The Death of General Washington's Promise is the Death of Madisonian Democracy

A final note to the people before Election Day.

Beloveds: Here we are about a week out from the November 5th 2024 election. First the day after the election you are invited to join me here: 

This election that the media, pundits, and one candidate have been talking about since November 5th 2020. So after I wrote this piece: Dear ELCA: It's up to you. Again - by lenny duncan I figured that would be the last word on the subject after arguments with everyone with a social media account and a last minute dash of political attitude to “defend democracy,”  including family, for being nuanced in a time where nuance is not appreciated writ large. 

At this point when it came to “defending democracy,” beyond being shot at, having attempts on my life, experiencing state violence, long term harassment campaigns often involving colleagues at the denomination I served, I figured people knew where I stood. I have also been covering in my own way via blogs, a book, and now my substack, this almost decade long slow, meticulous, and ever so tentative, slide into chaos. 

I was frankly taken aback that the same people who withered to face the instigators of Jan 6th in the street were so interested in patriotism, but they were. Any comment I have made that hasn’t sounded like a ringing endorsement of everything Harris Waltz has been met with outrage and questioning whether or not I loved this country. 

4 years out from the murder of George Floyd and you think the only Black trans queer anti fascist pastor you probably know is suddenly going to what? Not understand the strategic importance of voting as means of harm reduction? I lost people who trusted me to care for them to the Trump administration while most people sat at home. I got the memo. 

But it really freaked me out that people are so afraid that even after years of my basic message being we must stop this administration, and any other that is even remotely like the 45th President that any criticism of the Vice President and her run for the Presidency was met with furious hostility, this opened my eyes. 

My partner is way smarter than me, she is part scientist and part lawyer in a way I don't fully understand but she said something to me I can't unhear: “We treat our elections like the SuperBowl, the coverage, the stories, the headlines, the videos, everything.” 

As a Philadelphian this made sense to me, since most social media felt like a Dallas vs Eagles Home Game at the Linc. The weird banners, signs, weird mottos, slogans and songs. The vitriol and cultural hatred for some city, people, and team you barely know. The problem is this isn’t entertainment, or sports.

This a republic held together by gossamer promises of the ever more difficult to obtain “american dream” and thinly veiled social contracts that are stretched to the limit right now. 

Yet here we all are still on this slide into what we could now effectively call at minimum an authoritarian fervor held by almost a good third, if not half the country, with a light sprinkling of fascism. For flavor. 

I have watched, recorded, ridiculed and tried to articulate, over and over again, the deep desire by many in this republic's body politic for authoritarian tactics and policies to be applied to some of our citizens, and hopeful sojourners from around the world. People who see something in this country, our way of life, and what we profess on the world stage that we are no longer able to see in ourselves or in our country. 

On November 5th, 2020 we witnessed the death of General George Washington’s promise although it didn’t seem like it at first. 

We didn't get the memo until Jan 6th, 2021. 

On November 5th, 2024 we may be holding a funeral for Madisonian democracy as we know it no matter the results. 

In the days and weeks leading up to the 2020 election the sitting 45th President of the United States basically admitted he wouldn’t accept the results of the election if they didn’t favor him. This almost implausible declaration made on election night itself, and again after the election all seemed a little too surreal. 

But it was at that moment that the promise of General George Washington died. What I mean by “the promise of Washington” may be the only genuine American miracle, and for 244 years, every 4 years we got to witness this miracle repeat.   

For new readers of mine don't get too excited, it’s just a white man in power acting right. Once. 

George Washington, certainly from the perspective of Europe, was the only sitting general in modern history to cede power to a civilian government without a shot fired. Think on this for a second. Caesar was removed via the Ides of March. Napoleon via coup, intrigue, and death by literal exile to an island of irrelevance. Elbacide? Bloodless handing over of power, military control, and the future of a territory Washinton had spent most of his life at war in one form or another trying to secure. 

This promise was made and kept when he informed congress he would peacefully transfer power over to people who had little of his experience, and some would later claim little of his hard won” wisdom”, but who would be the winners of the next election. 

Washington had the political charisma, and the people of this country asked him to keep power for life. Think about that, on the day Washinton makes this decision, it is almost certain most Americans would have happily enjoyed another Washington term at minimum, but instead he set a precedent, a tradition, a sacred duty from his perspective: to cede power willingly no matter the political disposition of those that follow. 

When Donald J Trump the 45th President of the United States refused to accept the highly scrutinized results, he destroyed 244 years of tradition and precedent, and he sent the nation down the perilous path towards dissolution. 

The attempted sedition to the constitution, or insurrection, as it is now called on Jan 6th, 2021,  was the logical result of everything the 45th President allowed, caused, or was too inept and selfish to stop. You can choose whichever fits your worldview, because the truth is anyone could have seen that coming if they got off their phones, TVs, and laptops and went to go see for themselves the ugly side of this fascist creep in the collective consciousness of America's young cis men.

 Sedition is their game but patriotism is their brand. 

