Abe Lincoln, in an 1858 speech referring to the impossibility of our nation long surviving with the states being half slave and half free said, “A house divided cannot stand.” It took four years of war, 600,000 American deaths, and untold hardship and suffering to bring the house together.

I’ve lived a long time — born during the Great Depression, lived through WWII, through McCarthyism, through the civil rights struggle of the 60s, through the trauma of Vietnam, and through other challenges to the unity of our country. Through it all, it never entered my mind that our political system could fail. That the United States of America, the world’s oldest democracy, the shining city on a hill, would firmly stand into some distant future, was a given to me.

Sure, we had serious differences on policy, spending, and the use of our military might, but we were united on the rule of law, acceptance of certified election results, and the peaceful transfer of power. Recent events have called into question whether a large minority of us still agree on these core principles that have bound us together.

Donald Trump understands fear; it’s been the sharpest arrow in his quiver for a long time. He naturally defaulted to the use of fear when he decided to run for president. Trump exacerbated white conservative fears of losing power and status as Americans of other races and religions increased in numbers and exercised their right to vote. Immigration provided Trump an easy target, “They’re coming in hordes to take over the country. They bring disease; they’re rapists, murderers, drug traffickers, and thieves.”

Trump’s fear campaign included sowing distrust in the institutions of government that Americans have relied on to provide a fair shake for all of us. Perhaps his two most damaging attacks were on the media and on the integrity of our voting system. Beginning before the 2016 election and continuing throughout his presidency and after, Trump hammered on his false pronouncements that the mainstream media was “fake news” and that our voting system was “rigged.”

Fear was Trump’s primary means of gaining support, but anger is also a powerful motivator and he also used that arrow well too — anger at the secret cabal that was supposedly running the government, anger at “the Washington swamp” who were feeding on the people’s taxes, anger at our allies who were taking advantage of us, anger at Democrats who were ruining the country.

What could white Americans do if everything they counted on to preserve their status and their power was under attack, if the institutions of government were failing, if they couldn’t trust the news they were reading in their newspapers and seeing on their television sets, if they were being overrun by dangerous immigrants, if they couldn’t trust the election process? With perhaps the greatest statement of hubris ever uttered, Trump had an answer for them, “I alone can fix it” he declared.

Trump’s fear and anger campaign worked; he won the 2016 Republican nomination and the Presidency. Other presidents have used fear to win votes. (John Kennedy falsely claimed the US was falling dangerously behind the USSR in the arms race.) But after their election they have tried to unite the country. Trump doesn’t have that arrow, so he governed as he campaigned, doubling down on fear, anger, and mistrust. Republican officeholders feared being primaried; employees in his administration feared being fired; his die-hard followers feared every bogeyman Trump invented.

Trump’s presidency was four years of chaos highlighted by the damning Mueller report, deadly mismanagement of the Covid-19 epidemic, a giant tax cut for the rich, dismantling and disparagement of the treaties and alliances that had held the free world together since WWII, love affairs with murderous dictators, and two impeachments by the House of Representatives.

By 2020, Americans had had enough of Donald J. Trump and gave him a solid defeat in the election. But Trump didn’t have enough class or concern for our democracy to accept his loss. He continued to claim voter fraud, although he failed to find any in recount after recount and in over sixty failed lawsuits. Finally, like many dictator wannabees before him, he led a failed insurrection to halt the peaceful transfer of power that is the bedrock basis of our democracy.

Our democracy prevailed; there was no rigged election; there was no voter fraud. Nevertheless Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign continues (Just a few weeks ago Trump said, “We have to fix the 2020 election before we can move on to the ones in 2022 and 2024”) and has been remarkably effective.

Our house of democracy is seriously divided, and the divisions run deep. Like before and during the Civil War, it’s sharply divided families (slavery then; facts now) divisions within states (border states during the Civil War era; purple states now) and state against state (slave and free states then; red and blue states now).

Any hope that our politics would get back to normal after Trump was defeated has been dashed. Republican legislatures have fixed (read restricted) voting procedures to fix non-existent problems. Some have even passed laws allowing for elections to be voided and the winner determined by state officials. Voting officials who refused to go along with Trump and change voting counts have been replaced.

