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Democracy go down the hole

I've been learning about why people suck at governing themselves. In the last few decades a lot of democracies around the world have collapsed. The common theme is that the political middle falls out and extremist populism does a gradual takeover.

Populism can be left- or right-wing. It doesn't matter. Essentially, politics becomes more and more polarized with one side that's more politically homogeneous. This side comes to believe that "their way" is the "right way" and that all other ways are wrong and don't deserve to share in governance. Their concepts of rights and privilege become narrow and exclusionary. The country should be "our way" and no one else's. You can see the trouble with that in a country as diverse as the U.S.

A key belief in populist uprisings is that they're being oppressed by the "elites" on the other side. That's conservatism today. The Liberals are coming! The Deep State is suppressing us! They're taking our marriage! Our faith! Our guns! They're waging war on Christmas! They're censoring our free speech! They're making us socialists! They're in league with foreign powers to destroy our democracy!

With the population swept up in this sense of fearful victimization, it's easy for dubious leaders to show up and take advantage. They rile up a larger and larger base with fearmongering propaganda. In the end, they're able to subvert democracy with strong arm techniques in "the name of the people." The people are duped into thinking that they're ruling themselves but it's actually the populist elite and authoritarian leaders who have usurped power.

We've seen this again and again among democracies in recent times. Unbeknownst to me, scholarly research has already been showing that the U.S. has been in a democratic backslide for decades. It's been a gentle decline which is why it's been unnoticed by most. And considering that the U.S. is the oldest democracy in the world, I'm a little surprised that it took this long to happen.

The Right has been leaning more and more into this extreme populist thinking ever since religious nationalism was invented in the 1950s to counter the "godless commies." Ultra-conservative televangelists and aggressive far-right pundits like Rush Limbaugh became common and grew a following. But this movement had only limited effect in politics until the last four years when it got a shot in the arm by a president who lacked the ethics to prevent him from taking advantage of it. There was a huge demographic that was primed and chomping at the bit, just waiting for someone like him to come along.

Trump will be out of office in a couple weeks but in his wake we'll be left to deal with this radicalized movement. And it's going to last a long time. Republicans in Congress are making sure of that. So the problem isn't over. As long as this ideology has power there will be leaders who try to take advantage of it. Many of them are doing it now. I don't know what that means for our future.