The 5 Failed Ostracisms of Trump
The price we pay for forsaking history
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First, let's review “Alexander Hamilton's Theory of Democratic Collapse”—my favorite of the half dozen topics I’ve given talks on over the past several years.
Next, we’ll cast light on the five failed ostracisms of Trump before turning to the Athenians’ legislative method for dealing with demagogues in the 5th century BCE.
Understanding ostracism—and its failures—is essential to us in our current age of democratic decline.
Why? Because when crisis finally drives necessary reform of our current 50-state republic—or sparks the formation of a new one after a breakup—we’ll want to ensure that the ostracism of demagogues is Priority No. 1 in the new political order.
Alexander Hamilton's Theory of Democratic Collapse
Hamilton’s theory of democratic collapse is actually quite simple:
Loud-mouthed, exploitative demagogues are no joke in a democracy because once they obtain executive-level power they degenerate into autocrats who take a sledgehammer to democratic institutions like the separation of power, free and fair elections, and the peaceful transfer of power.
In other words, as Hamilton makes abundantly clear in Federalist No. 1, demagogues are how democracies die.
Demagogues, according to the founder, are like a cancer that consumes democracy.
And, as with modern cancer treatment, the salvation of the body politic lies in understanding the disease and acting decisively to remove, treat, and eradicate it.
Demagogues are how democracies die
The 5 Failed Ostracisms of Donald Trump
With Hamilton’s theory of democratic collapse in mind, let’s review the five failed ostracisms of Trump thus far.
First, on July 19, 2016, the Republican National Convention in Cleveland did not ostracize him. Instead, it chose a raging demagogue as the party’s nominee for president of the United States.
In this case, due to the binding nature of our presidential primary system, the delegates to the 2016 convention—the nurses and doctors, that is, who were supposed to excise the cancer—took no action.
They couldn’t. Look back in your mind’s eye at the convention and vividly see the thousands of delegates in the grand hall at Quicken Loans Arena who are gagged and muzzled into obedience by the rules of selection.
They were fettered by dogma. Think of it as a religious commandment, defying reason and common sense, proclaiming, “Direct democracy has spoken. Trust. Submit. Silence. All will be well.”
So, the convention delegates in 2016 did nothing. And, is this their fault?
You might think so, but, in fact, you and I would’ve done the same. The power of party combined with the greater godhead of direct democracy (the primaries) were all-controlling.
To reject Trump would have been to reject democracy, because we Americans, in fact, lack a proper understanding of what democracy is. It is a system of government wherein checks and balances against demagogues are co-equal in importance with the will of the people.
Recently, I wrote a piece entitled “Don’t Blame the Voters.” Now consider the proposition, “Don’t Blame the Republican Delegates.”
Don’t forget that those delegates, as of the 1970s, are the mere puppets of a demagogue-delivering presidential nominating system that has an IQ of 50.
Without intelligent reform, the Democratic Party may well be next.
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Second, on August 24, 2020, the Republican National Convention held in Charlotte, North Carolina, repeated the cycle. It once again did not ostracize a demagogue.
Third, on July 18, 2024, at the convention in Milwaukee, it happened again.
Fourth, the Senate failed to ostracize Trump on February 5, 2020, when it acquitted him of the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Fifth, the same thing happened on February 13, 2021, when Republican senators acquitted him of the crime of incitement of insurrection.
Do we blame those Republican senators? I can hardly contain myself as I pose this question.
Yes, yes, and hell yes. Those cowardly, lily-livered, sycophantic partisan lapdogs are entirely to blame for one of the greatest and most destructive acts of dereliction of duty in U.S. history.
The betrayal of responsibility by those senators, coupled with our harebrained presidential nominating system, fully explains why we are where we are today.
That is to say, why Trump holds the reins of executive power, brilliantly showcasing a golden rule of democracy: demagogues beget tyranny (Federalist No. 1).
Check out this article on ‘constructive patriotism’ written by my 17-year-old son Cameron. It’s good advice for our polarized, patriotism-skeptic times:
Ostracism: A Ten-Year Banishment from the Body Politic
The Athenians did not adopt ostracism out of accidental ingenuity. Instead, they devised it after years of bloody crisis: the dreadful reign of demagogue-autocrat Pisistratus and his two sons in the period 561-510 BCE.
It was to rid Athens of the Pisistratid faction without perpetual recourse to armed resistance that the institution of ostracism was introduced as a constitutional reform in 508.
The law of ostracism enabled the Athenian Assembly to exile a prominent individual deemed a threat to the city’s democracy. They did so for any cause whatsoever.
How did it work? Members of the assembly would cast anonymous votes by writing the name of the person they wished to exile on a small fragment of pottery, known as an ostracon. In the event of a majority decision, the named individual was exiled from Athens for a period of ten years.
As our reform guides, Trenchard and Gordon, detail in Cato’s Letters, the purpose of ostracism was to banish an individual, without specific legal or constitutional cause, whose “monstrous wickedness” posed an obvious threat to the constitutional order.
‘Cato’s Letters’ is the singular masterwork in the canon of Western history that, standing alone, holds the power to rescue threatened democracies and republics around the world today—provided that citizens absorb their teachings into heart, mind, and political practice.
