Is based on history which has shown that the liberal process that underlies America works. An honestly informed public, each with a vote, will tend to produce a result that is right and fair.
The doubt is whether conservatism has eroded enough of that process to thwart it, thereby leading the nation down a long, wrong path based on the speculation of a few elite.
Democracy never had a chance once television arrived.
Trump’s not an avatar of the elite here; they put up a platoon of challengers in the primaries, and Trump knocked them down. Trump is a conman who (to borrow from another election cycle) has gone rogue. His appeals to bigotry, nativism, misogyny and ignorance are much too naked for GOP elites; he gives away the game. But that doesn’t matter. The elites are stuck riding the tiger they created when they nurtured and built the Republican base.
Trump is sick, mentally ill, unhealthy in the head. He is going down and trying to drag everyone,the entire country down with him.
The only analogy I can think of is the domestic abuser being dragged off by the cops screaming I love you with the victim standing there bloody and bruised with two black eyes.
Part of the solution is that Democrats have to start offering economic policies that address the seriously eroded life chances of huge numbers of workers in huge swathes of the country. Like fascism in the 1930’s, the soil for Trumpism to grow is prepared by economic pain.
The GOP has fouled the experiment: Trump didn’t appoint himself its leader. I would be very clear on this if I were a Dem running for congress. Trump is the GOP and vice versa. This is hugely relevant to the future, too because the GOP will be around at the next election promising the ignore climate change, cut taxes for the rich, repeal ACA, etc etc. If we are worried about American democracy, it’s not particularly good news that the US has essentially developed a Russian roulette electoral model whereby every 4 years the revolver is placed against the national temple then shot. for the last 3 years, the chamber has been empty and a Democrat has won. But that run cannot go on forever. The GOP has to reform itself.
Just like Trump made the banks and investors and tax payers take the damage when his other projects went south, the rest of us will pay for his failure on this run, and he’ll make out just fine. This is how he rolls.
Plenty of other democracies have survived the introduction of television. What’s unique to the U.S. context, I think, is creation of a fully-independent right-wing media bubble (implemented on radio, cable TV, and online), which is large enough that significant parts of the population can take their entire worldview from it. This infrastructure created both an appetite for authoritarianism and lies, and a political party apparatus wholly dependent on those lies. Trump saw this as an opportunity and executed a hostile takeover.
The GOP pollution began with Reagan and the Bush Crime family.
Trump is nothing original. Think “welfare queens,” Willie Horton, Iran -Contra, Iraq and so many other GOP divisive atrocities too numerous to mention.
Aye, there’s the rub. Whose responsibility is it to honestly inform the public? The free press whose freedom is guaranteed by the Constitution, that’s who. The government is prohibited from regulating and interfering with the press, but there is nothing to prevent the press from abandoning its responsibility and choosing to pursue profits rather than information to honestly inform the public.
In a democracy the press should operate free from governmental control. Democratic governments do not have ministries of information to regulate content of newspapers or the activities of journalists; requirements that journalists be vetted by the state; or force journalists to join government-controlled unions.
• A free press informs the public, holds leaders accountable, and provides a forum for debate of local and national issues.
• Democracies foster the existence of a free press. An independent judiciary, civil society with rule of law, and free speech all support a free press. A free press must have legal protections.
• In democracies the government is accountable for its actions. Citizens therefore expect to be informed about decisions their governments make on their behalf. The press facilitates this “right to know,” by serving as a watchdog over the government, helping citizens to hold government accountable, and questioning its policies. Democratic governments grant journalists access to public meetings and public documents. They do not place prior restraints on what journalists may say or print.
• The press, itself, must act responsibly. Through professional associations, independent press councils, and “ombudsmen,” in-house critics who hear public complaints, the press responds to complaints of its own excesses and remains internally accountable.
• Democracy requires the public to make choices and decisions. In order for the public to trust the press, journalists must provide factual reporting based on credible sources and information. Plagiarism and false reporting are counterproductive to a free press.
[Excerpt from “A Free Press” taken from the U.S. Department of State publication Principles of Democracy]
Principles of Democracy is a State Department instrument meant to instruct emerging nations in how to create a democracy. The principles it espouses could use a little application a lot closer to home.
The nation deserves better than this ‘unreality TV campaign’, for which the GOP is entirely to blame. They own their own demise. They bought it, they broke it, it’s theirs to carry to the party’s grave.
GHW Bush’s thought on Trump as his VP
And Krugman’s look at Ryan’s doom and gloom if Hillary wins. BTW if you’re like me and don’t subscribe to NYT and their limit of articles per month ever keeps you for seeing these use a different web surfer or a chrome incognito window.
The Big Lie
“This level of relying on wholesale fabrications is unprecedented,” Osgood said.
"What Trump is doing very closely parallels the approach
that Adolf Hitler used in his propaganda campaigns."
Commendable that Lauren Fox is giving this idea play 3 weeks before the election.
At the least-- it is before.
But writers, editors, and producers-- of much bigger, broader platforms than TPM–
needed to be far less polite about this specific parallel-- long before now.
Aside from my own musings-- many other laypersons (here and elsewhere) have made the connection to both the rhetoric and the possible ensuing outcomes-- of allowing Trump’s lies to go unchallenged-- without resistance in the public sphere.
Here is where I could make some educated guesses as to ‘why’-- in a country where speech and rebuttal is broadcast easily and virally-- that a candidate of Trump’s ilk was able to advance politically to this point.
But there’s just one. Profit. At the expense of democracy.
Sold off in pieces, in exchange for theatrical demagoguery-- that plays well to an ignorant audience.
jw1
Shouldn’t that more aptly read ‘befouled?’
This is a popular meme, but there are a number of articles about the demographics of trump voters that bring it into question. Inthink dylan mathews in Vox for one. Party loyalty, and White nationalism seems to be his core attractions.
And Obama’s current BIG LIE is that Russia is responsible for the hacking of DNC! And Obama’s BIG LIE is that the Ukraine was destroyed by Russia, not him. And Obama’s BIG LIE is that Russia shot down the Malaysian airplane over the Ukraine. And Obama’s BIG LIE is that … ad infinitum. Who are you kidding anyhow. BIG LIES are an everyday occurrence in the MSM and current regime’s propaganda. Obama is in fact the BIG LIAR, for 8 years now.
When you lose Mukasey, you know you are really over the edge. http://www.latimes.com/news/la-oe-turley24oct24-story.html
It’s appropriate that Gingrich is out there feeding the corrosive “rigged” theme. He bears the greatest responsibility for the sickness that has infected out politics for the past 25 years. It was Gingrich that exposed and exploited weaknesses in our constitution to hunt a president. We’ve never recovered.
As distasteful as it is, after she wins, Clinton will have to reach out to these yahoos voting for Trump to keep the country together.
Sister Vladimir is standing over your shoulder with a ruler isn’t she?
jw1