America's Waning Love Affair with Liberal Democracy

[Danny Bateman]

20 of America's top political scientists gathered to discuss our democracy. They're scared.

 

Quote

On October 6, some of America’s top political scientists gathered at Yale University to answer these questions. And nearly everyone agreed: American democracy is eroding on multiple fronts — socially, culturally, and economically. 

 

The scholars pointed to breakdowns in social cohesion (meaning citizens are more fragmented than ever), the rise of tribalism, the erosion of democratic norms such as a commitment to rule of law, and a loss of faith in the electoral and economic systems as clear signs of democratic erosion. 

 

No one believed the end is nigh, or that it’s too late to solve America’s many problems. Scholars said that America’s institutions are where democracy has proven most resilient. So far at least, our system of checks and balances is working — the courts are checking the executive branch, the press remains free and vibrant, and Congress is (mostly) fulfilling its role as an equal branch. 

 

But there was a sense that the alarm bells are ringing.

Yascha Mounk, a lecturer in government at Harvard University, summed it up well: “If current trends continue for another 20 or 30 years, democracy will be toast.”

 

Fascinating article from Vox detailing many of the reasons the faith many of us have in our government is faltering.

 

Lots to dig into there. Apparently a poll in 2014 1 in 6 respondents supporter military rule here. Nuts. Kind of shows where sentiments are with regards to how well the current system is working, though.

 

Love to hear some thoughts on this.

 

[zoogs]

"America is good" is just so boring.

[JJ Husker]

Good read. I've got mixed feelings on the article or rather on the conference of "top political scientists". I agree that things are trending in a bad direction for democracy. Everything pointed out is in disarray. But I am very suspect when they claim each and every of these things is what leads to the breakdown of democracy. It seems maybe a little self serving at this particular time coming from obviously liberal left folk.  It's like they looked at everything going on in this country over the last few years and decided to claim "that's" what kills democracies. I'm not convinced at all they're wrong and it feels right but I'd like to be provided with the historic proof and case studies that point to all these things they highlighted being actual indicators of a democracy dying. I hate Trump and our congress and what has been happening in this country but I can't shake the feeling this was done to legitimize anti-Trump sentiment.  I guess I don't have much faith in the fair handedness of our higher education institutions.

[Danny Bateman]

19 minutes ago, El Diaco said:

Good read. I've got mixed feelings on the article or rather on the conference of "top political scientists". I agree that things are trending in a bad direction for democracy. Everything pointed out is in disarray. But I am very suspect when they claim each and every of these things is what leads to the breakdown of democracy. It seems maybe a little self serving at this particular time coming from obviously liberal left folk.  It's like they looked at everything going on in this country over the last few years and decided to claim "that's" what kills democracies. I'm not convinced at all they're wrong and it feels right but I'd like to be provided with the historic proof and case studies that point to all these things they highlighted being actual indicators of a democracy dying. I hate Trump and our congress and what has been happening in this country but I can't shake the feeling this was done to legitimize anti-Trump sentiment.  I guess I don't have much faith in the fair handedness of our higher education institutions.

 

Thanks for honest thoughts. It does get a bit old having echo chamber type conversations where everyone agrees on a particular matter. Seems like a lot of what binds us together at this particular point in time in political history is our mutual dislike of Trump and how the government is trending. It can be easy to forget how differently we all view different issues were it not be for an overwhelmingly despised POTUS to agree on.

 

I guess my take on the article was that so many political minds got together in one place to kick around hypotheses about whether & why US democracy could be faltering, given the climate. I took it to mean the answer isn't necessarily yes, but they kind of started with that premise and took stabs at why it might be occurring. 

 

In that sense, every one of them probably has their own ideas, and everyone else probably agrees or disagrees about them to different extents. I don't take it to mean each one of them unanimously agrees with all the guesses they made. Your point about how echo chambery the world of first-class academia can be is well-taken, though. As is your wondering about whether they started with an assertion and searched for evidence to support it instead of the other way around. Those are fair, IMO.

 

That said, I thought some of the ideas they put forth were incredibly interesting. Any you particularly agreed with/didn't like?

Edited October 14, 2017 by dudeguyy

[JJ Husker]

Oh I agreed with pretty much everything and I agree that none of it is good for our country or democracy. Wealth imbalance, those in power serving their interests rather than those of the citizenry, people voting in a tribal fashion, not looking out for the good of the collective.......I agree they are all problems. I’d just like to see the proof or evidence that these are in fact indicators of democracy dying. I suspect they are but I’m leery of the source on this one.

