HOW DEMOCRACIES DIE
Last week I offered up a few quotes from Benito Mussolini. One of my ‘favorites’ is: “The press of Italy is free, freer than the press of any other country, so long as it supports the regime.”
Trump’s attacks on the media are well documented and the phrase ‘fake news’ has become part of the new ‘norm.’ These attacks are unrelenting and while most often reserved for most major news outlets, he will even, at times, go after Fox News if someone says something with which he disagrees or which paints him in a bad light. In one of his latest tweets he not only went after Comcast, but encouraged his followers to ‘drop them’. The exact tweet is:
“Concast is known for its terrible service. On top of that they provide FAKE NEWS on MSDNC & @NBCNews. Drop them and go to a good provider!”
Since when is it OK for the President of the United States to go after a specific company like this? Regardless of your political views, this should raise alarms with everyone. What’s next, the President will start endorsing products kind of like ‘Oprah’s favorite things’. (Of course, he will probably demand a cut of the profits.) So, he will use the power of the presidency to help those companies he likes and use it to harm those he dislikes? This is just wrong and a clear abuse of the office of the President.
I know – this is just a little thing. This is just Trump being Trump. Given the events of the last three- and one-half years, I think it is more than ‘Trump being Trump.’ After my bike ride on Sunday, the rain set in so it was a good day to kick back and read a book. I read, How Democracies Die, by two Harvard professors, Steven Levitsy and Daniel Ziblatt, who have spent their careers studying the rise and fall of democracies around the world. I would highly recommend it to anyone who really cares about the institution of democracy in this country.
Most people think that democracies end as the result of coups or revolutions. In the past, that was often the case, but in more recent times most countries that are now considered authoritarian regimes started out with leaders elected democratically at the ballot box.
“Because there is no single moment – no coup, declaration of martial law, or suspension of the constitution – in which the regime obviously ‘crosses the line’ into dictatorship, nothing may set off society’s alarm bells. Those who denounce government abuse may be dismissed as exaggerating or crying wolf. Democracy’s erosion is, for many, almost imperceptible.”
“Once a would-be authoritarian makes it to power, democracies face a second critical test: Will the autocratic leader subvert democratic institutions or be constrained by them?…. This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy – packing and ‘weaponizing’ the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence), and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents. The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy – gradually, subtly, and even legally – to kill it.”
Just something to think about. Putin (Russia) was elected. Erdogan (Turkey) was elected. Chavez and Maduro (Venezuela) were elected. Fujimori (Chile) was elected. And the list goes on. If you think this could never happen in the United States of America, history says that it very well can.
“Our constitutional system, while older and more robust than any in history, is vulnerable to the same pathologies that have killed democracy elsewhere. Ultimately, then, American democracy depends on us – the citizens of the United States. No single political leader can end a democracy; no single leader can rescue one, either. Democracy is a shared enterprise. Its fate depends on all of us.”
How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Broadway Books (division of Penguin Random House), 2018
Good article. I’ll have to get their book.