‘Democracy Awakening’ puts it all in perspective

By Ande Jacobson

Heather Cox Richardson’s newest book, Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America, was released on 26 September 2023 and is a must read to understand how we got to where we are, the dangers we face, how Americans have strengthened our democracy in times of yore, and finally, how we can again counter the authoritarian threat and reclaim our democracy from those who would abolish it forever. For those who regularly read Professor Richardson’s nightly newsletter, Letters from an American, there isn’t a lot of new material in this book. What is new is how Richardson has condensed the journey and the solution into this tight volume. This isn’t a big book. In fact, it’s a collection of 30 essays of six to eight pages apiece. Bounding these essays are a Forward introducing the material and discussing how the book came about and a Conclusion at the end tying together the pieces of how we could go about recovering and strengthening our democracy going forward. Richardson is honest that she can’t say it’s a sure thing, but the vast majority of Americans want our democracy to survive. The question is whether the overwhelming majority of people will pull together to make it so. Only time will tell.

Meanwhile, regular readers of Richardson’s previous books and nightly letters will recognize pieces of the essays which in some cases are drawn directly from her oeuvre and combined in new ways to make the story of our current crisis of democracy crystal clear. The book is broken in three sections of topical essays. The Table of Contents in itself gives readers an overview of the story contained therein:

Forward

Part 1 Undermining Democracy

American Conservatism

The Liberal Consensus

Bringing the Declaration of Independence to Life

Race and Taxes

Nixon and the Southern Strategy

Positive Polarization

The Reagan Revolution

Skewing the System

A New Global Project

Illegitimate Democracy

Part 2 The Authoritarian Experiment

A Snapshot of America

A Shocking Event

Russia, Russia, Russia

The Streets of Charlottesville

The First Impeachment

Destabilizing the Government

Embracing Authoritarianism

Rewriting American History

January 6

The Big Lie

Part 3 Reclaiming America

What is America?

Declaring Independence

The Constitution

Expanding Democracy

Mudsills or Men

Of the People, by the People, for the People

America Renewed

A Progressive America

The Road to the New Deal

Democracy Awakening

Conclusion – Reclaiming Our Country

Acknowledgements

Notes

Index

The notes section is extensive and contains all of the references throughout the book chapter by chapter. The comprehensive index makes this an excellent quick reference book.

Part 1 of the book discusses how those who preferred oligarchy strove to undermine American democracy from the very start. Richardson brings in the American Paradox early on. The American Paradox is the concept that the equality sought by the fledgling nation was dependent on there being gross inequality underneath it. Those who were initially considered equal were only wealthy white men. Women and minorities and those without means were not considered equal under the law in colonial times, and the broadening of our democracy to include each new group was met with severe, often violent resistance. The arguments are by now familiar and are countered well in the third part of the book when Richardson discusses how those in favor of widening democracy responded throughout our history.

Part 2 of the book is extremely dark. Living through the Trump years has been a challenge, but for many not heavily involved in the political machinations, how extreme those years and the years since were and how close we still are to losing our democracy may not be immediately apparent. The parallels to other autocracies are striking, and the danger to American democracy is ever present. Richardson takes a deep dive into explaining how the concerted effort to overthrow our democracy and push us into a full-on autocracy has been executed. The tools are familiar to students of history, and technology has made it easier to displace factual information. American democracy has been under attack from all sides, within the country through heavily organized right-wing attacks, and from our adversaries engaging in active measures and large-scale propaganda campaigns. The stuff of dystopian science fiction has been playing out in plain sight for several decades culminating in the events over the last eight years. As Richardson has suggested in her live sessions and book discussions, while the whole book lays out the story, if readers are too disturbed by Part 2, they should read parts 1 and 3 to get a feel for how we got here and how we can push back and reclaim our democracy.

Part 3 is largely an historic look at the efforts to not only define but to expand our democracy to achieve that ideal of true equality where the governed can actively consent to the government they enact. Many of these essays hearken back to her previous books and letters, but again, she streamlines the story to show the connections throughout our history. From Part 1, while efforts to undermine democracy were bubbling under the surface throughout our history, they were supercharged when the major parties switched sides through Nixon’s Southern Strategy. They got a major push through the Reagan revolution, something that President Jimmy Carter warned about shortly before leaving office in 1981. He could see the writing on the wall and tried to put out a warning of where he saw us going.

In the Conclusion at the end of Part 3, Richardson shows the positive moves the country has made to recharge our democracy more recently, from electing Joe Biden to the presidency in 2020 to preventing the so-called red-wave in the 2022 midterm elections. Despite the massive gerrymandering and voter suppression that has been pushed by the GOP, the majority pushed back. The Biden administration has worked with a closely divided Congress that doesn’t represent the vast majority of Americans and has been able to accomplish several moves to strengthen our democracy despite all odds against doing so. He has kept his 2020 campaign promise to build from the middle out and the bottom up to help all Americans. In this last essay, Richardson shows us turning in a positive direction, but the job isn’t done yet. The last two sentences, while sobering, are hopeful.