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  • Essay / Trump and democracy

    He ran his campaign on the promise of “Make America Great Again,” the slogan emblazoned on the baseball caps he often wore at his public rallies, and is spoken out against political correctness, illegal immigration and government lobbyists. while promising to cut taxes, renegotiate trade deals and create millions of jobs for American workers. It's been a year since the election of Donald Trump, and political scientists suspect a decline in American democracy over the past year. How do we know if Trump is eroding our democracy? It rejects democratic rules, we can compare it to other countries with direct experience of declining democracies and understanding what democracy is. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayTrump himself – rejecting democratic rules, denying the legitimacy of political rivals, tolerating political violence, and considering restrictions on critics’ civil liberties – tests positive as “authoritarian.” Political scientists use the term authoritarianism to describe a way of governing that values ​​order and control over personal freedom. A government run by authoritarianism is usually led by a dictator. A 2011 study on democratic backsliding identified 53 historical cases of democratic decline. Of these, only five involved coups or other sudden collapses into authoritarianism. (how to lose). A democratically elected and potential authoritarian candidate's first year in office is an unreliable indicator of future democratic collapse, and has compared the United States with 1930s Spain, 1970s Chile, and Hungary, contemporary Turkey and Venezuela. They rejected the argument recently made by the Wall Street Journal, among others, that fears of rising anti-democratic forces in the United States amounted to a liberal fever dream, while warning that Trump's left-wing opponents could themselves fuel these forces. a bit like a sandcastle. Its construction is long but it can quickly be swept away. The Trump wave is unlikely to wipe out democracy in the United States, but it is gradually eroding it. We have already become dangerously accustomed to many of Trump's unacceptably authoritarian habits. We barely blink as he posts tweets calling for an investigation into his political opponents or the shutdown of critical media outlets. Such behavior poisons the minds of many voters, who applaud his strongman tactics and even falsely believe that Congress's nonpartisan legislative marker is "little more than fake news." Many in Trump's base now trust crazy InfoWars conspiracy theories more than accurate, well-researched theories. report. And the Republican Party's willingness to incorporate populist zealots like Roy Moore shows the extent to which Trump has corroded previously bipartisan American values. After Trump, we will struggle to repair the damage, raising the possibility that the era of democratic decadence he ushered in will endure and endure. This is the most likely scenario: American democracy will survive, but in a profoundly weakened form. In a recent academic article, we identified 37 cases in 25 different countries during the post-war period in which democratic quality declined significantly (even though a fully authoritarian regime did not experience a significant decline). does not emerge). In other words, around one in eight countries experienced measurable deterioration)