Someone here is more likely than I to have actually read Ziblatt and
Levitsky's How Democracies Die
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Democracies_Die#:~:text=How%20Democracies%20Die%20is%20a,process%20to%20increase%20their%20power.>
A recent article (behind a subscribe-wall) included the following quote:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2022-01-20/americas-coming-age-instability
/
/
/America may no longer be safe for democracy, but it remains
inhospitable to autocracy./
/Rather than autocracy, the United States appears headed toward
endemic regime instability.
/
/
/
/Such a scenario would be marked by frequent constitutional crises,
including contested or stolen elections and severe conflict between
presidents and Congress (such as impeachments and executive efforts
to bypass Congress), the judiciary (such as efforts to purge or pack
the courts), and state governments (such as intense battles over
voting rights and the administration of elections). The United
States would likely shift back and forth between periods of
dysfunctional democracy and periods of competitive authoritarian
rule during which incumbents abuse state power, tolerate or
encourage violent extremism, and tilt the electoral playing field
against their rivals./
/
/
I found this characterization of our plight very compelling, if also
very disturbing.
It seems as if we have "tumbled our gyros" but in a different mode than
the rhetoric about "Civil War" and "Descent into Autocracy" seem to
suggest. It also characterizes a lot of the aspiring/limping
democracies we know of in the world today up to and including extreme
examples such as Russia which fits the DINO (democracy in name only)
label pretty well.
This conception of the problem lead me to a very well written HS
student-essay by the same title: democracy-in-name-only
<https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/democracy-in-name-only-2020-01-02>.
Within this essay was a poignant quote:
In the words of Alexis de Tocqueville,
“A new science of politics is needed for a new world. This,
however, is what we think of least; launched in the middle of a
rapid stream, we obstinately fix our eyes on the ruins which may
still be descried upon the shore we have left, while the current
sweeps us along, and drives us backward toward the gulf.”
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