‘We Weren’t Alarmist Enough’: Experts Warn Trump And GOP Could Destroy Democracy
Sep 14, 2020 18:05:29 #
When Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt sounded the alarm two years ago that President Donald Trump posed a threat to American democracy, some critics treated their fears as absurd.
“Joe Scarborough ridiculed it on TV, saying, ‘These guys are alarmists,’” Levitsky told HuffPost recently, recalling the MSNBC host’s criticism of “How Democracies Die,” the book the two professors released in early 2018.
“It turns out we weren’t alarmist enough,” Levitsky said.
Over the past two months, with his poll numbers dropping and his ree******n in jeopardy, Trump has ramped up the broad assaults on America’s democratic institutions that have defined his presidency. And while some fear what he could do post-e******n, he’s done plenty beforehand to undermine democracy as a whole.
Trump approached the c****av***s p******c like a paranoid conspiracy that threatens his political prospects rather than the public health crisis it is. He unleashed often-unidentified federal agents to crack down on anti-r****t protests, whose existence he has used to try to stoke the grievances of his largely white base by painting the demonstrators as an unruly mob that threatens “law and order.” He sought to delegitimize the very existence of his political opponents and undermine an e******n he fears he won’t win, even turning the federal bureaucracy into a tool of his ree******n campaign.
The consequences are plenty: Amid the president’s attempts to sow chaos and violence in the streets, three people were k**led during protests in late August. Amid his efforts to foster distrust in the e******ns, nearly half of Americans have said in recent polls that they do not believe November’s v****g will be conducted freely and fairly ― a dramatic increase from just two and four years ago.
Now, a growing number of political scholars, political leaders and other officials are warning that 2020 is a referendum not just on Trump but on the nation’s democratic experiment as a whole. Still, Levitsky worries that not enough of us are as concerned as we should be.
“People are getting k**led over politics. There’s questions about whether the e******n will be free. Law enforcement bodies are being manipulated to protect allies of the president and go after rivals of the president,” Levitsky said. “Things are happening on various fronts, and we’re not putting it all together and realizing that our democracy is on the line.”
he United States has never been a perfect democracy, and its 250-year history is viewed best as a slow march toward democratization with a major step in 1965 when the passage of the V****g Rights Act aimed to fully enfranchise Black citizens for the first time. But the trend toward a more free and fair society has made it easy for many Americans ― especially w***e A******ns ― to ignore how easy it would be for this democracy to fall apart.
When T***p w*n in 2016, there was a general belief among experts that while he would test U.S. democracy (and certainly make the United States even less democratic for Black people, immigrants and other racial and ethnic minorities), he likely wouldn’t lay waste to it entirely. American institutions were too strong, the theory went, for a single leader to totally destroy them. There were enough constraints to limit how much damage could be done. Trump-like leaders in younger, less established democracies, particularly Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, seemed like much more immediate threats.
Four years later, it’s clear that view was too charitable. That’s because instead of serving as constraints on p**********l power, Republicans in Congress have done wh**ever they can to protect Trump. They blocked his removal from office after House Democrats impeached him and have kept administration officials from facing consequences for shirking their oversight duties.
Without those checks, Trump has proceeded to do wh**ever he wants: fire inspectors general, attack the judiciary, violate laws, and profit off his own office.
Owing largely to the GOP’s animosity toward checks and balances that might rein in Trump, “U.S. democracy has proven weaker and more vulnerable than I thought,” Levitsky said.
That has turned the Trump era into a case study on how modern democracies fall apart: not through a violent and sudden rupture, but by the chipping away at institutions until a full democracy doesn’t exist anymore. Political scientists call these “hybrid regimes” ― nations that often still look like democracies on the surface, and even initially maintain many of the civil and constitutional rights of democratic countries, but function in a more authoritarian manner institutionally.
“[In] old-school authoritarianism, you could tell a country was authoritarian because it didn’t have a democratic system,” said Amy Erica Smith, a political scientist at Iowa State University. A hybrid regime, though, “has all the trappings of a democracy,” Smith said, “but it doesn’t work like a democracy.”
Travis Waldron
HuffPostSeptember 14, 2020, 3:00 PM MDT
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/trump-republicans-democracy-at-risk-210055864.html
“Joe Scarborough ridiculed it on TV, saying, ‘These guys are alarmists,’” Levitsky told HuffPost recently, recalling the MSNBC host’s criticism of “How Democracies Die,” the book the two professors released in early 2018.
“It turns out we weren’t alarmist enough,” Levitsky said.
