts to a set of dictatorial acts – he eliminates the influence of Congress, curtails the rights of women and minorities, appoints prominent businessmen to administer the country, creates a militia to put down protests and stacks the courts to rubber-stamp his diktats.
The majority of Americans approve of these measures since they assume such steps would make America great again. The sole voice opposing Windrip is newspaper editor Doremus Jessup who sees through Windrip’s fascist policies and tries to inform the citizens but to no avail. When the paper shuts down, Jessup is rendered mute and ends up in exile. There is no denying that there are a great many parallels between the policies of fictional president Windrip and the policies espoused by the real President-elect Trump.
Of the many policies that Trump has advocated in order to get elected, there are four that merit close examination – muzzling the media, removing term limits on the presidency, revoking birthright US citizenship for children born in the US to parents who are in the country illegally, and the reading of the Bible and displaying the Ten Commandments in public schools. The last item would undermine religious freedom and covertly make the US a Christian nation.
Trump can achieve all of his stated goals by having a pliant Republican-controlled Congress pass bills to amend the US Constitution and an equally pliant set of state legislatures to ratify the amendments. The current constitution has 27 amendments which have been ratified. Four new amendments would be required, three for revoking existing amendments and one for creating a brand new amendment. Revoking the first amendment would destroy religious freedom, free speech and a free press, revoking the 22nd amendment would remove term limits for the presidency, revoking the 14th amendment would cancel the birthright citizenship provision.
The brand new amendment would redefine the US as a theocratic nation by making Christianity the state religion and put an end to the vexatious church-state separation problem. Article Five of the United States Constitution requires approval of three-fourths of the state legislatures to enact a constitutional amendment. Since there are 50 states, 38 ratifications are required. Many more amendments have been passed by Congress but never ratified. The Equal Rights Amendment which prohibits sex discrimination, passed by Congress in 1972, is yet to be ratified.
Shortly after Trump’s victory, Elon Musk gleefully posted that the election results were a landslide for right wing Republicans since they now controlled the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, a majority of state governor-ships and a majority of the state legislatures. Even though Republicans do not control 38 states, given Trump’s large support base of Catholics, Evangelicals and conservative Protestants, his bully pulpit and his penchant for viewing everything through a transactional lens, a theocratic US is definitely possible.
In his 1996 book The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order, author Sam Huntington, an influential American political scientist, argued that people’s cultural and religious identities would be the primary sources of conflict in the post-Cold War world. If the US does become a theocracy, any future wars it engages in will be heavily influenced by religious considerations.
The Star-Spangled Banner, the national anthem of the US, would need to be replaced. How about Onward, Christian Soldier?