Is Democracy fragile, weak, and vulnerable? During the last 10 months, MAGA has seemingly proved that it could bring down Democracy and all of its institutions.

The remarkable journalist Fareed Zakaria, one of the most astute political observers of our time, said that people have lost trust in Democracy. He must mean ordinary people, whose trust in government has been shaken by excessive policies of previous administrations. They felt threatened by the in-your-face influx of new cultures, customs, and beliefs. MAGA spoke to that fear by likening Washington D.C. to a swamp. The slogan “Drain the Swamp” was powerful and seducing. The people wanted to clean up the politicians’ mess.

Ordinary people should not lose trust in Democracy, which is their most desirable and final political environment as pointed out by the political science professor at Stanford, Francis Fukuyama. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, Democracy is of the ordinary people, by the ordinary people, and for the ordinary people.

Ordinary people know that truth by experience as well, which had been paid for with sweat, tears, and blood for centuries by the ancestors of Americans. Millions of them left their old countries for the democratic fertile ground created by the American Founding Fathers.

A little bit of interesting history: President Trump’s grandfather, Frederick Trump an ordinary German, could not fare well in the German monarchic regime ruled by the King of Prussia, later Emperor of Germany, Wilhelm I. He left for Democratic America at the age of 16 when Cleveland Grover, a DEMOCRAT, was U.S. president. Like they say, the rest is history. Frederick became a wealthy young man. True, he desired to go back to Bavaria to get married and settle there. But the clear fact remains that only in Democratic America that he found the opportunity to reach his potential and proved to the world, and his wife, who he was and what he was worth. No other political regime on this earth could boast that claim.

There are sharks lurking in any government and no doubt behind the Trump Administration’s effort to “Drain the Swamp”. Democracy is fertile ground for not just fescue grass but also crab weed, which fiercely vies for dominance. Lately, we have seen crab weed spreading wide and deep not just in Washington but all over the country, threatening Democracy. After the Civil War, America has never seen its military might set foot on American soil. Suddenly, they are everywhere, and only in “liberal” cities where the most threatening activities are sex and drug. MAGA sharks pretend that local law enforcement can’t police the cities. The nation’s chiefs of police and their officers, who have done the job all their professional life, are ostentatiously sidelined as incompetent, and the job can only be handled by the Secretary of Defense and his military.

Ordinary citizens must give the Roberts Supreme Court the benefit of the doubt that they had some other national interest consideration when they gave the country’s chief executive (not just President Trump) absolute immunity. But that ruling, regardless of their good faith in reading the Constitution or good reasons to support their decision, has wounded Democracy badly. It has moved our political system a lot closer to an Autocracy, an Aristocracy, or even a Monarchy.

We are living and functioning in a democracy. The chief executive must be held accountable for his personal wrongful conduct under our Constitution, a Democratic Constitution. To say otherwise is sophism.

Democrats have been busying themselves with the prestigious pursuit of forming world coalitions. It takes President Trump, of all people, to remind them that the enemy is within (of course his is different or opposite to theirs). To fight such enemies, they need the help of ordinary people. They need, as Mr. Zakaria hinted, to regain their trust.

That is the Democrats’ job but I, a mainstream Republican, would like to give them some advice: form coalitions with ordinary Americans that means being down to earth and divorcing yourselves from uncomfortable ideas before their time.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                        (This article appears on Facebook, X, and thelephongjournal.com)

Dinh Le picked up the napkin to wipe his mouth, took a sip of his tea, and calmly said, “It is not really important, but my first name is Dinh, and my last name is Le, L-E. I expected that Tim would go first to tell us what the president, or rather the Movement has been doing and planning to do. But since you ask a very important question, if Tim doesn’t mind, I will try to answer your question as much as I can. My answer, in fact, will shed some light on the administration’s action plan.” He stopped to finish his almond tea.

“I have dug deep to find the reason why the Movement was successful in seizing power. I say seizing power because their success is nothing short of a revolution, and I mean like the Bolshevik Revolution, which had been incubated for a long time starting with a doctrine, Marxism, a plan you may call Leninism, then the execution of the plan by Lenin and his lieutenants. We all know about that now, but like the Movement’s revolution, we know about it a little bit too late.

