Democracy’s Dark Winter

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Freedom and democracy have endured a long winter of setbacks. Spring will bring its own challenges both overseas and in the United States.

First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

• With Trump’s SCOTUS appeal, justice delayed is justice denied.
• The real reason Trump loves Putin
• The man who now controls the U.S. border

A Lingering Winter

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For many of us, March 1 is the unofficial start of spring. The head may know that it’s still winter, but the heart feels that warmth and new blossoms are not far away. For those of us in more northern locations, the firewood we stacked last fall is dwindling. We’re putting away sweaters (perhaps in a fit of optimism). Students are taking a deep breath as they head to the academic year’s finish line; older people are waiting for the sun to chase away their winter aches and pains.

I spent this first day of March watching people line up in the Russian snow for the funeral of a brave man who died in a Siberian penal colony.

The death of Alexei Navalny is one of many blows to the cause of freedom that has made it a hard winter for democracy on almost every front in the world. I wish I could be a bit more cheerful—it is, after all, Friday—but the past few weeks have been very much a part of the winter darkness.

The Russian government claims that Navalny (who was only 47) died of natural causes. I suppose that’s possible, but “natural causes” are common in Russian penal colonies, whose conditions turn otherwise-healthy men and women into physical wrecks. In any case, Russian President Vladimir Putin bared his teeth at his own citizens, warning them that demonstrations over Navalny’s death were forbidden. And yet, thousands of people turned out in Moscow’s cold and slush—the Russian winter doesn’t pay much heed to calendars—to honor Navalny with flowers and prayers.

I find this heartening. But note that Navalny’s own wife and children didn’t attend the funeral, and the Russians who lined the streets did so at significant personal risk. In the end, Putin has what he wanted: Navalny is in a box, and Ukraine is under renewed assault.

Back in the United States, vital aid to Ukraine is being held up by the claque of Republican Putin sympathizers, opportunists, and performance artists who control the House of Representatives. (You may be under the impression that a certain Mike Johnson of Louisiana runs the House as speaker. You would be incorrect.) The world—including America—is facing a panoply of dangers, but such perils mean nothing to a group of people for whom Congress is just a lark—a way to live in Washington, raise money, and be on television.

One indicator of how far American democracy has fallen is the way Mitch McConnell’s impending retirement has sparked concerns about who will replace him—as if McConnell is some lingering guardrail protecting democracy. (Still, McConnell was known to despise Donald Trump and hasn’t spoken to him for three years, which limited the former president’s reach in the Senate, so it’s not a trivial worry that his replacement may be more MAGA-friendly than he was.) McConnell is the longest-serving Senate leader in U.S. history; he will be remembered as one of the people whose decisions were crucial in bringing American democracy to the edge of destruction. Had McConnell retired a decade ago, he would have gone in the books as just another unremarkable party boss who used his talent for cloakroom politics to ensure that laws were written to protect the wealth and interests of his donors.

McConnell, however, worshipped the Senate and was willing to sell his political soul to stay in it and lead it. A master of legislative maneuvering, he helped create a strange new principle in American politics, in which presidents can nominate justices to the Supreme Court only if the Senate majority leader feels like entertaining that idea. He then led Senate Republicans through two impeachments and two acquittals of Trump, the second after the January 6 insurrection.

In a coincidence that Hollywood would not have allowed in a cheap potboiler script, McConnell announced his plans the same day that the Supreme Court granted a hearing on Trump’s ludicrous legal theory that presidents are unaccountable demigods who can rule at will. McConnell is the one man who, more than anyone else in Washington, made sure that Trump could walk free, run for president again, and then make his appeal for an elective monarchy to a Court whose conservative majority smirks at the idea of accountability.

Meanwhile, Trump continues his march to the Republican nomination. He is being aided by a Supreme Court that has agreed to hear his case. Some lawyers have argued that the Court should take up Trump’s case in order to settle the question of presidential immunity once and for all. The tell here, however, is the foot-dragging: After all, the 1974 decision that Richard Nixon had to hand over his tapes to a federal court was reached in 16 days. (In Bush v. Gore, the Court settled the matter in a few days, but they were facing an inflexible constitutional deadline regarding the 2000 election.)

The oral arguments in U.S. v. Trump won’t even occur until late April—as if this is some new problem that no one was prepared to argue next week. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Court’s conservative justices know precisely what they’re doing: They will eventually proclaim that Trump does not have the immunity he claims, while doing so late enough that he will, in fact, end up enjoying exactly the immunity he claims.

