230 years ago this month (September 1796) George Washington’s immensely insightful farewell address was published.
It has a “solemn” warning that excessive partisanship will: “consolidate power,” and “enfeeble public administration.” It will “agitate the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms,” which “kindle animosity” which will “foment occasional riot and insurrection.” (Jan. 6, 2021?)
It says that partisanship “opens the door to foreign influence and corruption.” Partisanship has obliterated our vaunted “checks and balances,” which is illustrated by Trump pursuing self-enrichment with foreign monarchies and Congress relinquishing war-making power. (Unless Congress has members with the integrity, intelligence and independence of Mitt Romney or Liz Cheney, “checks and balances” don’t exist.)
The farewell address warned that “the alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension,” will eventually lead to such disorders that it will “incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual.” Eventually, this one individual, “more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purpose of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.”
Washington’s point about elevating one individual is particularly prophetic. By 2016 much of the public was weary of both parties. Donald Trump — who changed his political affiliation six times and had earlier contributed thousands to Democrats Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton — claimed he alone could fix America’s problems. He did not promote policies of Republican platforms — a decade earlier he was not a Republican — but rather claimed his “very stable genius” would be the answer to all of America’s problems.
Tragically, all of Utah’s congressional delegation has fully supported Trump’s “elevation on their ruins of public liberty.”
Rick Edwin Jones, West Haven