Ever since starting Barbara F. Walter’s “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them,” the parallels between unrest in other countries and ours have been unnerving. International studies from 20 countries identify critical factors in democratic backsliding are factionalization and the politics of resentment fueled by “ethnic entrepreneurs.” Donald Trump is a classic type. In this century, social media acts as an accelerant. Where civil war breaks out, once-dominant groups who see their influence in decline start them.
We are not in the danger zone in this country yet, but warning signs are there. (We ranked there briefly after Trump’s attempted coup.) Have factionalized nations turned things around? South Africa was headed toward civil war and averted one, largely under pressure from the business community. If Walter has more examples than that one to offer, I’m haven’t read that far. “So there’s a chance” is not exactly comforting.
Cascading revelations about Trump’s Jan. 6 coup attempt have E.J. Dionne warning that while democracy itself was on the ballot in 2018 and 2020, it is again in 2022. Republicans are working feverishly under transparent rationalizations to restrict ballot access and to allow GOP partisans to overturn election outcomes they don’t like:
So why are Democrats not shouting from the rooftops about the need to protect democracy? One reason political consultants advance: Democracy issues are a tough sell with most voters, who are far more invested in their day-to-day problems than in a former president or a threat that still feels abstract.
“Making democracy a front-and-center issue is in competition with the malaise people feel over the economy, even if there’s a lot of good news about the economy,” Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg said in an interview. Voters, she added, “look at January 6 as something of a stand-alone event.”
That is what people thought of random attacks in other countries, Walter found. They see lone wolfs, not the packs. Citizens in multiethnic Sarajevo could not conceive of neighbor turning on neighbor until it happened.
Obama administration veteran Stephanie Cutter believes “the threat of Trump will not be enough to make suburban women vote Democratic” in 2022. Bu there is room for Democrats to talk about both economic concerns as well as threats to democracy.
Greenberg adds that a message that “voters should decide elections, not mobs or politicians” could get traction because “what people get upset about is that their votes don’t really count.”
Dionne concludes:
Democrats will be guilty of political malpractice if they fail to challenge Republicans to get off the fence. For their own sake and the country’s, they must demand that GOP candidates stand unambiguously either with or against Trump’s ongoing efforts to demolish American democracy.
This century has been a roller coaster of upset. The Republican Party under Trumpism looks to turn the United States into something antithetical to Americans’ prized sense of themselves. The September 11 attacks shook the country to its core, shattered its sense of invincibility. We turned to xenophobic madness and torture. War crimes.
Then came the economic degradation of the Great Recession. The election of the first Black president sent White America into T-party hysterics and eventually into Trump and insurrection. Covid-19 added to the cultural stress. If Americans really want to see a new normal (the old normal is dead and buried), they need to be the heroes they imagine they are while watching Marvel movies. They need to save democracy, save their businesses (if that’s what motivates them), restore their sense of stability and sense of mission. They need to turn out and vote to make America sane again.
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