We focus so much on arguing over who is at fault in this country that I think sometimes we fail to alert on what's actually happening. I would just like to point out, without attempting to assign blame, that American political institutions appear to be losing common knowledge of their legitimacy, and abandoning certain important traditions of cooperative governance. It would be slightly hyperbolic, but not unreasonable to me, to term what has happened "democratic backsliding".
Let's imagine America of 2012 was measured 0.8 on the fictionally accurate "legitimate democracy index", and Hungary of 2012 was measured 0.5. My thesis is that we'd now be at 0.75, and that our regressions seem to have calcified despite a calming culture war. Within the last three or four years we have seen:
The world's largest protest-riot ever, when measured by estimated damage to property.
The leader of the opposition party being arrested on a mix of real and recently-invented process crimes in several different jurisdictions a year before his campaign.
A presidential candidate openly contesting an election as fradulent; a third[1] of Americans coming to believe that our last presidential election was probably or definitely illegitimate.
Recent, and novel, legislative movements by Republicans to censure and fine Democratic congressmen millions of dollars outside of the criminal justice system.[2]
Serious and underreported attempts at dramatically expanding political control over the civil service[3] and, if you'll permit me to speak anecdotally, serious and successful attempts at unprecedented political loyalty testing of appointed silovik.
You can disagree with how any one political faction is characterizing the above events, or how I'm characterizing the above events. But I think that's missing the point. Maybe Donald Trump is a clown and all of his indictments are perfectly legitimate and that they ultimately demonstrate the dispassionate fairness of our nation's prosecutors. Even if that's the case, perception is the leading indicator for democratic stability, and a large amount of Republicans do not agree. Since Republicans now believe that the arrests are politically motivated, and that Democrats are defecting against longstanding political norms, they are pressuring their politicians to escalate[2][4] and calling them traitors when they refuse to do so. Democrats, in turn, will see this behavior and change their posture whether the election was actually stolen to begin with or not.
It's possible to exaggerate the danger. I do not expect the entire political system of the United States to change anytime soon. But since 1989 I think it has been appropriate to have a degree of knightian uncertainty in predicting the eternal dominance of this or that regime, on the basis that modern technology and secret police make resistance impossible. If you currently habitually round probabilities of serious repression or further democratic backsliding in the West to zero, I suggest moving that up to 1%-per-decade and spending a little bit of time thinking about what you'd do if this continues for five more years and your estimate increases to 5 or 10 percent.
I think you can see this happening more today. States like Florida and Texas are marketing themselves as bastions for those on the right to escape overly invasive federal/state policies, particularly those that appeal to the LGBTQ/gender/racial culture war talking points. On the left, you have states like California, Washington, Oregon, and Colorado leading the charge against overly invasive federal/state policies against bodily autonomy WRT drug usage and now abortion.
I'd like to know why you term this "devolution," as this seems to be the intended modus operandi of the United States. My only hope is that this "devolution" continues further to the point that local, municipal politics becomes most important. I view this as the fastest way out of the political gridlock we face ourselves in. If Americans can view neighbors as neighbors again, working together to make their communities better for one another, rather than enemies trying to overthrow the government or prosecute political opponents, I think tensions will ratchet down dramatically.
I'm not sure how we can take steps to change the culture to view local, municipal politics as most important. I think it's a very difficult walk. I think community-based news and dialogue is key to start. Local news outlets are disappearing, with corporate consolidation favoring a "cookie-cutter" / "assembly line" approach to journalism favoring national news stories. On top of this, I believe social media timelines (particularly Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook) lead users to engage with national or international news stories as those are most likely to go viral (they're "bigger" or "more impactful"). This idea that these stories are "more impactful" is a red herring, in my opinion. They really don't have an impact on one's day-to-day life quite like the story about what new zoning laws your city council discussed in last Thursday's meeting.
We focus so much on arguing over who is at fault in this country that I think sometimes we fail to alert on what's actually happening. I would just like to point out, without attempting to assign blame, that American political institutions appear to be losing common knowledge of their legitimacy, and abandoning certain important traditions of cooperative governance. It would be slightly hyperbolic, but not unreasonable to me, to term what has happened "democratic backsliding".
Let's imagine America of 2012 was measured 0.8 on the fictionally accurate "legitimate democracy index", and Hungary of 2012 was measured 0.5. My thesis is that we'd now be at 0.75, and that our regressions seem to have calcified despite a calming culture war. Within the last three or four years we have seen:
You can disagree with how any one political faction is characterizing the above events, or how I'm characterizing the above events. But I think that's missing the point. Maybe Donald Trump is a clown and all of his indictments are perfectly legitimate and that they ultimately demonstrate the dispassionate fairness of our nation's prosecutors. Even if that's the case, perception is the leading indicator for democratic stability, and a large amount of Republicans do not agree. Since Republicans now believe that the arrests are politically motivated, and that Democrats are defecting against longstanding political norms, they are pressuring their politicians to escalate[2][4] and calling them traitors when they refuse to do so. Democrats, in turn, will see this behavior and change their posture whether the election was actually stolen to begin with or not.
It's possible to exaggerate the danger. I do not expect the entire political system of the United States to change anytime soon. But since 1989 I think it has been appropriate to have a degree of knightian uncertainty in predicting the eternal dominance of this or that regime, on the basis that modern technology and secret police make resistance impossible. If you currently habitually round probabilities of serious repression or further democratic backsliding in the West to zero, I suggest moving that up to 1%-per-decade and spending a little bit of time thinking about what you'd do if this continues for five more years and your estimate increases to 5 or 10 percent.
Presidential Election Poll, January 2021, Umass
Adam Schiff defeats effort to fine and censure him 15 million dollars
Schedule F Appointment
Trump's inner circle is secretly making plans to fire thousands government employees if he wins in 2024, report says