Last month, America celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Lincoln Memorial, a temple to democracy that sits in silent repose on the western edge of the National Mall.
Sculpted from 28 blocks of white Georgia marble, even seated Lincoln has a 30-foot height advantage over the millions who make the pilgrimage annually to get selfies with the president who preserved the Union.
With only the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool between them, the 170-ton president stares resolutely at the Washington Monument on the opposite side of the mall. Lincoln has maintained that stare through a century of changing seasons, presidential administrations and wild swings in national temperament.
The centennial celebrations come at an uncertain time in our national history. Lincoln would recognize these historic reverberations for what they are — and tremble.
Were he alive, Lincoln would be familiar with the white hot rage of large swaths of the electorate animated by talk of secession. The political divisions of the last century are the echoes of a civil war that never truly ended with General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.
He would be stunned by the modern Republican Party's complicity in a crude plot to undermine American democracy by attempting to delegitimize the 2020 election at the bidding of a snake oil salesman. He would not recognize the GOP that continues to claim him even while stoking the embers of sedition.
Fixing its gaze across the Reflecting Pool to the country far beyond the Washington Monument, the Lincoln on the pedestal could be forgiven for wondering what happened to the Radical Republicans of the era of Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner and Henry Winter Davis.
How is it that a Republican Party forged during the debates over slavery and the Civil War could be so thoroughly replaced by men and women determined to attain office and hold on to power even at the cost of democracy itself?
"You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time," is a quote often attributed to Lincoln during the Lincoln/Douglas debates of 1858.
The quote has a simplicity and wisdom worthy of Will Rogers, which explains why we're eager to believe Lincoln actually said it, though he didn't. That doesn't mean the sentiment isn't true, though, especially in America today.
Looking out across the Reflecting Pool, Lincoln sees a nation where 7 out of 10 Republicans truly believe that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats using all sorts of nefarious techniques, from Italian hackers manipulating satellites to old-fashioned ballot-stuffing to tossing Trump votes into rivers by the thousands to busing undocumented immigrants to polls to flipping votes from Trump to Biden via rigged machines.
The same percentage of Republicans also believes that "Replacement Theory," a brand of ethno-nationalist paranoia once confined to the fever swamps of the hard right, best explains what has happened to America in recent years.
When racists talked about "white genocide" while warning of "white replacement" by the "darker, inferior races," you used to be able to hear a pin drop at their beer rallies. Now, there is standing room only even for the most cruel and dangerous nonsense.
Recent headlines and stories at right-wing sites suggest that there's a growing percentage of conservatives who believe that the persecution of white people far exceeds that against Blacks, and that the country is overdue for a course correction.
A recent poll conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that 44% of all Americans believe the nation is headed for a civil war.
In fact, 53% of Republicans feel it is inevitable, and 39% of Democrats agree with them. Neither Republicans nor Democrats expect a civil war to split the country along northern and southern battle lines again, though. The attitudes that made the Civil War of Lincoln's era possible have metastasized across the country.
This week, the House select committee investigating the violent attempt to overthrow the government on Jan. 6 will begin televised hearings designed to engage a public that has grown increasingly jaded about sedition. Roughly 500 days since the historic siege of the Capitol, the former president continues to operate as a kingmaker instead of a twice-impeached ex-president who will be indicted if suspected ties to the insurrection can be proven.
The evidence of Trump's guilt is already overwhelming, but the so-called "party of Lincoln" is no longer intellectually honest enough to admit it. There was far less evidence for President Richard Nixon's guilt than for Donald Trump's, yet Nixon was self-aware enough to know that his presidency was no longer tenable if the people perceived him as a crook.
It also helped that the GOP of 1974 wasn't the least bit intimidated by their party's standard bearer and incumbent president. The integrity of the party was bigger than Mr. Nixon's shredded reputation. They told him to resign because they wanted to avoid the demeaning spectacle of the GOP voting to impeach him. Nixon had no choice.
Donald Trump has committed crimes against American democracy far more insidious than anything Nixon imagined. Trump dares to say out loud the things other politicians keep hidden out of modesty and fear of prosecution.
The Lincoln made of marble sees all of this, but reacts to the changing times with its usual stoicism. There's nothing it can do but remain a symbol of another way of doing things in a still young and immature democracy. Lincoln encouraged his fellow Americans to acknowledge "the better angels of their nature" in a speech a long time ago. There are no guarantees when it comes to the democratic experiment, but with careful attention to the signs of the times, the Lincoln Memorial might witness another century of democracy trying to perfect itself.
