There’s a thing called Do Something Twitter. These are people on Twitter who loudly demand that those in power DO SOMETHING to save democracy.
I’ll give a few examples. After Hayden Brown reported that Biden talks energetially about the importance of democracy, Sarah Kenzdior (who has appeared on news programs and presents herself as an expert in authoritarianism, and who has more than 600K followers on Twitter, said this:
Here she says that Garland “serves Trump and Barr, and is a corrupt institutionalist. (She is not a lawyer and when she doesn’t understand something, she calls it ‘corrupt.’ The problem, of course, is that her 600K followers believe she is an expert in these matters):
Cheri Jacobus is a former Republican and Trump hater, has close to 200K followers on Twitter:
This tweet from Joe Walsh, a former Republican candidate for president received 32,900+ “likes,” and was posted on February 1, 2022:
This Tweet has a more than 30,000 “likes”:
As a result of so many large accounts tweeting about how Merrick Garland is doing nothing and should be bringing indictments, the mantra: “Indict them now!” has become what Timothy Snyder calls an Internet Meme, and what I’ve called rage-inducing simplifications.
Cries of “indict someone now!” are flooding Twitter, and probably other social media platforms as well. Sometimes I engage some of them in conversation. It usually goes like this:
Person: There should be indictments by now!
Me: The DOJ has brought 768 January-6th indictments so far, including an indictment of Steve Bannon and recent indictments for seditious conspiracy. These indictments were brought in an ongoing investigation, in less than a year, during a pandemic.
Person: NONE OF THOSE COUNT because . .
Fanning the Flames
The rage against the DOJ, which leads to cries that Merrick Garland is doing nothing, is being fanned by prominent lawyers. Because these lawyers are left-leaning, they have built up trust among left-leaning Twitter, people tend to trust them and think anything they say is true. (Hint: Lawyers are not always right, and they are certainly not always right when they speculate or offer opinions without having facts to back them up.)
This prominent lawyer has more than 1 million followers and frequently appears on TV:
Save Democracy Now!
It seems to me that much of the indictment hysteria comes from believing that indictments will save democracy. Here is Rob Reiner (who did a fabulous job playing Archie Bunker’s son-in-law on All in the Family but is not a legal authority or expert in government) tweeting that he wants indictments so we can “save” democracy:
His Tweet got 42.7K “likes.” And here’s another:
That one got 53.2K likes.
Now, look, I’d love for Trump to get indicted, but indicting (or even actually convicting) Trump will not end the threat of fascism. It won’t solve our most serious problems which are (1) rampant disinformation and (2) the fact that so many Republicans still support Trump and Trump-like candidates.
Once we understand the nature of the danger and where the danger is coming from, the solution becomes obvious and the idea that indictments will help becomes ludicrous.
You see, the GOP loves Trump because he is a lawbreaking, democracy-bashing supporter of white supremacy. So it’s pretty silly to think that indicting or imprisoning Trump will end the danger and save democracy. Imagine the KKK and white power militias saying, “Well, Trump is indicted so we better fold up shop, and learn to love a multi-racial democracy, and start playing nice.”
The solution is to get involved in local politics. Organize. Get out the vote. Register voters. (The goal isn’t to try to change minds. The goal is to mobilize the people who want to put an end to right-wing extremism.)
The way to save democracy is with more democracy, or what Barack Obama calls “citizenship”:
In other words, we are the people who need to do something.
Do Something Twitter thinks that the alternative to yelling “do something!” is to be passive and acquiescent. Wrong. The alternative to yelling “do something” is to recognize that democracy, to succeed, requires each of us to contribute. There is no magic thing that the people in power can do to put an end to right-wing extremism. But if enough people become active, we can send the extremists back to the fringes. If everyone contributes — if everyone does their share, we can turn out the numbers to beat back the threat. This week, I did a shift on a hotline helping voters in Texas who were having trouble getting their absentee ballots.
Do you need ideas for what you can do? Click here.