Ostracism was “an extraordinary power” adopted in times of “extraordinary exigencies” to “punish uncommon crimes, which were not within the reach of ordinary justice.”
The purpose of the practice was “to save the state” from demagogues who would, following Hamilton’s theory, descend into tyranny.
I wonder if Cato’s Letters had been assigned reading in American high schools during the past half century if all those Republican senators would have twice failed to ostracize Trump forever from American federal politics. And, would we be living under the dark shadow of such a senseless presidential nominating system?
I wonder, despair, and beam with joy at the prospect of reform.
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Eli Merritt is a psychiatrist and historian who writes about the origins of our present political discontents and solutions to them. He has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune, among other publications.
He writes American Commonwealth and is the author or editor of the books “Disunion Among Ourselves: The Perilous Politics of the American Revolution,” “Demagogue in the White House: Lessons Learned from the Presidency of Donald J. Trump,” and “How to Save Democracy: Advice and Inspiration from 95 World Leaders”
More articles by Eli Merritt
Books
The Curse of Demagogues: Lessons Learned from the Presidency of Donald J. Trump
Disunion Among Ourselves: The Perilous Politics of the American Revolution
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Sources
Cato’s Letters, No. 12-13
Despite believing that the US Constitution is very much part of the problem, I’m not convinced that we can ever get a new one barring the complete collapse of the US political order (which is not a zero probability when viewed in decades). The current interests groups (primarily oligarchs, US corporates, but even the left) have too much invested in the current system to allow change. The media, especially new social media, has been captured by the Right Wing and perpetuates propaganda and lies - there is no balance or comparable Left Wing media ecosystem to educate the voters and displace the lies. There is a very real possibility of violence and political intimidation by the gun totting Right - we are seeing it right now. So I think if we went down this route it would either fail or be co-opted and we would be left with something even worse.
What is required for democracy to work is a broad, if not universal, commitment to reason and fairness, those are the two principles upon which democracy is founded. Not cultural traditions, not religious traditions, not hegemonic power. Every (good) law and every institution in our democracy has been brought into being under notions of bringing fairness to imbalanced governance systems under a reasonable assessment of conditions.
I, like Doug and Eli, below, long for a healing of rifts within our society, but it can’t happen unconditionally if we are looking to maintain our system of democracy. Everything Republicans and conservatives in general have worked for over the past decades has been to challenge and scramble reasonable assessment and upend efforts to make our systems more fair.
Since the Civil Rights Act, conservatives have sabotaged government efforts to fulfill the basic and frankly irrefutable logical extensions of principles of fairness embodied in the Act. The injustices that had been perpetuated in our society since Africans were kidnapped from their homes and enslaved, on into the 20th Century were merely the most egregious and brutal of the systemic injustices. Legislators were acting to carry out the mandates of the essential democratic principle of fairness in passing the Civil Rights Act, followed by laws protecting women as equal citizens and then ever-smaller groups of citizens found to be held at disadvantage by systemic inequities. Democrats have seen it as their mission since the Civil Rights Act to follow through on the logical extensions of the meaning of fairness as defined in the Civil Rights Act.
Republicans and conservatives have, on the other hand, done everything in their power to disrupt and demonize the essential democratic principles embodied in the Civil Rights Act and in subsequent legislative initiatives to address systemic inequities, waving their guns and yelling louder rather than arguing reasonably, respectfully about how to embody fairness and logic in policy. The first impulse of conservatives in the wake of the Civil Rights Act was to appeal to the racist hatred of southerners and to give voice to their grievances over not being able to lord it over black people like they used to. The Southern Strategy, still in full operation today, has been adapted and expanded to appeal to ever broader themes of grievance, while challenging doctrines of fairness and reason at every step.
It would be nice for America’s fractured polity to come together, but thinking it’s merely a matter of respecting divergent points of view or being nicer to one another is just wrong. This is a struggle over epistemology and the values upon which our society is built. Republicans have shown with perfect clarity their disinterest in upholding American democratic values, never more succinctly than in the past few weeks. If there are any Republicans at any level, from president on down, who care about basic principles of democracy, the supposedly fundamental precepts of the rule of law over the rule of men, or the traditions that have upheld our democracy for 250 years, I don’t hear a single one of them. And in that deafening silence we must understand that they’ve given up on the American system and the American dream. Whatever it is that they are dreaming of, it’s a radical departure from “America” as we know it.
If American democracy were housed in a building, you’d have to say that Republicans are on the outside. Democrats have all along invited them back inside (with triangulation- Clinton and Obama; legislative compromise: eg. the 2020 immigration bill that Trump nixed), and all along Republicans have refused to compromise, to give credit, to bargain fairly, they still refuse to come in. Republicans don’t care about healing, their entire program under Trump is to give offense, to wound and demean! You can’t have reconciliation without conciliation. Have you ever heard a single word of conciliation from the Trump gang. Not one!
Today Republicans are setting fire to the building Democrats (and Republicans, both) are sworn to protect. They’re just going to burn it down. And all you have to do to heal the rift is light a match.