Beset by a seemingly never-ending pandemic, soaring economic insecurity and inequality, widespread distrust of government, and Trumpist efforts to subvert election boards and amass power locally, the US is hurtling towards catastrophe.
Joe Bidens election victory bought time. Given Barack Obamas 2016 assessment that Donald Trump was a fascist, Hillary Clintons recent warning that Trump is an aspiring tyrant, and Bidens declaration that the 2020 election was a battle for the soul of the nation, you might have imagined that, upon achieving a congressional majority and the presidency, Democrats would have seized the opportunity to pass an emergency package of reforms to protect American democracy. Sadly, you would have been wrong.
A year on from the 6 January Capitol riots, the US seems to be further than ever from resolving its political crises. Neo-Nazi extremists are regrouping and continuing to organize. The archaic, anti-democratic filibuster stymies progress by effectively requiring a 60-vote Senate supermajority for most legislation. Rather than jettisoning the filibuster posthaste, the Democrats equivocate. As late as July 2021, Biden nonsensically defended the filibuster. It took until October for the president to cautiously support a limited exception for voting rights reforms. Only now are the Democrats inching towards rule changes that might allow them to actually get things done.
Then there was the episode with Elizabeth MacDonough, an unelected Senate parliamentarian, who torpedoed a minimum wage increase that would have materially improved millions of peoples lives, and the Democrats kowtowed to her rather than firing her. Most critically, they have failed to enact the For the People Act, a desperately needed overhaul to the creaky machinery of American politics which would enhance election security; strengthen ethics requirements for officials; and introduce voluntary public campaign financing, same-day voter registration, and automatic voter registration.
If enough of us speak up, we'll be able to protect honesty in public life.
Trumps election was devastating. I knew his administration would be disastrous. But I was skeptical of centrist hand-wringing about Trump being a wannabe Mussolini, despite reports that Trump kept a copy of Hitlers speeches by his bed and allegedly praised Hitler in 2018, as well as repeated accusations that various Trump advisers had ties to neo-Nazis. Ive studied Hannah Arendt and Erich Fromm and Theodor Adorno extensively. Ive read It Cant Happen Here and The Plot Against America. Ive watched The Man in the High Castle. Im largely immune to the rhetoric of American exceptionalism. I even analyzed political violence in Trumps speeches. Despite all this, it was hard to imagine the US succumbing to authoritarianism. The banality of evil is easy to pay lip service to; fully internalizing the idea that evil may masquerade as buffoonery is challenging.
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Liberal fecklessness: The US is on a precipice and time is running out - Open Democracy
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