American democracy is doomed
vox.com
vox.com
This is way too dismissive of what's actually happened in American history. The word "transient" implies that the political problems eventually went away, and American democracy kept on going.
But what actually happened is that each political problem was addressed by changing our government--either through Constitution amendment, through federal legislation, or through the creation of new court precedent.
So the American government of today would not look very familiar to the people who wrote the Constitution. If they were alive today, they would think that what they created has already been replaced. We'll feel the same way 100 years from now...big deal. People always feel out of place as they age.
The fundamental benefit of the American system of government is that it can be changed in a wide variety of ways without violence.
In truth, this article engages in a sort of fallacy, we're only doomed if we think doom is the only outcome that's possible. There's another version of this article that could happen called "American democracy can be fixed with sensible design".
Some modules can be completely re-written for better results, for instance our tax system could be replaced by some type of flat-tax.
Other ones can get by with significant refactoring over a long period, maybe financial regulation could have better consumer protection and ultimately allow for a more equitable distribution of wealth (I'm' not economist, maybe those goals don't even involve each other)
And other ones just need bug patches, for instance interstate commerce, which I'd guess is smooth as a cucumber right now, but we could have more states align on issues of policy that create confusion in the marketplace (a Delaware C copr is a great example of people finding those simple solutions).
It is hard to think of a really good, functioning part of government, but generally those are the ones we don't even notice. The government is great at handing out money to people, and that is often touted as the only social program we really need. We can reform the broken way it hands out contracts to companies.
Here's the thing. Starting over is a fanciful idea, but completely stupid. When you re-build a system, you have to re-build the parts that worked too. And for what it's worth, democracy works and change happens. Yes it sucks that it's slow, but it's sure.
The cutoff line is, very roughly, "does the middle class still exist". If serious, significant fixes are not applied by then, it will be too late. Not only will we have already lost a lot of what the patches should be intended to protect, it is probably impossible to do anything besides a "rewrite" afterwords. It is hard to get people to support "let's save the OLD system" once everything starts going all Robespierre.
The article likes parliamentary-style democracies, but what happens there is that the party in power can pass pretty much anything it wants, limited only by the members' willingness to go along. American-style checks and balances mean that, even if you have a majority, you can't pass your brilliant idea without selling it to at least some of the minority. I assert that that's a good thing - your idea has to make sense outside your party for you to be able to turn it into law.
The only humane option is secessionism, which has been poisoned in american political discourse by its historical association with slavery. Why Alabama and California should have anything more than, perhaps, a mutual defense pact, at this point, is beyond me.
The American people aren't nearly as polarized as the American people think.
We aren't "headed toward" Fascism. The Progressive Movement and their fundamental changes to the government of the US was a core inspiration for Fascism. This is old, old news.