Democracy Threatened

Alongside reports of Republican voters expressing no regrets over last year's vote, Gary Younge writes about his conversations around the country.

Increasingly, for many white Americans, their racial privilege resides not in positive benefits of work and security but in the sole fact that it could be worse – they could be black or Latino. In other words, their whiteness is all they have left.

Henry Giroux sees a nation that no longer values critical thought.

This assault on higher education is accompanied by a systemic culture of lies that has descended upon America. The notion that democracy can only function with an informed public is viewed with disdain. [Fuckface] apparently rejoices in his role as a serial liar, knowing that the public is easily seduced by exhortation, emotional outbursts and sensationalism.

The corruption of the truth, education and politics is abetted by the fact that Americans have become habituated to overstimulation, a culture of immediacy and live in an ever-accelerating overflow of information and images. Experience no longer has the time to crystallize into mature and informed thought.

Meanwhile, Sascha Meinrath says our elections have been distorted by social and political forces.

These problems with America’s voting system did not materialize out of the blue, and certainly were not orchestrated by foreign powers. Rather, the election results were skewed by two longstanding, systematic, often racially motivated, well-resourced efforts: election district gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement.

Paul Blumenthal reminds us who pays for those elections.

The White House and congressional Republicans have sought to portray their tax plan as primarily a middle class tax cut. But lately, some of them have been admitting that big money political donors and wealthy CEOs, two groups that overlap heavily, are the ones who care about it the most.

[S]everal Republicans have indicated that the tax bill would boost the wealth of the already rich and ensure that their political donations keep flowing to help the GOP hold power in 2018.

And if all this isn't enough, Paul Rosenberg reports that Wisconsin just became the 28th state (out of 34 required) to call for a constitutional convention.

“Sadly, this is not fake news,” said Common Cause president Karen Hobert Flynn. “The specter of an Article V convention to rewrite the Constitution remains one of the most alarming threats to our democracy that nobody has ever heard of before. The deep-pocketed special interest groups behind this effort to call a convention are not likely to stop with a single amendment when there are no rules to prevent opening up the Constitution to a full rewrite in a runaway convention.”

Update (November 24):  Among other things, the Republican tax bill would effectively end the Johnson Amendment which prohibits tax-exempt organizations from endorsing political candidates.

To make it even worse, the tax-exempt status of churches and charities means that any millionaire or billionaire who funneled political spending through such a group could then turn around and claim that donation as a tax writeoff. Money given to a pastor in order to buy his endorsement wouldn't look any different on paper than money given to a church for its charitable work or other legitimate purposes. Republicans are creating a loophole that will allow rich people to shelter political donations from taxes while influencing election campaigns in total secrecy.

Update (December 25):  Junior uses an isolated incident of F.B.I. agents exchanging personal anti-von Clownstick texts to peddle conspiracy theory and imply that holding his father accountable amounts to treason.

My father talked about a rigged system throughout the campaign, and people were like, 'Oh, what are you talking about?' But it is. And you're seeing it.

There is, and there are, people at the highest levels of government that don't want to let America be America.

Update (December 30):  Cas Mudde sees the president as a symptom of an underlying danger.

[T]he Republican establishment had radicalised its base to such an extent that it was no longer representative of its views. [Von Clownstick] didn’t hijack the Republican party, he provided the base with a real representative again.

Update (February 26, 2018):  Cenk Uygur criticizes Common Cause and points out that a constitutional convention can only propose amendments, quoting Article V:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress.

The issue that Uygur is pushing is an amendment to get all money out of elections. And Lee Fang reports on how Chinese government owned Wanhua joined the American Chemistry Council which will allow the Chinese to pour dark money into U.S. elections. The influence of multinational corporations is much greater than anything Russia could do.

Update (July 9, 2018):  Steven Rosenfeld lists several trends with potential negative impacts on voting. And in an interview with Chauncey DeVega, Malcolm Nance warns that the Russians have a long term plan. He refers to them as "ultra-conservative Christian nationalists".

Their goal is to use democracy to destroy democracy. You want to get rid of democracy, have an election. But this is an election where they vote away your rights. This is an election where you lose to voter suppression and aid from a foreign power. But at the end of that loss, these enemies of real democracy then say, “Oh, no. It was all fair and square.” The Republicans want an autocracy where the rights of minorities and others are not protected. Vladimir Putin, with [Fuckface von Clownstick] and with the European conservative movements, are building an axis of autocracies, and the United States is on the relatively quick road to becoming an autocracy and no longer a constitutional republic.

I agree American democracy is under attack, it's just hard to resolve whether internal or external forces are the greatest threat.

Update (July 11, 2018):  Rosenfeld continues with additional threats to democracy.

There’s even more evidence that the absence of restraint, or of meaningful checks and balances, is a defining feature of our political time. There’s an authoritarian dominating the presidency’s bully pulpit. There are accountability-averse election rulings from the Supreme Court, where the right to segregate voters to fabricate popular vote majorities (gerrymandering) or to erode an opponent's base (partisan voter purges) was upheld.

Update (September 14, 2018):  Issue One finds that 75 percent of "dark money" is spent by just 15 organizations.

Update (September 18, 2018):  A court order is going into effect requiring dark money organizations to disclose large donors.