Democracy Dying, And How

LONG BEFORE Trump's big election lie and his consequent violent insurrection attempting to overturn the election of 2020, a pair of Harvard political scientists, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, saw the handwriting on the wall, so to speak. In 2018 they published what is arguably the most seminal, authoratative book on the real threat to American democracy by the political rise of Donald Trump and Trumpism: "How Democracies Die". These two scholars have spent more than twenty years researching and studying the destruction of demoracy in Russia, Hungary, Venezuala, and throughout Europe and Latin America, and their work deals with their analysis, applicable to the present day USA. Usually, the backslide of demoracy into authoritarian government is a gradual process, rather than a sudden, violent upheaval. It begins with a deline in the acceptance fo political norms; a refusal by political parties to acknowledge the legitimacy of opposing points of view., accompanied with accusations that opponents lack patriotism and the willingness to place country before personal ambition. The political culture becomes corrupt by a mutual, enduring animosity; enemies within dehumanizing their political opponents. Refusing to accept the results of a verifiably free and fair election. The employment of those in power of mechanisms within the powers of government to subvert demoracy by such methods as court packing, attacks on the freedom of the press, attempts to suppress voter turn out. Democracies usually die. The authors also cite other demographic factors in the decline of democracy, notably widespread economic inequality and the segregation of society and political parties according to race, religion, gender, and economic status. Reviews for this seminal monograph have been and remain glowing, more so now because of its eerily prophetic nature. However, As Goethe said, one should not cite error without a willingness and ability to offer solutions. That is exactly what this esteemd work does; it cites remedies which can be implemented immediately to rectify our current backslide away from democracy, towards authoritarianism, can take us back towards healthy democratic norms. Voter participation must be greatly expanded. A democracy becomes a narrow oligarchy when people stay away from the ballot box. Civic and political education must be strengthened in our public education system. The current concentrated corporate media must be fragmented into a healthy, varied, large number of independent media and information sources, independent of corporate control. The branches of government must be insulated against attempts to corrupt them and use them to deny politial power to those deemed unworthy of participation. An entrenched, unmovable legislative political class and judiciary must be constantly infused with new blood. The most striking aspect of this book is, again, the fact that almost immediately upon its publication, the train of events it warned against and predicted came to pass in the United States, with the refusal of Trump to accept election defeat, and the support of his violent insurrection by tens of millions of his suporters, Americans who have given up on democracy, and who still support installing Trump as an authoritarian head of state by reelecting him in 2024, despite his massive criminality, inside and outside of the political processs. At this very moment America is facing its Hitler moment. Our salvation is that we still have time to do something about it, and that we have been very adequately forewarned.