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Is American democracy in decline? Should we be worried?
On October 6, some of America’s top political scientists gathered at Yale University to answer these questions. And nearly everyone agreed: American democracy is eroding on multiple fronts — socially, culturally, and economically.
The scholars pointed to breakdowns in social cohesion (meaning citizens are more fragmented than ever), the rise of tribalism, the erosion of democratic norms such as a commitment to rule of law, and a loss of faith in the electoral and economic systems as clear signs of democratic erosion.
No one believed the end is nigh, or that it’s too late to solve America’s many problems. Scholars said that America’s institutions are where democracy has proven most resilient. So far at least, our system of checks and balances is working — the courts are checking the executive branch, the press remains free and vibrant, and Congress is (mostly) fulfilling its role as an equal branch.
But there was a sense that the alarm bells are ringing.
Yascha Mounk, a lecturer in government at Harvard University, summed it up well: “If […]
The US has never been a democracy. It’s a republic. What they are afraid of is the destruction of politics as usual, which has not been serving the people for quite a few years.
I despise Trump, the name has become a curse word for me. Yet my sister and her husband think he is just fine and much better than Obama who, according to her, stirred up racial problems and ran the US into the ground. I would guess most of my extended family would feel the same.
I have felt for some time that we are in dangerous times that the election of “he who shall not be named” is the latest and so far most egregious example. Some have predicted that the US could devolve into regional entities with the federal government becoming relatively unimportant or worse. These days that does not seem so outrageous. Or could it be out of the fires of chaos and confrontation with the worst and most childish running things that the phoenix of a renewed American republican democracy will arise. One that puts citizens ahead of wealth and business…dangerous times. For sure nothing will be the same post-Mad King Donald.
I cannot recall who said it, but one of our founding fathers in America said that one of the main purposes of a national government was to protect the poor from the rich; such as exists in a social democracy which is not afraid to tax the rich and enrich the poor to make equality a reality. After all, wasn’t that one of the main reasons we left Europe or wherever our forefathers came from, which all had “robber-barons”.
Our democratic process hasn’t actually worked for some time now. Economics drives everything that occurs, and our Plutocracy (the system of government we have now) is the example of that. Money, given from influential sources having a specific agenda, manufactures our candidates from which we are made to choose as the lesser of two or more evils. Candidates who represent those who placed them on the ballot. These candidates aren’t running to represent the “people”; they run to fulfill the bidding of their corporate or special interest masters. The people’s wishes are subtended or obfuscated by the propaganda generated by the monied voices we are given to chose from. Any candidate wishing to run to actually represent his/her constituents doesn’t really have a chance because they usually have little money to generate much awareness of their efficacy..
But Tte resolution to our democratic problems is really very simple. Hard, but simple. We need to get the public to want to become more involved by giving them a reason to have hope that they can make a difference and take control of the democratic process. To accomplish this we need to take the “money” out of the electoral process. To that end we need to overturn Citizens United, allow only public funding of campaigns and grant equal media time, and shorten the campaign season to under six months. Under such a mechanism we would only have candidates running who truly want to represent the people in their districts. This would radically lower the influence of special and corporate interests whose propaganda capabilities currently overwhelm and confuse voters.