Axar.az presents an article "My New Year's Wish" by John Samuel Tieman.

Here's my somewhat belated wish for the New Year. I don't want an end to xenophobia and antisemitism. I know that's impossible. However, we can make the haters irrelevant.

Donald Trump is a xenophobe and an antisemite. But lately, his speeches have become positively Hitlerian. He uses the word “vermin” to describe sections of American society he dislikes, and repeatedly declares that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”. Mr. Trump wants to build huge camps to detain migrants while their cases are processed. Think about it: some people are “vermin”, others are “poisoning the blood”, so send them to camps. He has been warned that his recent speeches sound like pages from “Mein Kampf”. Instead of backing off, he's repeated it all. His campaign slogan should be, “Make Crystal Night Great Again!”

Donald Trump would be little different from your racist uncle ranting at dinner were it not for his followers. They love his rants. A recent poll, done by the “Des Moines Register”, surveyed Republicans likely to vote in the upcoming Iowa caucuses. The poll found that 42% of Republicans would be more likely to vote for Trump because of his “poising the blood” comments. 43% like his “vermin” slur, and would be more likely to vote for him. And fully 50% – Half! – support his talk of opening camps. Does America have a functioning democracy? For the longest time after Trump and company came to power, I was among those who felt that such folks could be reasoned with. All we need to do is dialogue with them. Right? Now, my feelings are far clearer. If you are uninterested in the norms of representative democracy, then you shouldn't be allowed to participate in governance. Any citizen enjoys the rights and privileges of citizenship. But if a person doesn't value democracy, then that person shouldn't be in government.

Steven Levitsky and Ziblatt are professors of government at Harvard. In their recent book, “The Tyranny Of The Minority”, they write that when a vocal minority – xenophobes and antisemites in this case – threaten the functioning of government, that government responds in three ways. “First, they expel extremists from their own ranks”. Second they “sever all ties”, ties both public and private. Third, they “unambiguously condemn” this behavior. The problem today is simply this. The Republican Party doesn't expel xenophobes and antisemites. The Republican Party doesn't sever ties with xenophobes and antisemites. The Republican Party doesn't condemn xenophobes and antisemites. They are the xenophobes. They are the antisemites. And I don't know if representative democracy can survive this.

I used to hate my country. When I first returned from Vietnam, I felt a depth of betrayal that no words can adequately capture. It took me decades to truly regain my faith in America. But through it all, I seldom lost faith in the ideals of representative democracy. Now, as I write, I look out onto a quiet street. The street is so quiet that you can hear children playing in the schoolyard just over the hill. You wouldn't think that this country is coming close to civil war, that people are questioning the efficacy of a nation “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” In the words of the Great Emancipator, we are ”testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.”

We are at a crossroads. Will America be a multiracial plurality, one with many religions? Or will we cease to exist? As daunting as it may seem, we have remade our country before. Think of America before and after the Civil War. Think of America before and after the Progressive Era. Can we do it again? I don't know. For the moment, I will take some comfort in the words of Alexis de Tocqueville. “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.”