Trump and the Mystic Chords
There was a time when America was more divided than it is today. In 1861, the nation was breaking up over the issue of slavery. In his First Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln strove to keep the country together. His closing lines set up a contrast with Donald Trump, who is doing the opposite.
“We are not enemies, but friends,” said Lincoln. “We must not be enemies.” Trump has tried to make us enemies, and he is not shy about using the word. On May 5, he tweeted: “The Do Nothing Democrats and their leader, the Fake News Lamestream Media, are doing everything possible to hurt and disparage our Country. No matter what we do or say, no matter how big a win, they report that it was a loss, or not good enough. The Enemy of the People!”
Hostility to journalists has been building for years, and Trump made it worse with that label, which was a staple of Soviet show trials. During the recent protests, police attacked journalists, causing serious injuries. It is impossible to say whether Trump’s remarks directly caused the attacks, but one thing is sure: instead of a Lincolnesque plea for restraint, he issued Stalinesque calls for rage.
Lincoln spoke of “the mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land.” Lincoln believed in what we today call “civic education.” He wanted Americans to learn about the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and those who fought to make our country live out the true meaning of these documents.
That’s what Americanism is about. To become a naturalized citizen, you have to pass a knowledge test, not a blood test.
Trump drowns out the mystic chords with misinformation. He put up a golf course plaque commemorating a Civil War battle that never happened and pledged to protect the Constitution’s “Article XII,” which does not exist. And let us always remember his present-tense praise of Frederick Douglass as “an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.”
Such examples of his historical ignorance are comical. Others are sinister. Shortly after the deadly Charlottesville incident in 2017, he tweeted: “Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments.” This statement turned history on its head: the statues and monuments honor the people who did rip our country apart.
The marble men lie to us. The figures in stone do not just register history: their presence on pedestals proclaims that the rebels are worthy of veneration. They aren’t. The Confederates committed treason, which the Constitution defines as “levying War” against the United States.
Trump has never acknowledged this undeniable fact. Lately, he has insisted that military installations should continue to bear the names of these traitors, tweeting that their names are “part of a Great American Heritage.” True, they are part of our past. So is Lee Harvey Oswald. We don’t build monuments to him.
Trump has sown even more confusion by applying the word treason to Representative Adam Schiff and other political opponents. Their only “offense” was that they tried to expose Trump’s wrongdoing.
Lincoln looked forward to the day when Americans’ hearts would be touched by “the better angels of our nature.” If Trump’s nature does have better angels, they have kept themselves well hidden for the past 74 years. Instead of bringing out the best in his followers, he panders to their worst. There’s a double meaning to the familiar phrase, “He’s rallying the base.”
From 1861, Lincoln added a note that speaks to us in 2020. “While the people retain their virtue and vigilance no Administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can very seriously injure the Government in the short space of four years.”
Let’s hope he was right.
John J. Pitney, Jr. is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and the author of Un-American: The Fake Patriotism of Donald J. Trump.