[Danny Bateman]

2 hours ago, zoogs said:

"America is good" is just so boring.

 

Care to expound upon this some?

[zoogs]

I don't think we have a love affair with liberal democracy. I think we have a love affair with wealth, power, and global pre-eminence. 

 

Compared to that, the moral goodness of America just doesn't have the same entertaining cachet. We don't perceive the execution of our democracy as a constant tension that requires us to repeatedly make the right choices. We're slaves to excitement.

[NM11046]

Boy there's a ton to unpack there, but the big take away for me is that Americans' don't hold views on things, but instead vote based on tribalism.  True, and scary.

[B.B. Hemingway]

10 minutes ago, NM11046 said:

Boy there's a ton to unpack there, but the big take away for me is that Americans' don't hold views on things, but instead vote based on tribalism.  True, and scary.

 

Can't say I completely agree with you there. Much of that tribalism is hardened through shared views. If anything, I find Americans to be passionate about their "views", however right or wrong they may be.

[zoogs]

Views governed by tribal instinct -- would that be better?

[B.B. Hemingway]

Sure, why not.

[zoogs]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/14/opinion/sunday/milo-yiannopoulos-white-nationalism.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

 

There's a great passage here that uses this term: "Honest reckoning".  is paramount. Every hard issue we confront today, there's this pull towards dismissing it away or reframing it as normal, not so bad, whatever. But this is the Darkest Timeline, and we have got to not lose sight of that.

 

White Americans hunger for plausible deniability and swaddle in it and always have — for the sublime relief of deferred responsibility, the soft violence of willful ignorance, the barbaric fiction of rugged individualism. The worst among us have deployed it to seduce and herd the vast, complacent center: It’s O.K. You didn’t do anything wrong. You earned everything you have. Benefiting from genocide is fine if it was a long time ago.

 

Posting here as I think it touches on 'resiliency' in an important way. Is Milo that bad? Are these just "partisan, divided" times? How about getting both sides of the story? Etc. 

[VectorVictor]

A lot of this has to do with the deliberate erosion of our public education system--there's less emphasis on critical and scientific thought processes, and more of an emphasis on regurgitation and test taking due to standardized testing and the focus on trying to put a simple business metric on a complicated process like education. 

 

This doesn't seem like much, but in the long run, it severely impacts a person's ability to use cognitive thought processes to absorb and critically evaluate news and information presented to them. This leads to the regurgitation of data via echo chambers and the tribalism we experience today. Additionally, we've already heard from college professors that kids coming into college are woefully under-prepared to engage in critical thought compared to 10 or 20 years ago. 

 

Couple the erosion of America via its public education system with easy to digest news media from the right that predicates its messages on fear, intolerance, tribalism, and hatred--concepts that are easy for those not accustomed to critical thought to latch on to--and it's not a shock we're sliding this way. And I'd suggest that if we don't start at the base of this problem and get back to what made public education great, we will continue to see further erosion to where we reach the point of no return. 

[zoogs]

Great point. Unfortunately the erosion of public ed is seized upon by people like Betsy Devos and the rest of the GOP to sink it further. And why not? An undiscerning populace is the only kind that could support them.

[Danny Bateman]

That's a fantastic point. I feel like arguments about critical thinking & the woefully lacking civic education provided by our public schools are points that ge brought up in a lot of left-leaning circles. But at the same time, I don't feel it's merely hurtling partisan bricks to say that Betsy DeVos is a horribly unqualified Sec of Ed that bought her seat with many years of expensive Republican donations. I don't feel she has any vested interest in improving public schools in general, much less the components of their curriculum that prepare students to be educated, engaged citizens. 

 

One the other hand, conservatives often complain about universities and colleges as liberal breeding grounds that indoctrinate impressionable students. They claim that the news media does not give them a fair shake & a strong liberal bias exists in colleges, news, Hollywood, etc. They seem to me to be more in favor of expanding freedoms and 1A rights for churches, religious groups, gun rights groups... but seemingly ONLY those groups. They seem to think other groups have enough power in the current climate & the aforementioned groups need a boost.

 

Who's right? I'm trying to be fair to conservatives here, even though I don't believe a lot of what they espouse. But it seems to me we currently have a duopoly regarding the best course of action forward: Either we redouble our efforts on education en route to creating a more informed electorate that can better elect politicians who to truly represent their interests, or we focus on enhancing our own positions & advancing our interests, often at the expense of others or at the price of dishonesty or an authoritarian-leaning regime in order to get it done.