Democracy In America Is In Trouble

I am a pessimist when it comes to the future of America's democracy. I see the problem and I can't point towards a path that I am confident would solve it within the boundaries of normalcy. Even voting today didn't help that feeling.

The people fighting to save democracy are doing so with fact, but the people willing and working to destroy it are operating on a feeling. The former is relying on data and the latter on dogma.

These are different languages speaking to different facets of the human experience. The antidemocracy faithful cannot and will not be dissuaded by facts. Faith, which doesn’t require evidence, can be fed and affirmed by things that aren’t true. And that is precisely what is happening.

That faith doesn’t even allow for the notion that destroying democracy would be bad, or markedly worse than present conditions. So people may even believe that they will benefit from democracy’s demise.

This is Trump’s twisted legacy, something that will endure, no matter what happens during these midterms and whether he runs once more for president. The damage he has done and continues to do will, in the end, be far bigger than he ever was.

He has given birth to a distortion that will long outlive him.

As Biden pointed out, the country is perilously close to installing officials who want to undo it and remake it, who want a partial democracy or none at all. America is one bad election away from being a memory.

From a Charles M. Blow op-ed at the New York Times.