Erosion of Democracy’s Norms is Dreadful to Behold

Rev. Steve Edington

This Op-Ed was originally published in the Union Leader on March 6, 2026.

Several years ago, I watched a production of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” by a community theater troupe in Belfast, Maine.  The play portrays the events in Salem, Massachusetts leading up to the hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials which took place in 1692-93. Nineteen young women were hanged on charges of “witchcraft,” with other imprisonments and executions taking place before the religiously fueled madness ended.

Miller wrote the play in 1953 as an allegory for the McCarthy era, but its message is universal. The play is about what happens when the norms — both legal and cultural — that hold a society together break down. This was the unspoken, but still very real, message contained in the drama by way of a profound staging device.

The performance took place on a bare stage with furniture and props moved in and out as each scene required. The stage’s backdrop consisted of a series of large rectangular panels.

But the panels were more than a backdrop. At times during the play a stagehand would come out and remove one of them. This continued until the play was over, by which time all the panels were gone.

The panels symbolized the norms by which a society lives, be they for a village like 1690s Salem, Massachusetts, or a nation. They represented the structures any society has to have in place so that its citizens can live reasonably normal, safe, and sane lives.

Some of these norms take the shape of laws that can be legally enforced. Others are more undefined: Behavioral practices, how people are to be treated, etc.

What happens in “The Crucible” is that what had initially been unthinkable becomes increasingly set in place as the panel/norms come down; and full-blown madness, much of it religiously generated, sets in.

The image of those panels coming down has been much on my mind lately. I am convinced that the future of our democracy, our rule of law, and our general stability as a society, rests on how many of our panels we keep in place even as others come down.

Among the panels we’ve seen threatened over just the past year are those having to do with the rule of law as set forth in the Constitution and its subsequent democratic processes. Consider these words by Trump aide Stephen Miller in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper: “We live in a world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” No mention of being governed by any Constitutional rule of law or due process; it’s all strength, force, and power. A panel down.

Confirming Mr. Miller’s words, President Trump has launched a war against Iran that may involve American ground troops, but with no clearance at all from Congress, as the Constitution requires. A panel down.

There are the panels of simple human decency that are brought down by Trump’s juvenile name-calling of any political opponent with whom he’s upset. A despicable example of this was Trump using his social media outlet to depict former President Obama and his wife, Michelle, as apes and then refusing to apologize for it. A panel down.

For all the panels that are coming down, however — and more could be cited — I continue to believe that enough of them remain in place that will spare us the kind of madness portrayed in Arthur Miller’s play. Examples:

A Washington, D.C. grand jury has rebuffed U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi — acting on orders from her boss President Trump — by refusing to indict Senator Mark Kelly and others for the so-called “crime” of pointing out that members of the military do not have to obey unconstitutional orders. A panel up.

More recently, the Supreme Court has rebuffed the president by ruling that he does not have the authority to levy tariffs in the way he has attempted to do so. A panel up.

There is the widespread resistance to the monarchial designs of the president as seen in the “No Kings” and “Indivisible” movements and rallies. A panel up.

The citizens who gathered in Merrimack last February 21 to protest the attempt to place an ICE detention facility in their town constitute another panel of resistance. Plans for such a facility have since been withdrawn.

My hope and faith are that our 250-year tradition of democratic rule, with all its acknowledged flaws and failings, will keep enough of our legal and societal panels in place in a way that will spare us from the bare stage seen when “The Crucible” ends.

This is the question for “We the People” in this 250th year of America’s founding: Who will be the enablers in pulling down the panels, and who will strive to keep them standing?

Rev. Steve Edington is the Minister Emeritus of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua.