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Jump to: 2016; 2017; 2018; 2019;
Note:
When it comes to "democracy", it's very difficult to get news links that are not
of the commentary nature, so this section reads like mostly opinion and/or
commentary.
-- 2016 --
May 1: America Has Never Been So Ripe
for Tyranny
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html?gtm=top>m=top
Winter 2016:
Exceptional Circumstances: Does Climate Change Trump Democracy?
Researchers who flirt with the idea that more authoritarian governance would
help us address global warming are badly mistaken. What’s really needed is more
democracy.
https://issues.org/exceptional-circumstances-does-climate-change-trump-democracy/
-- 2017 --
Fall 2017:
What Compares to Trump
Reality in the United States has become surreal. Politics, with its influx of
reality stars TV show hosts, musicians, maybe even professional wrestlers, has
become harder to understand. To help in that problem, we asked five
distinguished historians, among them Democracy board member Sean
Wilentz, what to make of this current moment, and what past moment (if any) it
compares to. The results were interesting, surprising—and, inasmuch as no one
said the late 1850s, reassuring.
https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/46/what-compares-to-trump/
October 18:
Why your alarmism over Trump is dangerous for democracy
We live in an era of alarmism. Everyone, or at least Trump opponents, seems
alarmed nearly all the time. Even when we can’t quite summon the energy, we’re
expected to be outraged. Our outrage is then presented as a badge of honor,
evidence of virtue at a time of historic challenge to the Republic. But the
nature of the outrage – overwrought before even Trump took office – has taken a
new turn.
We are confronted daily not simply with outrage, but a kind of end-of-worldism:
America is on the brink of dictatorship; Trump is going start World War III; the
president’s access to the nuclear codes might actually destroy the universe; if
he manages to control his impulses, then his withdrawal from the Paris climate
change accords will still destroy the universe, just a bit more slowly.
Nine months into Trump’s tenure, it could have been better, but it could just as
well have been worse, perhaps much worse.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/why-your-alarmism-over-trump-is-dangerous-for-democracy
-- 2018 --
January 18: How Democracies Die review – the
secret of Trump’s success ... Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have written a
fascinating – and alarming – account of how the US shook off its democratic
safeguards and gave the world Donald Trump [the editor of this website has
not yet read this book but keeps hearing rave reviews of it]
History, the surprisingly fashionable Alexander Hamilton remarked in 1787,
teaches that men who overthrow republics begin “by paying an obsequious court to
the people; commencing demagogues and ending tyrants”.
In other words, dictators do not always arrive at the head of columns of troops.
When they seize the television stations, they do not send in soldiers but party
loyalists who promise to end “fake news”. They do not need to imprison judges,
just pack their courts and rewrite the constitution to make opposition
impossible. They win democratic elections, then dismantle democracy.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/08/how-democracies-die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt-review
February 16: Trump, Democracy, and the
Constitution
At the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, Elbridge Gerry, a delegate from
Massachusetts, warned against too much democracy. The people, he stated, were
“the dupes of pretended patriots” and were “daily misled into the most baneful
measures and opinions by the false reports circulated by designing men.” Two
hundred and thirty years later, Gerry’s concerns—which most of the framers
shared—were vindicated: the American people elected a president who disdains
basic tenets of democracy.
Democracy depends on norms, some written into the Constitution, others implicit
in it. Donald Trump regularly disparages or repudiates at least ten of these
norms:
http://www.processhistory.org/klarman-trump-democracy/
Spring 2018: Mass Psychology in the Age of
Trump
Why is Trump driving liberals berserk? Is it him or us—or both?
https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/48/mass-psychology-in-the-age-of-trump/
March 25: Letting Trump Be Trump: A 'Good
And Hard' Lesson In Democracy
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2018/03/25/letting-trump-be-trump-a-good-and-hard-lesson-in-democracy/#470bc95662b6
October 1: Can U.S. Democracy Policy Survive
Trump?