Party loyalty now comes before the good of the people. Would be successors of Trump like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, and other ambitious Republican pols are using Trump’s playbook of fear and divisiveness to court voters. As mentioned above, Trump continues to roil the political waters. Right wing media, like Fox News commentators, strain to feed viewers craving for the red meat of fear, anger and outrage. (Tucker Carlson hit a new low arguing that parents who required their young children to wear masks were guilty of child abuse and should be reported and arrested.)

Two-thirds of Republicans still believe the 2020 election was stolen. They believe this despite absolute proof to the contrary. They believe this because the completely discredited Donald Trump told them to. They believe this because Rudy “Truth is not Truth” Giuliani, sanctioned lawyer Sidney Powell, and Mike the Pillow Guy told them to. Each of these is being sued for billions by the voting machine companies they accused of manipulating votes. Sidney Powell’s lawyer offered in his client’s defense that her accusations were so ridiculous that no reasonable person would believe her.

That’s the crux of my fear, the “stolen election” hoax is so ridiculous that no reasonable person would believe it. Yet tens of millions of our neighbors do believe it. They believe it solely because they want to believe it.

We have a deeply divided house; we have politicians eager to divide it even further; we have institutions that have proven their frailty, and we have proof that Americans are willing to forego reason for demagoguery.  Our house is in grave danger.

Philip A. Watts

IF WE ARE TO HAVE ANOTHER CONTEST IN THE NEAR FUTURE OF OUR NATIONAL EXISTENCE, I PREDICT THAT THE DIVIDING LINE WILL NOT BE MASON’S AND DIXON’S, BUT BETWEEN PATRIOTISM AND INTELLIGENCE ON ONE SIDE, AND SUPERSTITION, AMBITION, AND IGNORANCE ON THE OTHER.

— Ulysses S. Grant, September 1876

Abe Lincoln, in an 1858 speech referring to the impossibility of our nation long surviving with the states being half slave and half free said, “A house divided cannot stand.” It took four years of war, 600,000 American deaths, and untold hardship and suffering to bring the house together. 

I’ve lived a long time — born during the Great Depression, lived through WWII, through McCarthyism, through the civil rights struggle of the 60s, through the trauma of Vietnam and through other challenges to the unity of our country. Through it all, it never entered my mind that our political system could fail. That the United States of America, the world’s oldest democracy, the shining city on a hill, would firmly stand into some distant future, was a given to me.

Sure, we had serious differences on policy, spending, and the use of our military might, but we were united on the rule of law, acceptance of certified election results, and the peaceful transfer of power. Recent events have called into question whether a large minority of us still agree on these core principles that have bound us together. 

Donald Trump understands fear; it’s been the sharpest arrow in his quiver for a long time. He naturally defaulted to the use of fear when he decided to run for president. Trump exacerbated white conservative fears of losing power and status as Americans of other races and religions increased in numbers and exercised their right to vote. Immigration provided Trump an easy target, “They’re coming in hordes to take over the country. They bring disease; they’re rapists, murderers, drug traffickers, and thieves.”

Trump’s fear campaign included sowing distrust in the institutions of government that Americans have relied on to provide a fair shake for all of us. Perhaps his two most damaging attacks were on the media and on the integrity of our voting system. Beginning before the 2016 election and continuing throughout his presidency and after, Trump hammered on his false pronouncements that the mainstream media was “fake news” and that our voting system was “rigged.” 

Fear was Trump’s primary means of gaining support, but anger is also a powerful motivator and he also used that arrow well too — anger at the secret cabal that was supposedly running the government, anger at “the Washington swamp” who were feeding on the people’s taxes, anger at our allies who were taking advantage of us, anger at Democrats who were ruining the country.

What could white Americans do if everything they counted on to preserve their status and their power was under attack, if the institutions of government were failing, if they couldn’t trust the news they were reading in their newspapers and seeing on their television sets, if they were being overrun by dangerous immigrants, if they couldn’t trust the election process? With perhaps the greatest statement of hubris ever uttered, Trump had an answer for them, “I alone can fix it” he declared. 

