Restoring a little faith
by Tom Sullivan
“They start shifting in their seats,” the freshly minted citizen tells me. Born in Argentina, raised in Venezuela, the single mother works seven days a week and supplements her work as a Spanish translator by driving for Uber and Lyft. Chatting after an impromptu post-mortem on the election Saturday, she explained how her more Trumpish passengers react to her being from Venezuela.
What is it like being from a communist country? they ask pointedly. How did things go bad so quickly?
It’s really an authoritarian dictatorship, she corrects them. (Her family left before Hugo Chávez took power.) She then has a little fun. People wanted a change from the status quo, she explains. So, they elected a man with no experience. People thought he was a straight-shooter.
Her passengers start looking uncomfortable and start shifting in their seats, she grins.
He appointed cronies to key government positions, she continues. Then he insisted the president needed more time to fix what was broken. So he began rewriting the national constitution to extend his term indefinitely.
And so on.
That’s the problem with electing strongmen. Her family left Venezuela to get away from them. Now, she says with some irony, she is a citizen of Trump’s America.
A senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, Joshua Kurlantzick cautions that once democratically elected autocrats begin unwinding democratic institutions and norms, “rebuilding democracy is arduous and hardly guaranteed.” His opinions run counter to the confidence of experts at CFR, the Brookings Institution, the Heritage Foundation, and the Center for American Progress that liberal democracy can weather the autocratic populists now in control in countries across the globe.
Kurlantzick cites a series of cases to argue that recovery from a descent into autocracy is hit or miss, and easier when there is “a relatively clean break with the ancien regime,” as after military defeat and occupation. Populists simply turned out of office can retain influence and a strong base of support. Even return to power:
Another problem is that, while in power, democratically elected tyrants can permanently alter institutions. In Turkey, as Cook points out, Erdogan and his party have so deformed the judiciary, parliamentary oversight and the election process that it will be extremely difficult for future leaders to reform the system and fashion any type of real democracy. This differs from the situation of purer post-authoritarian states: Where there were genuine revolts, where fully autocratic governments fell, their replacements could build judiciaries and political systems with integrity from scratch. Germany fashioned a more decentralized political system after the Nazi era, and Indonesia did the same in the years after Suharto.
Weakened institutions and shattered civic norms leave an opening for other populists to rise — or for opponents of the populists to fight back with even more undemocratic methods, like the coups that ousted Thaksin and, in 2014, his sister and successor. In Venezuela, some Hugo Chávez opponents welcomed a failed 2002 coup, and in Turkey, opponents of Erdogan tried to oust him with a coup in 2016. Citizens who lose faith in democracy and turn to antidemocratic tactics to oust populist leaders grease the slide toward permanent authoritarianism.
A survey of countries across Latin America shows faith in democracy falling. Dissatisfaction has risen from 51% in 2009 to 71%, reports a pollster in Santiago, Chile. Content with it has fallen to 24%, the lowest recorded in two decades. More than half say it is still their preferred form of government, although that too has declined.
Disillusionment is becoming easier here among white Trumpers who see their standing on the social pecking order challenged. It is challenging for Democrats to hang on, too, when corrupt officials no longer shrink at hiding efforts to undermine elections, Brian Kemp.
Pundits keep warning of an impending constitutional crisis that asymptotically never arrives. Hint: It’s here. But for the president’s lack of competence as an autocrat, we might already be Venezuela:
The recipe for populism is universal. Find a wound common to many, find someone to blame for it, and make up a good story to tell. Mix it all together. Tell the wounded you know how they feel. That you found the bad guys. Label them: the minorities, the politicians, the businessmen. Caricature them. As vermin, evil masterminds, haters and losers, you name it. Then paint yourself as the savior. Capture the people’s imagination. Forget about policies and plans, just enrapture them with a tale. One that starts with anger and ends in vengeance. A vengeance they can participate in.
The smackdown Trump received on November 6 means the U.S. still has a chance to stop the Trump train before it runs away with the country. Democrats headed for control of the House have more at stake than reelection and regaining the presidency in two years. They have to promote policies that will make people’s lives better if they can get back the power to enact them. People’s faith in democracy must be reinforced against those who have rejected it.
My new friend was not done with her passengers. Where else had she lived? they asked. Belgium, she replied.
So, what is it like living under socialism? they ask pointedly.
Her son was born there prematurely, she says. She herself spent a week in the hospital. Her son had to remain even longer, getting top-notch care in a hospital that felt to her like a spa.
They start shifting in their seats again.
When it was done, her husband paid about $1,000 total, she said.
Maybe our new crop of Democrats could start with something like that.