In President Donald Trump’s first year in office, U.S. policy relating to
supporting democracy abroad became starkly divided. At the level of “high
policy”—direct engagement and messaging by President Trump and his principal
foreign policy advisers—the United States sharply downgraded its global
pro-democratic posture. Trump’s praise of dictators, criticism of democratic
allies, and anti-democratic actions at home recast the United States as at best
an ambivalent actor on the global democratic stage. Yet at the same time,
pro-democratic “low policy”—quiet but serious engagement by U.S. diplomats to
counter democratic backsliding and support democratic advances overseas, and the
extensive but generally low-profile domain of U.S. democracy assistance
programs—largely carried on, making important contributions in many countries.
https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/10/01/can-u.s.-democracy-policy-survive-trump-pub-77381
October 28: Americans Aren’t Practicing
Democracy Anymore
As participation in civic life has dwindled, so has public faith in the
country’s system of government
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/losing-the-democratic-habit/568336/
November 10: If Donald Trump Is a Stress
Test for Democracy, the Midterms Were Just a Warm Up Exercise
The 2018 election proved our system really is self-correcting, but the real
referendum on the president's threat to democracy is two years away.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a24894884/2018-midterm-elections-recap/
-- 2019 --
February 18: Pres. Trump to say Venezuela's
move to democracy is 'irreversible'
President Donald Trump will seek on Monday to rally support in the largest
Venezuelan community in the U.S. for opposition leader Juan Guaido, saying
Venezuela's "current path toward democracy is irreversible."
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said that Trump will express "strong
support" for Guaido, whom the U.S. recognizes as the country's rightful
president, and condemn President Nicolas Maduro's government and its socialist
policies. As the monthslong political crisis continues, Trump is to make a
public case to Venezuela's military, which could play a decisive role in the
stalemate, to support Guaido's government. The Venezuelan military has largely
remained loyal to Maduro.
https://www.whsv.com/content/news/Pres-Trump-to-say-Venezuelas-move-to-democracy-is-irreversible-505994751.html
February 21:
India Has a Lesson for Trump: National Emergencies Are a Disaster
for Democracy
Indira Gandhi's Emergency damaged Indians' rights —
and gave the opposition a cause to unify against.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/02/21/india-has-a-lesson-for-trump-national-emergencies-are-a-disaster-for-democracy/
February 20: Trump Calls the Democratic
Party Socialist.
The White House has ramped up its message that the 2020 campaign is a choice
between the whole of American history (as represented by Trump) and socialism —
which it defines as Venezuelan-style government control combined with repression
of dissent.
The Democratic Party is still not “socialist” in any meaningful sense of the
term, and to the extent socialism has exerted any influence upon it, it is not
of the Venezuelan variety.
There is a bit more truth to the idea that the Democratic Party is moving left
on economics. Still, the scale of the shift has been overplayed. Democrats may
be moving left, but they remain to the right of most mainstream left
parties in the world. News accounts have emphasized the trend rather than the
level. The growing share of self-identified liberals within the party ranks has
attracted far more attention than the fact that moderate and conservative
Democrats still (slightly)
outnumber liberals. Twitter battles pit leftists against liberals, but
compared both to the Democratic Party’s elected officials and its voting basis,
even the liberals occupy the left-of-center space.
Parties move slowly and tend to change their character over long periods of
time. The entrance of far-left policy demanders in the Democratic Party is a
very notable development that might lead to important changes over the long run.
In the short run, the party is mostly the same. And Trump’s notion that his
reelection is all that stands between the United States and socialism is nothing
more than a paranoid fantasy.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/trump-calls-democrats-socialist-lying-bernie-sanders-2020.html
February 24: Trump Is the 'Greatest Threat'
to Democracy, Constitution 'Since the Civil War,' Congressman Says
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-greatest-threat-democracy-civil-war-1341840
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