Meanwhile, the cruelty and vulgarization of American politics continue apace. President Joe Biden went to Texas and invited Trump to join him in pressing for a bipartisan border-security bill. Trump, for his part, referred to California Governor Gavin Newsom as “New-Scum.” He did this at a campaign event while a two-star general in uniform—the head of the Texas National Guard—flanked him on camera, in yet another departure from U.S. civil-military traditions. And the Border Patrol union, which represents sworn officers who work for the United States of America, posted on X that President Biden should “keep our name out of your mouth today.”

The U.S. was once a serious country, home to a serious people, and it is still a nation in which millions take seriously their responsibilities as voters and citizens. But it is also now, apparently, a place where some Americans who wear badges and carry weapons in the service of the national government feel free to engage in childish snarking at the commander in chief on social media.

As March 2024 begins, a Russian dictator’s war goes on, and a Russian patriot is laid to rest. In the United States, venal would-be autocrats continue to game the political and legal system, smirking at how easily they’ve played their opponents. Spring is inevitable, and we can keep faith that it will arrive, as it always does. But even when the sun returns, the winter shadows of authoritarianism will remain.

Related:

• Why is Trump trying to make Ukraine lose?
• Mitch McConnell surrenders to Trump.

Today’s News

1. President Joe Biden signed a stopgap bill to prevent a partial government shutdown.
2. Biden announced plans to airdrop humanitarian aid into Gaza.
3. Walgreens and CVS said that they are preparing to carry the abortion pill mifepristone in states where it is legal to do so.

Dispatches

• The Weekly Planet: AI is taking water from the desert, Karen Hao reports.
• The Books Briefing: Lily Meyer recommends memoirs that won’t boss you around.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

Evening Read

Tip Your Hotel MaidBy Margaret Carlson

(From 2019)

As I check out of a hotel, various excuses race through my head for not tipping the housekeeper. I’m in a big rush. I don’t have cash. Will the maid who folded my clothes get the money? Why can’t I just add a gratuity to the credit-card bill and expense it?

About 70 percent of hotel guests go through the same mental exercise and end up not leaving a tip. A waiter would have to spit in your soup, and you would have to see him do it, to stiff him. Housekeepers are stiffed every day. I’ve heard every reason why guests treat hotel workers so differently than other service workers, but I’ve not heard a good one.

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

• Why the best singers can’t always sing their own songs
• How a middle-aged everyman actor won everyone over

Culture Break

Read. Ted Chiang’s fiction, which our associate editor Matteo Wong says “expands how I understand time, sentience, and knowledge itself.” Start with “Story of Your Life” or “The Lifecycle of Software Objects.”

Watch. Dune: Part Two, in theaters, is a colossal blockbuster that justifies its scale.

Play our daily crossword.

P.S.

I can’t leave you with such a gloomy outlook on a Friday, so I thought I would pass along something lighter for your weekend. Let’s take another trip back to vintage television, and revisit a show that I distinctly disliked when it first aired: Newhart.

As a child, I was devoted to the killer CBS Saturday-night programming, sometimes judged the greatest primetime-television lineup in the history of the medium: All in the Family, M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, and then Carol Burnett’s variety hour. They were all great, but it was Bob Newhart’s deadpan wit that grabbed me. I was a preteen, just old enough to grasp the notion of dry humor, and as much as I loved the slapstick of Harvey Korman and Tim Conway, Bob was my role model. (Also, I couldn’t help but notice that his character was married to Suzanne Pleshette.)

Newhart’s next show, Newhart, debuted in 1982 and had him playing a New Yorker who runs a Vermont inn, replicating the normal-guy-among-weirdos dynamic of his previous series. I was in college, and I thought the series was stale and dumb. Later, when I lived in Vermont, I was even more irritated by the idealized version of the Green Mountain State in the show. (I knew a guy much like Tom Poston’s handyman, George. He was a local store worker who even dressed like George. I saw him almost every day, and, like real New Englanders, we never spoke a word to each other in seven years.)

But maybe I’ve mellowed. In Newhart, Bob is still Bob. He still has a lovely, understanding wife—like all sitcom husbands, he punched above his weight. The show, like its 1970s predecessor, avoided smarmy treacle and “very special episodes” and dumb plots revolving around cute kids. (It also has the greatest series finale of all time, which I will not spoil for you here.) It’s not as astringently dry as The Bob Newhart Show, but it’s still funny and pleasant, and these days, that counts for something.

— Tom

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Isabel Fattal contributed to this newsletter.

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