How to Save America
8 min read
I am an American by choice. I left the Netherlands for the United States to finish my graduate studies in 1984, met the love of my life, and became an American citizen. America has been good to me. I advised presidential candidates, served on the National Security Council under Bill Clinton, and was the U.S. ambassador to NATO under Barack Obama.
But I didn’t choose to become an American just because of the opportunities it provided. The reason was more personal.
My parents grew up during the Second World War. My mother escaped the Holocaust in 1942 after a harrowing six-month journey from Holland, through Belgium and France, to get to neutral Switzerland. Much of her family was not so lucky. My father, who lived in occupied northern Holland, suffered through the Hunger Winter of 1944–45, during which more Dutch civilians died of starvation than Dutch soldiers died in the entire war.
The war was a central part of their lives and provided the backdrop to my growing up. It was a frequent topic at the dinner table. My father became an academic and devoted much of his career to studying how democracies could be structured to resist the kind of antidemocratic movements that had taken hold in Italy in 1922 and in Germany a decade later. He never found a satisfactory answer. He always worried about the feebleness of democracies because they were based on consensus and norms that could be violated with impunity.
My parents instilled in me the sense that the world contains many evil people—but is full of good people, too. Evil inheres in the human condition—an evil that can turn neighbors into traitors and collaborators and cultivate hatred to the point of exterminating an entire people. But the Americans who liberated a continent beset by two internecine wars, supported a massive economic reconstruction effort through the Marshall Plan, and offered the security of a strong alliance showed what good people can do.
I have never been blind to America’s warts: its ugly history of racism, lack of a true social safety net, gun-toting culture, great inequality, and foreign-policy blunders. But America is a nation of self-correction, where positive change is possible. This is a country based not on ethnic identity, national origin, or religious preference, but on an idea: that all “are created equal” and endowed with the unalienable right to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” It has a constitution with a bill of rights, a government of checks and balances that is “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
This is the America I believe in. This is the America I chose.
But that country is now under threat by another America—one that has always been there but is now closer to power than at any time in the country’s nearly 250-year history. This is an America I want no part of.
The age of conquest, in which democracies fell to armed invasion, ended with Germany’s defeat in World War II. (Russia’s attempt to resurrect that age has been bloody and brutal but also a strategic failure—at least so long as we keep our wits and support Ukraine.) Now the greatest threat to democracies comes from within. History teaches us that democracies founder when a charismatic leader emerges to lead a movement of subservient followers. The leader develops a cult of personality. Unity is bolstered by identifying a distinct enemy who can be blamed for social ills and economic plight. “In every society,” Benito Mussolini proclaimed, “there is a need for a part of the citizens who must be hated.” Violence against the enemy forms an essential part of creating and growing the movement and its power. Victory is made possible by the steady erosion of the norms, rules, and basic rights that are the foundation of democracy.
That’s what happened to Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 1930s, Venezuela in the early 2000s, and Hungary in the past decade. And it’s threatening to happen here in America. My father died in April 2016, but I well remember his warnings about what the rise of Donald Trump—a man with strong authoritarian tendencies, singularly unprepared for high office—could portend.
Trump presents himself as uniquely strong and uniquely capable. Nothing underscored that projection more than surviving an assassin’s bullet, and the image of him being hoisted by Secret Service agents—a fist raised high, shouting “Fight! Fight! Fight!”—is now cherished by his supporters.
Trump’s authoritarian proclivities are well documented. He has said he will be a dictator on “day one” and favored “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” He refused to accept his defeat in 2020, instead inciting a mob to storm the Capitol. And he has openly revered actual dictators including Vladimir Putin (whom he has called a “strong leader,” “savvy,” and a “genius”) and Xi Jinping (whom he has called “an exceptionally brilliant individual who governs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist,” as if this is in any way admirable).
