[Bill Britton is a freelance writer and formerly an editor for John Hopkins University Press, ABI Research, and Elsevier Science.  He is a frequent contributor to Vero Communiqué, though his views do not reflect the position of Vero Communiqué. Vero Communiqué encourages a free and open exchange of ideas by welcoming reader’s editorial submissions.]

Over the past 6 years or so, I’ve wrestled with trying to find a single word that would encapsulate the effects that Trump has had on American politics and American life in general. I’m sure there are many words that would serve this purpose, but the one word that has lodged itself in my brain is “poison.” Poison is appropriate because of the toxic effect Trump’s words and actions have had on the health of American democracy.

In 1964, Senator Barry Goldwater, in his acceptance speech as the Republican nominee for President, declared, ““Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice . . . moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” The thunderous applause he received at the end of his speech indicated the capitulation of moderates in the party to the forces of the extreme right that continue in the Republican Party of today.

Of course, to be a force in politics today, you need money and lots of it. Plus, you need advocacy groups to define your principles and to fill the party coffers; conservative Freedom Works and The Heritage Foundation spring to mind. Their message is essentially a call for America to return to the earlier values as espoused by the Founding Fathers, some of whom owned slaves.

But it is the proliferation of right-wing hate groups that present a clear and present danger to American democracy. Estimates declare that there are more than 5,000 such groups extant today, many of them small and local, which were in the vanguard of the January 6^th insurrection in the nation’s capital. The reluctance of Trump and Republicans in general to condemn these extremists was, and is, disheartening. Some even went so far as to defend what was clearly indefensible: an attack on American democracy. Barry Goldwater’s words have come to haunt the halls of Congress, the Oval Office, and the judicial system.

“Liberty,” as defined by the political Right, means defending the status quo of 1776, that is, the supremacy of white males to the denigration of people of color and immigrants “different” from “true” Americans. The inevitability of White America becoming a demographic minority is frightening to them. The words engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty mean nothing to them: 

“Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” [Emma Lazarus}

The question for America is this: Is there an antidote for the poison flowing unimpeded though the body politic?