Trump’s fear and anger campaign worked; he won the 2016 Republican nomination and the presidency. Other presidents have used fear to win votes. (John Kennedy falsely claimed the US was falling dangerously behind the USSR in the arms race.) But after their election they have tried to unite the country. Trump doesn’t have that arrow, so he governed as he campaigned, doubling down on fear, anger, and mistrust. Republican officeholders feared being primaried; employees in his administration feared being fired; his die-hard followers feared every bogeyman Trump invented. 

Trump’s presidency was four years of chaos highlighted by the damning Mueller report, deadly mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic, a giant tax cut for the rich, dismantling and disparagement of the treaties and alliances that had held the free world together since WWII, love affairs with murderous dictators, and two impeachments by the House of Representatives. 

By 2020, Americans had had enough of Donald J. Trump and gave him a solid defeat in the election. But Trump didn’t have enough class or concern for our democracy to accept his loss. He continued to claim voter fraud, although he failed to find any in recount after recount and in over sixty failed lawsuits. Finally, like many dictator wannabees before him, he led a failed insurrection to halt the peaceful transfer of power that is the bedrock basis of our democracy.

Our democracy prevailed; there was no rigged election; there was no voter fraud. Nevertheless Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign continues (just a few weeks ago Trump said, “We have to fix the 2020 election before we can move on to the ones in 2022 and 2024”) and has been remarkably effective. 

Our house of democracy is seriously divided, and the divisions run deep. Like before and during the Civil War, it’s sharply divided families (slavery then; facts now) divisions within states (border states during the Civil War era; purple states now) and state against state (slave and free states then; red and blue states now). 

Any hope that our politics would get back to normal after Trump was defeated has been dashed. Republican legislatures have fixed (read restricted) voting procedures to fix non-existent problems. Some have even passed laws allowing for elections to be voided and the winner determined by state officials. Voting officials who refused to go along with Trump and change voting counts have been replaced. 

Party loyalty now comes before the good of the people. Would-be successors of Trump like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, and other ambitious Republican pols are using Trump’s playbook of fear and divisiveness to court voters. As mentioned above, Trump continues to roil the political waters. Right wing media, like Fox News commentators, strain to feed viewers craving for the red meat of fear, anger and outrage. (Tucker Carlson hit a new low arguing that parents who required their young children to wear masks were guilty of child abuse and should be reported and arrested.)

Two-thirds of Republicans still believe the 2020 election was stolen. They believe this despite absolute proof to the contrary. They believe this because the completely discredited Donald Trump told them to. They believe this because Rudy, “Truth is not Truth”, Giuliani, sanctioned lawyer Sidney Powell, and Mike the Pillow Guy told them to. Each of these is being sued for billions by the voting machine companies they accused of manipulating votes. Sidney Powell’s lawyer offered in his client’s defense that her accusations were so ridiculous that no reasonable person would believe her.

That’s the crux of my fear, the “stolen election” hoax is so ridiculous that no reasonable person would believe it. Yet tens of millions of our neighbors do believe it. They believe it solely because they want to believe it. 

We have a deeply divided house; we have politicians eager to divide it even further; we have institutions that have proven their frailty, and we have proof that Americans are willing to forego reason for demagoguery.

See Phil’s past columns.

Back to the Op-Ed Page.

Phil Watts learned some early life lessons as a paperboy on the Southside of Birmingham, where he grew up. His education continued at Auburn University, where he earned a mechanical engineering degree and made lifelong friends in his Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. Later he earned an MBA from Samford University and served in the U.S. Army.

Licensed as a professional engineer, he co-founded Control and Power, Inc., an industrial distribution business in 1959. He retired from that business in 2011. His interests over the years have included handball, bicycling, canoeing, snow skiing, and reading. He is a longtime member and Sunday School teacher at Southside Baptist, an all-inclusive church in Birmingham, where he still lives. He is married and has three children and two grandchildren.

Phil wrote for business purposes throughout his career, along with occasional personal pieces. He became more serious about his writing after the infamous escalator ride at Trump Tower in 2015. His essays on life and politics circulated to his circle of friends for several years. Beginning in September 2019, they began to appear as regular features on The Op-Ed Page at www.newsouthbooks.com.