7 October 2024 | X
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“Four Freedoms” by Norman Rockwell (1943) was inspired by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address. In the address, Roosevelt outlined four democratic values that he believed were crucial to preserve: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.
According to a Gallup survey released in January, a record high majority of 43% of U.S. adults identify as political independents. More Americans, especially younger voters, are dissatisfied with the two major political parties in this year’s presidential campaign cycle. It is no wonder, as at least 84% of Americans see “partisan fighting, the high cost of political campaigns, and the outsize influence of special interests and lobbyists” as characteristic of the U.S. political system. The shift away from the established two-party system is rooted in the steady erosion of “four freedoms” described by President Roosevelt decades ago: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.
In contrast, the declared candidate of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, embodies the erosion of these four freedoms. Trump is the medical definition of geriatric, a convicted criminal, the only U.S. president to have incited a violent insurrection to overturn election results and the U.S. government, and an architect of Project 2025 aimed at eroding our democratic freedoms. In every sense, he is the wrong candidate to lead the Free World, but Trump has effectively manipulated the justified grievances of Americans. “Have I gone crazy, or has supporting Trump become reasonable?” asked a user on X (formerly Twitter) in October.
Trump’s appeal to a broad demographic of voters lies in his disregard for the status quo, which clearly isn’t working for the American people. This trend of frustration with the U.S. political system is rooted in the erosion of these four freedoms, which Trump has manipulated to the detriment of our democracy.
Freedom of Speech
Our current media landscape perpetuates bias instead of promoting objectivity. Since the repeal of The Fairness Doctrine in 1987, the media has become untethered from its original purpose of serving an informed electorate and promoting freedom of speech, as articulated in the First Amendment. The First Amendment protects and empowers journalists to cultivate a robust and vibrant marketplace of ideas. It acknowledges that a diverse range of voices and perspectives is crucial for a healthy democracy. The Fairness Doctrine, established by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), aimed to ensure this diversity. Initially implemented to safeguard the American public from media bias, the Doctrine required airtime for opposing views on various issues. Described as the “single most important requirement of operation in the public interest,” it was repealed under political pressure, leading to the partisan media landscape we face today. Media networks often broadcast falsehoods without fact-checks, rather than engaging in informed dialogues.
A 2021 investigative report found that Trump made a total of 30,573 false or misleading claims during his four years in office. On average, this equated to 21 erroneous claims per day. A PEN America timeline also tracked important developments during the Trump administration that undermined free expression and press freedoms, including Trump’s 2017 call for a Senate investigation into news outlets for publishing unflattering stories about him. In 2023, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems nearly $800 million to avoid a trial in the voting machine company’s lawsuit, exposing how Fox News promoted Trump's lies about the 2020 presidential election.
Freedom of worship
The first clause in the U.S. Bill of Rights, which consists of the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” This establishment clause of the First Amendment mandates the separation of church and state, prohibiting the government from creating an official religion or favoring one religion (or nonreligion) over another. Our founding leaders argued that compelling citizens to support a faith we did not follow violated our natural right to religious liberty.
Going directly against the American principle of separation of church and state, Trump profited from the release of a limited-edition, $60 Bible, during his campaign earlier this year. Another version of the Bible, signed by the Republican presidential candidate, was sold for $1,000 each. The selling point for the print was a reference to a Trump campaign slogan: “We must make America pray again.” In October, Oklahoma’s Department of Education opened bids to fill a 55,000 unit order of Bibles for classrooms across the state. Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters “coincidentally” changed the rules for classroom materials in order to send millions to the Trump campaign. Earlier in June, Trump told a Christian group that has vowed to “eradicate" abortion that if he is elected, “you're going to make a comeback like no other group.” In July, Trump told Christian voters that if they vote for him this November, “in four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good, you're not gonna have to vote, my beautiful Christians.” In a similar anti-democratic statement, during an interview with Fox News in December 2023, Trump said that if he won the election he would become a dictator “on day one”.
