'We talk about broken politics. But I wonder if Americans have become a broken people' // Jared Stacy
Simply because history tells us the republic has survived before doesn’t mean it will be able to withstand the increasingly polarised nature of politics in the US
Maybe the actual crisis of democracy is that We The People are increasingly unable to agree on a “crisis of democracy” that exists outside our preferred ideologies and tribes. We cannot imagine a crisis of democracy outside of an “us v them” binary. Millions believe this as captives to the ideology of White Christian Nationalism. Its insidious confusion of “white” with “Christian” and “Christian” with “American” isn’t remotely new, but rather primal in America’s racist past.
On the one hand, this historical grounding might comfort us. It helps us see today’s division as somewhat normal in the development of an American experiment. It’s worth pointing out, in spite of the reality-denying populism of GOP officials today, that elections in the US do have a long history of corruption and intimidation. These midterms are, in this sense, no exception. And so Democracy endures, we say.
If our politics are broken, it is because We The People are. The fact we cannot agree on a crisis which involves us all is troubling, if not damning. And so we do what we can based on what we can know. And we know politics. We trade on the crisis for political power. We derive our own sense of authority and legitimacy in wielding power from the shattered remnants of civil religion scattered across our cultural landscape.
The Republican “crisis of democracy” is really paranoia of tyranny. There are 185 candidates standing for election in the American midterms who deny or have actively contested the results of the 2020 election, known as “the Big Lie”. A key component of this conspiracy theory is invasive and pervasive Democrat interference. When instead, foreign actors like China and Russia have more often than not exploited or sought to influence election outcomes through other means.
One state race to watch is Kari Lake running for governor of Arizona. She has leveraged her public doubts, distrust and denial of Biden’s election as a crucial part of her campaign strategy. She is practising a radicalised form of paranoid politics which is galvanising to her conservative base.
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