You may have little regard for the first President of these United States, plenty of political, social,  historical critique for a General who was a slave holder, never won a battle, whose family's speculation business is the very roots of capitalism, land theft,  the imperialism of America today, and you wouldn’t be wrong. 

That's not what we are talking about here. 

We are not talking about Washington the person. Also for the record fuck the weird worship of the founding fathers I am quite sure they would be disgusted by it, except maybe Madison.

That dude. 

We are talking about the weight of the office being heavy enough to humble someone. We are talking about the very boring, dry, dull, and completely procedural elections that are a minor sociological miracle we enjoyed for 244 years before this orange hobgoblin took office. 

Gone. 

You have been on edge for 4 incredibly strange years because you sense it. 

Nov 5th, 2024 may be the end of 248 years of Madisonian Democracy as we know it. 

We are all hyper aware that the Trump team has no plans to accept the results unless he wins, and they have been saying the quiet parts out loud about their plans if they do win. Between project 2025, the racist rally at MSG, the “mass deportation” of a number that wildly ranges from 2 to 21 million (or more) people depending on the audience. 

While everyone else on social media has had a great time ripping each other to shreds, while parties have decided to engage in perhaps the most effective information and misinformation campaigns I have seen in decades, as we lose faith in the 4th estate, I have been haunted by the fact that in many ways Trump, his compatriots, and the most vile elements of American corporate plutarchy have already won. 

We no longer trust the US Government to complete the simplest of tasks and we no longer trust our elected officials unless they play for our team. I’m in no way endorsing you trusting the government with everything. But there is a danger here that is not readily apparent.  

Without confidence in this moral, legal, and shared estate of fair and free elections that both parties are willing to accept the result of or to this place in American life where we join the U.S Government and the people’s will, there can be no functioning republic. 

No matter the winner, the public's confidence in this simple thing you learned about in a civics class in elementary school will go the way of cheap rent, the dinosaurs, and most likely our very basic human rights if we don't keep our eye on the ball. 

Why do I say this? Because Madison himself wrote extensively on the subject of insurrections, sedition, and factions destroying the fledgling colonies and desperately was trying to remedy such situations with the constitution. In the Federalist Papers 10 Madison actually warns about a situation that looks a lot like the last 10 years so it’s worth a looksie: 

“By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community. 

There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects. 

There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests. 

It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency. 

The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.”

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government. 

No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity

This last line is perhaps more ominous than his warning against a government that would take someone's liberty to get its way. A possibility Madison thought so ludicrous he barely wasted a paragraph on it, because how can one protect liberty by extinguishing it? 

But even above Madison’s warning of class warfare,  or his ready admittance that the state is just here to protect property not people, is the fear hinted at in the last line. 

You see the greatest fear of Madison was the “regulators,” congress, the senate, the protectors of the promises of the new constitution would somehow become entangled with what he called “A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests” what we would now recognize as corporations.  Madison feared the firewall between government and corporate interest would fall and create a party of reckless leaders with overt government policy that would be able to run roughshod over what he called the “debtors.”  You know, the average American citizen who wasn’t one of these interests. 

Laying aside how at the time these rights and powers were distributed unevenly and were oppressively obtained like the land Madison and his buddies were  splitting up like a goddamn cake at some kids birthday party, there is still a word of wisdom and something to give us all pause here. 

No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.

The power hungry promises, the grievance culture, the plans to violate the first Madsionian principle of Federalist Paper 10  in the first days of his 2nd presidency, his overt policies of authoritarianism, his willingness to invoke the cruelest most inhumane policies from our past make the 45th president Donald J Trump’s plan for America, and his plans if he loses unAmerican. 

But mostly their tolerance in the public sphere makes me question if we haven't stretched the norms and traditions past their point of stress. I believe no matter which way things fall, the battle to defend democracy won't end at the ballot box. We will have a long and entrenched battle against these forces now that the door is open. I still believe many of those cheering the former president have no idea what those policies will actually look like as Last Week Tonight with John Oliver demonstrated to great effect on his program last week as he showed how a table full of Trump voters last time around watched as beloved figures from their county were snatched by I.C.E. and were horrified. 

All of this isn’t going to automatically stop on Nov 5th, 2024 if the Vice President wins and becomes the first Black Woman president in United States History. Just like the work had to continue after the Obama  Administration. 

But that doesn’t mean you don’t fucking vote, and yes, vote for the Harris Waltz ticket. In no world do things get better for us, the dangerous situations around the world with Genocides in Gaza and  Sudan, 250+ armed conflicts and war zones, or Black, brown, queer, and trans Americans with a Trump Victory. 

To the uncommitted movement, I disagree with the strategy but 100% respect your right to use your vote to speak to the American Government in ways that empower you. That's it.  Because my people were beaten, hosed, mauled by dogs, tear gassed, and lynched so you could have that right in this country. 

Let's hope we won’t have to do it again for everyone. 

Written in Love and Liberation

Rev. lenny duncan