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NYRB: The Suffocation of Democracy
The Suffocation of Democracy is an article in the October 25th issue of the New York Review of Books by Christopher Browning, an emeritus professor of history. He doesn't see a bright outlook for American democracy.An excerpt:
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If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell. He stoked the hyperpolarization of American politics to make the Obama presidency as dysfunctional and paralyzed as he possibly could. As with parliamentary gridlock in Weimar, congressional gridlock in the US has diminished respect for democratic norms, allowing McConnell to trample them even more. Nowhere is this vicious circle clearer than in the obliteration of traditional precedents concerning judicial appointments. Systematic obstruction of nominations in Obamas first term provoked Democrats to scrap the filibuster for all but Supreme Court nominations. Then McConnells unprecedented blocking of the Merrick Garland nomination required him in turn to scrap the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations in order to complete the steal of Antonin Scalias seat and confirm Neil Gorsuch. The extreme politicization of the judicial nomination process is once again on display in the current Kavanaugh hearings.
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Whatever secret reservations McConnell and other traditional Republican leaders have about Trumps character, governing style, and possible criminality, they openly rejoice in the payoff they have received from their alliance with him and his base: huge tax cuts for the wealthy, financial and environmental deregulation, the nominations of two conservative Supreme Court justices (so far) and a host of other conservative judicial appointments, and a significant reduction in government-sponsored health care (though not yet the total abolition of Obamacare they hope for). Like Hitlers conservative allies, McConnell and the Republicans have prided themselves on the early returns on their investment in Trump. The combination of Trumps abasement before Putin in Helsinki, the shameful separation of families at the border in complete disregard of US asylum law (to say nothing of basic humanitarian principles and the GOPs relentless claim to be the defender of family values), and most recently Michael Cohens implication of Trump in criminal violations of campaign finance laws has not shaken the fealty of the Republican old guard, so there is little indication that even an explosive and incriminating report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller will rupture the alliance.
But the potential impact of the Mueller report does suggest yet another eerie similarity to the interwar periodhow the toxic divisions in domestic politics led to the complete inversion of previous political orientations. Both Mussolini and Hitler came to power in no small part because the fascist-conservative alliances on the right faced division and disarray on the left. The Catholic parties (Popolari in Italy, Zentrum in Germany), liberal moderates, Social Democrats, and Communists did not cooperate effectively in defense of democracy. In Germany this reached the absurd extreme of the Communists underestimating the Nazis as a transitory challenge while focusing on the Social Democratsdubbed red fascistsas the true long-term threat to Communist triumph.
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Faced with the Mueller investigation into Russian meddling in the US election and collusion with members of his campaign, Trump and his supporters first line of defense has been twofoldthere was no collusion and the claim of Russian meddling is a hoax. The second line of defense is again twofold: collusion is not a crime and the now-proven Russian meddling had no effect. I suspect that if the Mueller report finds that the Trump campaigns collusion with Russians does indeed meet the legal definition of criminal conspiracy and that the enormous extent of Russian meddling makes the claim that it had no effect totally implausible, many Republicans will retreat, either implicitly or explicitly, to the third line of defense: Better Putin than Hillary. There seems to be nothing for which the demonization of Hillary Clinton does not serve as sufficient justification, and the notion that a Trump presidency indebted to Putin is far preferable to the nightmare of a Clinton victory will signal the final Republican reorientation to illiberalism at home and subservience to an authoritarian abroad.
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