ALIEN DEMOCRACY

Remember my post “Happy Memorial Day!” the book report on How Democracies Die?  https://mkj-actually.blogspot.com/2019/05/happy-memorial-day.html.  Well this post is about what replaces a dead democracy:  an autocracy.  I like to think of this transformation from one form of government into another as The Alien which burrows into the living, breathing body politic, destroys its host from within, and when it’s fully formed, bursts forth as an ugly beast, discarding the destroyed carcass of democracy that gave it life.

What the heck am I talking about?!  Let’s start with a few definitions.

We throw the word “democracy” around liberally (no pun intended) these days.  But do we remember what it means?  Webster’s defines it as a government by the people, especially rule by the majority, in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.  

Rule by the majority.  Hmmm.  Given that:  (1) a few of the recent presidents elected by the Electoral College did not receive the most popular votes; (2) extreme gerrymandering, which makes a joke out of the concept of one-man-one-vote and is now all but sanctioned by the Supreme Court; (3) the Voting Rights Act, once a check on voter suppression by the states, now leaves the states “on their honor” to do the right thing; and (4) the most recent attempt to add a citizenship question to the U. S. Census which, if successful, is guaranteed to further suppress voting, it looks to me like we’ve already moved substantially far afield from the definition.  

But does that make the U. S. an autocracy?  Webster’s defines the word “autocracy” as a government in which one person possesses unlimited power.  The U. S. hasn’t yet given birth to The Alien, but it sure seems to be “a little pregnant.”  To be clear:  Donald Trump did not create this fertile ground.  The conception of autocracy was made possible by the extreme partisanship and polarization paralyzing the U. S. today.  That did not originate with this President, although he has without question exploited it for his own political ends.  The U. S. has a long history of emasculating and rendering dysfunctional its democratic institutions.  But what is happening today in tandem with this sad history is a slow slide into autocracy that can claim as its father, Donald Trump. 

Tanks but No Tanks, July 4, 2019

Is that an exaggeration?  If only.  Like a wannabe dictator ticking off a checklist, Trump:

• used the 4^th of July to stage an unprecedented military display 
• demonizes “the other”- migrants, Muslims, “shit hole countries"
• is building a hereditary dynasty
• prostrates himself before strongmen
• steers foreign leaders to his hotels, golf courses, and resorts for financial gain
• muses about being President for life
• hints he would not accept the outcome of an election he lost
• threatens to jail political opponents
• characterizes the Democratic Party as the enemy
• pursues vendettas against media companies critical of him
• orders his aides and Attorney General to ignore Congressional subpoenas
• packs the federal courts with sympathetic  judges
• undermines the free press
• destroys the truth through constant bull shitting
• puts himself before country

Is this "just Trump being Trump?"  I don't think so.  This is an arrogation of power in a single individual.  It's a classic authoritarian move.

If it makes you feel any better, this autocratic trend is a worldwide phenomenon.  The Interpreter, a New York Times newsletter, reported in March on a study by two political scientists from the University of Gothenburg, who concluded that we are in the midst of a third wave of democratic decline, which they call “autocratization.”  This third wave began in 1994 and has been more difficult to spot than were prior anti-democratic waves that manifested themselves just before and immediately after World War II:  fascism and the Cold War.  That’s because modern democracies don’t turn into autocracies overnight through military coups or invasions anymore.  They change gradually, within a decaying democratic shell.  Like The Alien, autocrats kill from within.  The Interpreter:

The most common form of authoritarianism in the world today, the authors [of the study] find, isn’t pure dictatorship but something called “electoral autocracy,” in which elections are still held — sometimes with votes freely cast and accurately counted — but under conditions that prevent real democracy. That often means, for instance, harassing the opposition [Democrats], subverting the rule of law[demanding loyalty from the U. S. Attorney General], or restricting media freedom [the press is the enemy of the people] (or, more common these days, finding ways to turn prominent outlets [Fox News] into unofficial propaganda arms).

Here is a link to the study:  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13510347.2019.1582029 and a rather disturbing quote from its authors (emphasis added): 

About a third of all autocratization episodes (N = 75) started under a democratic dispensation. Almost all of the latter (N = 60, 80%) led to the country turning into an autocracy. This should give us great pause about the specter of the current third wave of autocratization. Very few episodes of autocratization starting in democracies have ever been stopped before countries become autocracies.

In other words, once a democracy is raped by an autocrat, it’s hard to abort its offspring.  Witness Venezuela and the resilience of Chávez and Maduro.

Venezuela Economic Protests, February 2019

I should make clear that the study, which looked at data through 2017, does not include the U. S. on its list of countries experiencing autocratic episodes since 1994.  And it’s also important to note that the authors point out that this third wave of autocratization is slower-moving and might be milder than previous slides.  But at the same time, they say that there are other countries on the threshold of a decline in democracy and that “the third wave may still be picking up.”  The authors don’t hint at whether the U. S. is one of those countries on the threshold, and we don’t know how they would view the U. S. in 2019, two years beyond their research and further into the Trump presidency.  They urge that additional research is needed to understand why 20% of the anti-democratic episodes they studied did not result in autocracies.   I couldn’t agree more.  Perhaps then we would be able to predict whether the U. S. will or will not be one of the 80%.

But at this point, we’re all just gazing into a crystal ball.  The truth is that no one knows whether the Trump presidency will give birth to The Alien.  But it sure seems to be growing something ugly and evil inside.  And that makes me think the nation might need an abortion in 2020.

Keep it real!

Marilyn