Freedom from want
There is increasing inflation and economic hardship for the middle class to achieve the American dream, exacerbated by years of political neglect in developing meaningful long-term vision to address debt beyond the short-term election cycle. The rise of political tribalism in society has fueled this lack of vision, and wasteful spending on foreign wars since 9/11 has deepened our national debt. The American military-industrial complex is spiraling out of control; a U.S. defense budget audit revealed that the Pentagon spent $52,000 on a trash can. Out of all U.S. taxpayer dollars, $820 billion goes to the U.S. defense budget, while only 5% is allocated to public education. The federal debt hit a new record of $35.669 trillion in October of this year, the start of the new fiscal year.
During his campaign in 2016, Trump railed against his opponents for their ties to Wall Street. Contradicting his own campaign rhetoric, Trump explained in 2017 why he chose Wall Street billionaires for several of his Cabinet roles including Commerce Secretary, Treasury Secretary, and director of the National Economic Council: “In those particular positions, I just don’t want a poor person. Does that make sense? I like it better this way, right?” The middle class needs a tax cut, but Trump did not deliver it to them in his previous administration as promised. His 2017 Tax Law was skewed to the rich, and his Project 2025 plans to raise taxes on the middle class and give additional tax breaks to the rich.
Foreign influence in our media has easily taken advantage of the partisan media landscape. The Internet provides an opportunity for education and connection, yet we are ironically overwhelmed by a landscape of disinformation and vitriol, yearning for a community and elected leadership that represent us. In a recent example, the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal revealed that social media business models motivated by profit influenced the 2015 presidential campaign cycle and gave rise to the tribal echo chamber we find ourselves in today. In that same election cycle, Russian President Vladimir Putin directly ordered a sabotage operation named Project Lakhta, a “hacking and disinformation campaign” to damage Clinton and help Trump win the U.S. Presidential election. The Russian Internet Research Agency (I.R.A.), described as a troll factory, created thousands of social media accounts that purported to be Americans supporting radical political groups and planned or promoted events in support of Trump and against Clinton. They reached millions of real American social media users between 2013 and 2017.
In the current election cycle, Russia has a far more sophisticated tool to sabotage American democracy: Artificial Intelligence (AI). In late August and September this year, Russian troll farms produced and disseminated inauthentic videos utilizing AI to target the Harris-Walz campaign, each generating millions of views.
Freedom from fear
In an X Spaces interview with Donald Trump in August, CTO Elon Musk stated that America's enemies in the world need to see a strong U.S. President. Trump responded to his statement by praising our enemies and dictators, including Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China, and Kim Jong Un of North Korea. These dictators have openly murdered their political opponents, imprisoned lawyers and journalists, and systematically starved and deluded their people with mass propaganda.
“(Vladimir) Putin, Xi (Jinping), Kim Jong Un are at the top of their game; they’re tough, they’re smart, they’re vicious,” Trump said. He followed up with, “they love their country; it is a different form of love”.
Trump’s “strongman” approach has appealed to an apathetic American electorate that is understandably sick of the status quo and fearful for our collective future. Trump uses fear as the prime motivator both with American voters and elected leaders in Congress, stating that “power is about instilling fear”.
Much to Trump’s chagrin, the world does not fear him. In fact, our enemies have become emboldened by his prior chaos in office. Longtime U.S. allies who were alienated or insulted by him began to cooperate with our enemies, namely China. Former Mexican President Vincente Fox used an expletive in response to Trump’s suggestion that Mexico fund a wall across our shared border. Mexico, our second-largest economic partner, has since permitted the smuggling of fentanyl and fentanyl precursors from China across the border into the United States. The U.S. recorded its largest-ever fentanyl seizure from Mexico in August, which could have killed 75% of the U.S. population. The rise in illegal immigration into the U.S. from Mexico, including Chinese nationals, has skyrocketed since the Trump administration. In his last months in office, apprehensions at the border had more than quadrupled from a pandemic low and were higher than the month he took office.
According to former Trump national security adviser John Bolton, Russian President Vladimir Putin sees Trump as an “easy mark.” Echoing Bolton, Fiona Hill, a national security official in the first two years of Trump’s administration, stated that “Trump views Putin as a strongman. In a way, they’re working in parallel because they’re both trying to weaken the U.S., but for very different reasons.”
