In Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America, Heather Cox Richardson probes the question “What is America?” (also a chapter title). Richardson, one of America's foremost historians and political observers, addresses the question by considering the promises of the Declaration of Independence as well as her historian’s panoramic understanding of events. The answer, however, is sobering. We are on the road to authoritarianism.
One of the great values of this book is Richardson’s own analysis and insight into that founding document and its role in American society. While the Declaration undergirds our national identity and political processes and points to an egalitarian society, it was written by patriarchal slaveholders, and it took the country a long time to grow into the vision it held out. Racism and slavery were a provocation to the idea “that all men are created equal,” and there was push-back from the start. What followed was a seesaw of events in which those who benefited most in terms of monetary gain and political power were met with social movements demanding not just more rights, but more guardrails and programs to protect and nurture the lives of families and produce a more even distribution of wealth.
Richardson connects events most Americans already know but may not have seen as related. With the long view of a historian, Richardson identifies the recurring oscillation between conservative and progressive interpretations of the Declaration. In the 19th century, the Civil War, the Emancipation Act, and progressive constitutional amendments that opened voting to more Americans were soon undermined by Jim Crow laws, and romantic but revisionist accounts minimizing slavery’s role in the conflict. Conservatives who aspired to oligarchy and who needed slavery to provide cheap labor glossed over the racism at the root of the war and postured as victims who were being fleeced out of their wealth because their money would now be used to support and educate the newly enfranchised.
The see-saw happened again in the 20th Century, a time of astonishing growth and gradual inclusivity. The period between 1930 and 1970 produced what Richardson calls the period of “liberal consensus” in which the government worked to actively support the general welfare of the people. Beginning with FDR’s New Deal through LBJ’s Great Society, there were significant legislative advances (e.g. Social Security, Fair Labor, WPA, Voting Rights Act, Head Start, Medicare, EPA) in the areas of civil rights, employment, unions, immigration, and small business support. It was a time when there was more consensus building and when politicians from both parties were expected to work together, unlike the present day. This period of liberal consensus kept enriching America until it bumped up against Reaganomics and Movement Conservatism (a term Richardson uses to describe a coalition of the religious right, libertarianism, patriarchy, and racial purity).
This is where the value of historians for the protection of democracy and the nation comes into play. Richardson reveals the ingenious but insidious tactic heavily employed in the Reagan administration: gaslighting, just lie and keep on lying. In 1983, the Office of Management and Budget computers predicted that supply side economics touted as “lifting all boats” would actually lead to a $116 billion deficit by 1984. It was not what Reagan wanted to hear, and the facts were easily “fixed.” Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, simply reprogrammed the computers. But the gaslighting kept on: George W. Bush falsely based the rationale for invading Iraq on the bogus presence of WMDs, Tea Party Republicans insisted “death panels" would be part of the Affordable Care Act, Obama was not born in America, and, worst of all, that our voting system could not be trusted. The deliberate and expert distortion of facts, according to Richardson, prepared the way for the easy manipulation of “alternative facts” promulgated by the Trump administration, manipulation that was leading to authoritarianism.
The brilliance of Richardson’s book lies in her unmasking the tactic of using the false flag of knee-jerk topics. The Movement Conservatives simply recast their push for power by creating bogey men to scare voters to their side. The bogey men would threaten that government assistance amounted to unfair wealth redistribution, that the communists were coming for us, that immigrants will take jobs, that feminism or any gender issues will destroy the family. Anything to scare-monger citizens at the voting booth and keep their hands on their money and their power.
The book, published in 2023, ends optimistically. Richardson hangs her hopes on the work that Biden achieved to counter many of Trump’s autocratic actions. One wonders how this book might have to be retitled today. In 2026, President Trump will preside over the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration and the birth of the United States. The question now is, how will a president committed to authoritarianism celebrate a document committed to egalitarianism?