Is it ‘harming democracy’, or merely exposing a system of theatrics & ceremony intended to masquerade as a ‘democracy’? I’m less convinced our democracy was ‘lost’ than I am its absence was long-obscured by clever elites.
the concept of a democracy, and the root of power being the will of the people is far more sound than a dictatorship.
What youre seeing today is the result of a 70 year long campaign that started when nixon resigned and roger ailes said nixon was actually innocent and founded fox news on the principle that the media was the real reason he was impeached.
and then suddenly we're surprised to see right wing authoritarian technocrats buying up every piece of media they can, as fast as they can, after they systematically destroyed every regulation put in place to prevent that.
No. Our democracy was not lost. It was conquered by right wing authoritarians who seek to purge any and all political opposition.
Yes, George W Bush definitely was. Except then, it was double entendres, economic ramifications, and lying.
We live with the legacy of Lee Atwater with his hot mic "ni*er ni*er ni*er" comments how those play out. Except now, we're back at saying ni*er is OK, and so is slurs against LGBTQ, handicapped people, and anybody else not "Republican white cis-male".
There's even an Arkansas advert that depicted welfare abusers as a gamer white guy. Why were Republicans angry? Cause it doesn't fit the "inner city black woman trope" from Reagan's Welfare Queen (aka identity theft fraudster).
Just this week, trump called a trans-woman who's running for Congress a "tranny". That's the level of our national discourse. And we're not the only ones. Brazil is turning fascist. AfD is winning through Germany. Various VPN companies are funding fascist orgs in EU.
I'd partially accept news media and social media contributing to rise in fascism. But I don't think that's the whole story. I think it's more economic in nature. Lot of people are doing worse and worse. And "other" is a very common scapegoat, along with a strongman saying it's the "other".
50 years ago, the President was supporting numerous brutal authoritarian third-world regimes that routinely used torture and murder. That still happens, but it happened more during the Cold War.
US foreign policy is actually a lot more moral now than it was during the Cold War. I think this probably has more to do with how much harder it is to hide things from the masses than it does with a change of heart, but the fact remains.