Donald Trump has a 30-year track record of opposing the established global order, organized around alliances including NATO, an open global economy, and multilateralism. Putin wants to overthrow the global order because he believes it poses a direct threat to his regime. A two-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller found that Russian interference to help Trump win in 2016 was “sweeping and systematic.” Trump cozied up to Russia during his presidency, including an Oval Office meeting with the Russian ambassador and foreign minister where Trump shared classified information. “Putin much prefers the chaos agent of Trump because it undermines the U.S.,” explained Hill, “Trump is less a threat to Russia, and more to the U.S. given his approach to governance.”
Americans are free to evolve our democracy
Americans are the most powerful citizens in the world. We have extraordinary rights, including the right to elect leaders that represent us and our democracy. Our founding leaders predicted centuries ago that our democracy is an “experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” Thomas Coens, an expert in History at the University of Tennessee, said that “fears about [our] fragility should be tempered with a recognition that democracy’s essential and demonstrated malleability—its capacity for adaptation, improvement and expanding inclusivity—[is] a source of strength and resilience as well as vulnerability.” If we do not take an active role and vote in our democracy, it becomes vulnerable.
Consider some basic numbers: Trump was the choice of only 14 million people who voted in the Republican primaries in 2015. In a nation where over 230 million Americans are eligible to vote, that’s only 6 percent of eligible voters. Instead of being rejected as an anti-democratic candidate, Trump has instead risen to power by harnessing our fears and sympathies. After the July 13 assassination attempt on his life, he received the formal nomination of the Republican Party. Data and history show that assassination attempts increase the popularity (even if temporarily) of the public victim. In the case of Trump, it is important to remember he is the only U.S. President to have incited a violent insurrection to overthrow the U.S. government on January 6, 2021, including threatening the life of his own Vice President at the time, Mike Pence. He has since been convicted of multiple crimes, and mutated an established U.S. political party into a cult of personality. Trump is an undeniable danger to our democracy.
Pence and many other Republican leaders no longer stand beside Trump, and Pence refused to endorse Trump's bid to return to the White House. Despite evidence to the contrary, Trump and his new vice presidential running mate, J.D. Vance, still refuse to accept the 2020 election results that delivered the presidency to U.S. President Biden. At a pivotal moment during the October debate between Vance and Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, Vance declined to say whether he accepted the results of the last election. In response, Walz retorted, “That’s why Mike Pence isn’t on this stage.”
There is good news for those who are already taking action to evolve our democracy: Platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and The Center for Humane Technology, recognizing the influence of technology on democracy, have rooted out censorship and exposed algorithms that amplify extreme political views. These are relatively small but vital changes to encourage public discourse, freedom of expression, and constructive engagement in modern society. Although X and its CTO have been criticized for amplifying support for Trump, the platform has given users the freedom to access information that was previously censored on Twitter. “Twitter’s old censorship system was based on the assumption that people make bad choices because they are exposed to misinformation. But lack of trust is the real problem—people lose trust in authorities or can’t find the information they want, causing them to seek out fringe sources. Censorship [creates] more distrust by stifling open discussion about important topics,” going against a core tenet of the First Amendment.
Centuries of Americans have fought for our rights, through war and protest, intellectual and artistic expression. Many of them paid the highest price of their lives for us to enjoy these rights, and our attention and energy are all that is required to maintain them. We are the most free people in the world as a result, with the privilege to access information and vote for our leaders.
At a time when most of us feel powerless, take a step back and realize how much power we actually have as American citizens. According to a recent poll, “ordinary Americans care about making the political system work well.” In response to these systemic issues and the importance of our four freedoms, Americans are organizing to appeal to the average American voter. Groups like Represent Us, a nonpartisan anti-corruption organization fighting to defeat special interests and pass laws that hold corrupt politicians accountable; the Forward Party, representing a grassroots coalition of independent candidates and voters that offer a political home to the majority of Americans; as well as Principles First and the Lincoln Project, formed to support principles over party in U.S. politics. Campaigns to get out the vote ahead of election registration deadlines are underway, and college student voter turnout is much higher this year, after a history of low voting rates.
On the ballot is Trump versus our four freedoms. We must vote accordingly.
Evin Ashley Erdoğdu is an author, artist, and analyst. She is a graduate of Boston University where she studied International Relations and a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own. They do not represent those of people, institutions or organizations that the author is associated with in a professional or personal capacity.