“The doctrine adopted by the Movement has been around for a long time, older than Marxism. You may call it Hobbesism or Burkeism or Lockeism, as it was advocated by Thomas Hobbes, Edmund Burke, and John Locke. I call it Elitism. These gentlemen firmly believed that average people should not be trusted to govern themselves. Even many of our country’s founders, notably James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, preferred indirect democracy, or a representative Republic. You all know that before the 17^th Amendment, U.S. senators were not elected by the people but by the state legislatures, which were controlled by the rich landowners. The most striking remnant of that elitist mindset in our Constitution is our presidential election: our presidents have not been elected by the people but by the Electoral College that has resulted, five times in the U.S. political history and twice in modern days, in a candidate being elected president even though he got fewer popular votes.”

Benedict was a little concerned that former secretary Joshua Bennett would lose patience with Le’s erudite lecture and explode with sarcastic comments. But he was amazed that he in fact was deep in thought with his eyes fixed on Le.

“I get your point,” mumbled Bennett.

“Do you have a question, Mr. Secretary?” Le asked.

“Oh, no. Please continue.”

Senator Hill reminded everyone where they were, “We are in a restaurant. Just let Dinh finish his thoughts. We ruminate over them later.”

“We now know that the Cook campaign was tinted with racism, which has never been a secret or new phenomenon in American politics. George Wallace, David Duke ran for public offices.  The Christian Republican Movement used the lowest layer of society, the racists, to form its core during the campaign. The racist emotion, if not stronger, is at least as energetic and powerful as religious fervor. They did not send out messages saying please contribute to the Cook campaign because he is a nice guy. Their messages were forceful: “Joe (or Jane), what happens to you, why don’t I see your contribution check in the mail? Are you American? Are you with us or with the woke leftists who want to destroy our country? Don’t you want to elect Zachary Cook so he can take our country back?’, and so on.

“The middle class, themselves are not necessary racist, may disagree with the Movement’s tactic. But its messages strike a chord that neutralize their ‘s sensibility toward races: us-with-our-Christian-culture-and-tradition versus them-with-their-alien-culture-and-tradition. To win the race, the Movement knew that they had to win over the middle class. They had thought about it, worked out a plan for quite some time, and meticulously implemented their plan. It would not matter whether it was under the Social Democrats’ radar or not, I am sorry to tell you this Senator Russell and Carter, their plan rendered you impotent – you cannot adopt it, and you have no countermove.”

“What are you talking about? What plan?” The former secretary asked.

“The Movement’s plan to win over the middle class,” Le said.

“Each party has always tried to get the middle class’s votes to win elections. It’s not a big secret.”

“You are absolutely right, Mr. Secretary. That is why the Movement’s strategy to win over the middle class was genius. They knew that the racist strategy would not do well with the middle class because regardless of individual cases of open racist behavior and attitude, the middle class as a whole is more sensible and more refined in their thought and act toward other races. They would loathe the coarse racist approach. The Movement modified their strategy.  They made a crime committed by one illegal immigrant, especially a recidivist, a national tragedy. They beat the drum hard and loud for years that affirmative action or health care for the poor or DEI, etc., are threats to the white race’s future, sending them into a panic. So, the middle class, a more rational and less prejudicial than the racists, was convinced to choose Cook and the Movement, the arch-conservative faction of the Christian Republican Party. They probably thought that let them solve those issues; if they strayed from the democratic norms, we would send the Democrats back in. They may be mistaken because the Movement has, of course, anticipated and prepared for such thinking.

“The past election was radically different, not in form but in what to be expected. The voters did not know that the winners, the Movement, did not maneuver to gain power to do good for the American people and the country, and wait for the next election cycle for the people to make a judgment on their performance. That has been the democratic process. The Cook administration and its backers, the Movement, have no intention of continuing to follow the democratic process or even to preserve Democracy. Their ultimate goal is to gain power in order to be able to consolidate and stay in power – for good, or until history forces them to relinquish power.

“You are so good at seeing things. Can you tell us what we can do?” The former secretary asked.

“Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I see some things going on in this new political climate. But I am not a policy maker like the rest of you. I can tell you this: the Movement’s effort to subvert Democracy has got tremendous boost from powerful quarters in the world, from dictatorial Russia to the kingdoms in the oil rich Middle East. They see the collapse of Democracy in America as a great vindication of their policy of dividing society into two classes, the have and the have-not-much, and keeping the have-not-much or ordinary people in their place.”

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                              (This Excerpt appears on Facebook, X, and thelephongjournal.com)