Over the past two months, with his poll numbers dropping and his ree******n in jeopardy, Trump has ramped up the broad assaults on America’s democratic institutions that have defined his presidency. And while some fear what he could do post-e******n, he’s done plenty beforehand to undermine democracy as a whole.
Trump approached the c****av***s p******c like a paranoid conspiracy that threatens his political prospects rather than the public health crisis it is. He unleashed often-unidentified federal agents to crack down on anti-r****t protests, whose existence he has used to try to stoke the grievances of his largely white base by painting the demonstrators as an unruly mob that threatens “law and order.” He sought to delegitimize the very existence of his political opponents and undermine an e******n he fears he won’t win, even turning the federal bureaucracy into a tool of his ree******n campaign.
The consequences are plenty: Amid the president’s attempts to sow chaos and violence in the streets, three people were k**led during protests in late August. Amid his efforts to foster distrust in the e******ns, nearly half of Americans have said in recent polls that they do not believe November’s v****g will be conducted freely and fairly ― a dramatic increase from just two and four years ago.
Now, a growing number of political scholars, political leaders and other officials are warning that 2020 is a referendum not just on Trump but on the nation’s democratic experiment as a whole. Still, Levitsky worries that not enough of us are as concerned as we should be.
“People are getting k**led over politics. There’s questions about whether the e******n will be free. Law enforcement bodies are being manipulated to protect allies of the president and go after rivals of the president,” Levitsky said. “Things are happening on various fronts, and we’re not putting it all together and realizing that our democracy is on the line.”
he United States has never been a perfect democracy, and its 250-year history is viewed best as a slow march toward democratization with a major step in 1965 when the passage of the V****g Rights Act aimed to fully enfranchise Black citizens for the first time. But the trend toward a more free and fair society has made it easy for many Americans ― especially w***e A******ns ― to ignore how easy it would be for this democracy to fall apart.
When T***p w*n in 2016, there was a general belief among experts that while he would test U.S. democracy (and certainly make the United States even less democratic for Black people, immigrants and other racial and ethnic minorities), he likely wouldn’t lay waste to it entirely. American institutions were too strong, the theory went, for a single leader to totally destroy them. There were enough constraints to limit how much damage could be done. Trump-like leaders in younger, less established democracies, particularly Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, seemed like much more immediate threats.
Four years later, it’s clear that view was too charitable. That’s because instead of serving as constraints on p**********l power, Republicans in Congress have done wh**ever they can to protect Trump. They blocked his removal from office after House Democrats impeached him and have kept administration officials from facing consequences for shirking their oversight duties.
Without those checks, Trump has proceeded to do wh**ever he wants: fire inspectors general, attack the judiciary, violate laws, and profit off his own office.
Owing largely to the GOP’s animosity toward checks and balances that might rein in Trump, “U.S. democracy has proven weaker and more vulnerable than I thought,” Levitsky said.
That has turned the Trump era into a case study on how modern democracies fall apart: not through a violent and sudden rupture, but by the chipping away at institutions until a full democracy doesn’t exist anymore. Political scientists call these “hybrid regimes” ― nations that often still look like democracies on the surface, and even initially maintain many of the civil and constitutional rights of democratic countries, but function in a more authoritarian manner institutionally.
“[In] old-school authoritarianism, you could tell a country was authoritarian because it didn’t have a democratic system,” said Amy Erica Smith, a political scientist at Iowa State University. A hybrid regime, though, “has all the trappings of a democracy,” Smith said, “but it doesn’t work like a democracy.”
Travis Waldron
HuffPostSeptember 14, 2020, 3:00 PM MDT
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/trump-republicans-democracy-at-risk-210055864.html
Sep 14, 2020 18:10:53 #
rumitoid wrote:
When Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel... (show quote)
Isn't it just terrible that Donald J. Trump has finally done it. Why he caused those terrorists, er murderers, er peaceful demonstrators to go and shoot those two cops in LA and others to try to block the ambulances taking them to the hospital. Those poor protestors couldn't help themselves.
Sep 14, 2020 21:21:42 #
John Meoff wrote:
Isn't it just terrible that Donald J. Trump has finally done it. Why he caused those terrorists, er murderers, er peaceful demonstrators to go and shoot those two cops in LA and others to try to block the ambulances taking them to the hospital. Those poor protestors couldn't help themselves.
No evidence of that accusation. What for some facts.
Sep 15, 2020 10:02:22 #
rumitoid wrote:
No evidence of that accusation. What for some facts.
They did precisely that & it has been documented on TV.
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