None of this matters to his followers, whose devotion is absolute. They see a nation beset by enemies from without and within, and Trump as the country’s last hope of defense. “The greatest invasion in history is taking place right here in our country,” Trump exclaims. “They’re coming from prisons. They’re coming from jails. They’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums.” Immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” he says, echoing Hitler’s racist metaphor in Mein Kampf. The enemy on the inside is an elite class that scoffs at the common man and relies on a “deep state” to undermine the will of the people. The mainstream media lies, he says, and the leaders of the Democratic Party are not only incompetent but “treasonous.”
Trump will put a stop to all of these enemies. He will seal the border and redeploy the military to defend it. He will forcefully deport the 11 million people who are working in the United States without documentation. “We will demolish the deep state,” he promised. “We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake-news media … We will root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”
Democracy doesn’t end suddenly in darkness: “It dies in bright midafternoon light,” as Adam Gopnik wrote. Everyone witnesses the violation of norms and rules, designed to keep the powerful in check. Yet all too many ignore or downplay what is happening, telling themselves that “it isn’t so bad” and “it can’t happen here.” But it is, and it can.
Those who hope that institutions like Congress and the courts will stop Trump if he makes it back into power will be disappointed. He will transform the executive branch into an organization singularly focused on doing his bidding—elevating the loyal and firing anyone who dissents. And he will call up the troops to get the job done. A Congress of his own party will not stand in his way; if it tries, he will ignore or override it.
As for the courts, Trump’s four years as president already reshaped them—including the Supreme Court, one-third of whose members he appointed. In what is perhaps the most important case on presidential power in half a century, Trump vs. United States, the Republican-appointed majority ruled that presidents, unique among Americans, enjoy broad immunity from criminal prosecution for their official acts, which could include trying to overturn the outcome of a presidential election. As Justice Sonya Sotomayor argued in her dissent, the ruling effectively renders the president “a king above the law.”
Even if the courts were to rule against him, it might not matter. After all, it is the executive branch that enforces the courts’ decisions; and the executive can and has at times refused. Andrew Jackson, one of Trump’s heroes, defied a court ruling in 1832: “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it,” Jackson is said to have responded. Though the quote is probably apocryphal, it reflects a path that Trump would have no hesitation in following.
Trump has declared this the most important election in history: “2024 is our final battle.” That is why he’s exhorting his followers to “get out and vote! Just this time”—because once he’s back in power, “you won’t have to vote anymore.” On that point, Trump is right. This is the most important election since at least 1860, and perhaps since the founding of the republic itself.
While my father always feared the worst, my mother was more optimistic, and I have inherited both sentiments: my father’s apprehensions about what might be, and my mother’s confidence about what can be.
I remain hopeful because, while too many Americans have fallen sway to Trump’s authoritarianism, a majority have not. Joe Biden’s courageous decision to put country above self not only stands in stark contrast to so many elected officials who have put Trump above country; it also gives the nation its best chance to save democracy.
If that happens, America should count its blessings. But it should also make reforms that are necessary to strengthen our democracy going forward. Our political system has allowed a minority to hold disproportionate power—alienating many from politics and seeding the ground for Trump’s authoritarian movement. Even if Trump is defeated, this system would remain vulnerable.
Most corrections can be made without the need to amend the Constitution. A Senate majority should begin by reforming the filibuster, which allows a minority to effectively veto virtually all legislation. Congress should increase the size of the House, which hasn’t changed for more than a century, even as the population has tripled. This would help make the Electoral College more representative, among other benefits. Congress should also end gerrymandering, guarantee uniform ballot access, promote election security, and require transparency of big money in politics. And it should reform the Supreme Court by adopting term limits and giving every president an equal number of justices to appoint each term.
Such reforms would force the parties to compete for votes at the center instead of the extremes, freeing us from the hate-filled vitriol of the past few decades. The best guarantee of our democracy is making politicians fight for voters’ support.
America is far from perfect. But its strength, as Obama reminded us, lies in our commitment to strive, day and night, to form a more perfect union. That is why I chose to be an American.
