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Democracy’s Enemies are Counting on the Bystanders Syndrome

By William S. Becker

As the nation watched the Trump machine demolish the East Wing this week, I recalled an incident from 1964, the year I graduated high school.

In the early morning hours of March 13, 28-year-old Kitty Genovese was raped and stabbed to death outside her apartment building in Queens.  The New York Times reported that nearly 40 people saw or heard the attack but did nothing to stop it. It shocked the nation that no one had the courage to intervene. Psychologists called it the “bystander effect” and the “Genovese syndrome.”

It is an apt analogy to what we are witnessing today as a criminal president and his allies assault the Republic. The entire nation, including our elected leaders, stood by and watched the destruction of “the people’s’’ house to make way for a billionaire despot’s gilded ballroom.

The televised demolition of the historic and ostensibly protected East Wing was itself symbolic of the methodical demolition of democracy by the Trump machine. In our form of government, the people elect representatives to manage government and protect the Republic against corruption and insurrection.

Yet, Donald Trump has corrupted government and its institutions in full view of a complacent, compliant Congress and Supreme Court. The stench pervades our politics, but the institutions created to protect it are merely holding their noses and tongues as it happens.

Those of us who have served in the military – and especially those who have been in combat – may be especially sensitive to the smell. The country counts on its bravest and most selfless citizens to protect what the Founders created and to defend the freedoms of people in other countries.

But we count on the people back home to defend domestic liberties, the rule of law, the rights guaranteed by the Constitution, and moral governance. Cowardice is a contemptible betrayal of America at home and abroad.

It’s particularly contemptible now as the hundreds of men and women we have sent to Congress fail to use their tools to defend democracy against the Trump machine. Why? Because they are afraid to lose the jobs they are not doing in the first place.

It has been the custom of each generation to try to leave future Americans with better and more secure lives than their parents inherited. We talk less about our obligation to past generations. The men and women who founded the United States of America stood up to and openly defied the world’s most powerful monarch. They fought and defeated an empire’s well-trained, well-equipped military. As many as 70,000 members of America’s newly formed army died in the Revolution. Since then, 1.3 million Americans have died in its wars, defending freedom here and abroad.

But with the Republic under rapidly advancing attack by Donald Trump and the radical Right, the institutions designed to defend our constitutional democracy aren’t lifting a finger. Elections are meant to be the remedy for such inexcusable cowardice, but the Trump machine is moving rapidly, methodically implementing a plan to destroy democracy and the respect for the rule of law beyond repair before another election can prevent it.

As a fail-safe, Trump is calling on Republican states to subvert next year’s midterm election with gerrymandering and limits on voter rights.

What’s equally disturbing is that 77,302,580 Americans allowed themselves to be duped into handing the presidency to a convicted felon under indictment for more than 40 additional felonies related to the January 6th insurrection and his willful mishandling of the nation’s secrets. Trump’s voters could not claim ignorance about the deeply flawed character of the man.

He was well known as a con man, serial liar, pathological egomaniac, bully, and convicted sexual criminal. There has not been a tranquil day in American politics since Trump entered the arena in 2015.

Trump won the popular vote anyway, though not a majority. The victory allowed him to escape trials on the dozens of charges against him. As I have pointed out previously, he is not only the first convicted felon to occupy the White House; he’s also the first fugitive from justice to obtain sanctuary there. Trump won votes with many promises to America’s “forgotten middle class” during his presidential campaigns. His record and economic evidence show he is not keeping them.

Instead, he is laser-focused on accumulating unconstrained power, making himself and his family richer, and punishing people, including loyal public servants, on his enemies list. In these first months of his second term, the people’s enemy list has become clear, led by Trump, Miller, Vought, Vance, and the many sycophants in his administration who regularly humiliate themselves with their prostrations and professions of worship.

So, here we are. Now we understand Benjamin Franklin’s wry comment that the Founders gave us a Republic if we can keep it. The men who created the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution, who stood up against a king’s abuses, and who died for our liberties, counted on the Republic to endure.

However, they made a mistake. They assumed, or perhaps only hoped, that succeeding generations would be principled enough and gutsy enough to keep the Republic safe from despots and ideologues who believe their narrow and bigoted biases are superior and should supersede the freedoms of thought and action defined at America’s inception.

Maybe a few members of Congress in Washington will use their constitutional powers to defend the Republic. But it doesn’t look good. Many are succumbing to the bystander effect, allowing those who threaten democracy to advance with little resistance. The timing of the next election makes it impossible to stop the damage. The Supreme Court has sided with the subversives. As a result, America’s fate now depends entirely on its people.