Rachel Brougham: Is our democracy dying?
Imagine the following scenarios.
We have an election. But long before we even cast our vote, the current president starts to cast doubt in the process. He encourages his followers to act as watchmen at election sites, and report anything they feel suspicious. Carry guns if they must, who cares if they are intimidating.
But either way — no matter how the votes go — the president insists he will stay in office. That’s because if he wins, the election was definitely fair. But if he doesn’t get enough votes, the election was rigged even without any real evidence to support that claim. It doesn’t matter though, many of his followers support him not matter what happens.
But isn’t this a democracy, you say.
Well, it was a democracy, but things are different around here these days.
Turns out, the sitting president lost his election bid. But the thing is, he doesn’t want to leave office. So he encourages his followers — tens of thousands of them — to march to the Capitol and do what they need to do to stop the transition of power. The protest turns to a violent insurrection.
“Oh no no, they’re just tourists,” he says of his supporters who beat police officers and others who stand in their way.
“He’s our president. The election was rigged!”
“The election was stolen!”
“The rebellion is coming!”
His followers threaten the rest of us if we don’t go along with their version of events, their distorted reality.
The fight continues.
One party works to cast even more doubt on election integrity. They work to limit how you can vote, where you can vote, when you can vote. They draw lines to make it so their candidates have a clear pathway to office where they can work to cast even more doubt on the legitimacy of any election they lose.
And when it comes to questions about possible crimes, the president is always innocent. It’s all just a witch hunt. The press is unfair to him. He’s the chosen one, in the eyes of his followers. The laws don’t apply to him. He’s the only one who can save our country. He’s the president after all, and you can’t charge a president with crimes unless you want riots in the street. That’s what they say, that’s what they threaten.
But this is all starting to sound like an authoritarian regime, you say to yourself. And you wouldn’t be wrong.
When democracies start to die, it’s hard for them to recover. Will America be the next country to fall into a democratic decline, such as Hungary or Turkey? Ten years from now, will we still call ourselves America: The land of the free, home of the brave? Or will we be something none of us have ever recognized because we sat back and watched as our democracy died?
— Rachel Brougham is the former assistant editor of the Petoskey News-Review. You can email her at racheldbrougham@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Rachel Brougham: Is our democracy dying?
