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How to Destroy a Democracy: Inequality, Distrust, and the Myth of the “Far Left”
It took 44 years to make Americans unfit for democracy, but nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition
It’s possible we’ve been focusing on the wrong problem. We ask “How can we return democracy to the American people?” Perhaps we should be asking “how can we return the American people to democracy?” Because the challenge we face today is this: a large segment of the American public is no longer fit to serve as citizens of a democratic republic. Thanks to decades of relentless conditioning, these people have been taught to believe that democracy is a farce, that half of this country is their mortal enemy, and that tolerance, compromise, or evidence-based reasoning are unnecessary burdens for governing America.
When the Republican Party launched its project to save America from diversity under Ronald Reagan in 1980, they probably weren’t trying to create a fascist state. They simply wanted to maintain the level of white-male supremacy that had dominated American politics since its founding. That supremacy had been under threat since the 1960s, due to rising demands by women and minorities for the equal rights and privileges promised by the US Constitution, but never delivered. Those demands were a threat to the existing…
