According to a Grinnell College poll in October, only 35 percent of Democrats believe that American democracy faces a “major threat.” The figure is twice as large for Republicans—whose belief in a major threat is the threat. Delusion about the danger prevails in both parties.--
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Is the world witnessing the demise of the U.S.-led liberal order? If so, this is not how it was supposed to happen. The great threats were supposed to come from hostile revisionist powers seeking to overturn the postwar order. The United States and Europe were supposed to stand shoulder to shoulder to protect the gains reaped from 70 years of cooperation. Instead, the world’s most powerful state has begun to sabotage the order it created. A hostile revisionist power has indeed arrived on the scene, but it sits in the Oval Office, the beating heart of the free world. Across ancient and modern eras, orders built by great powers have come and gone—but they have usually ended in murder, not suicide.
The historical irony is rich. Democracy has a better than even chance of being permanently subverted by those who in their delusions believe it already has been. They aim to turn the country in fact into a far worse version of what in their fevered imaginations they already believe it has become.
In the same article, Packer envisions different scenarios that might ensue if the Republicans take the White House and both houses of congress in January '25. One involves vigorous, even violent forms of resistance from the American Left, but more likely is this scenario:
Following the election crisis, protests burn out. Americans lapse into acquiescence, believing that all leaders lie, all voting is rigged, all media are bought, corruption is normal, and any appeal to higher values such as freedom and equality is either fraudulent or naive. The loss of democracy turns out not to matter all that much. The hollowed core of civic life brings a kind of relief. Citizens indulge themselves in self-care and the metaverse, where politics turns into a private game and algorithms drive Americans into ever more extreme views that have little relation to reality or relevance to those in power. There’s enough wealth to keep the population content. America’s transformation into Russia is complete.
The Right has every reason to expect that there will be little to no resistance to their coup if it succeeds because Liberal resistance to authoritarianism is mostly abstract and procedural. Once they lose the procedural battles, there will be nothing for them to fight with except to take to the streets, which will happen, but with little effect. There will be a few Catos who will speak out in Congress, but they'll be censured, mocked, or otherwise made irrelevant. The Liberal talking heads on cable will squawk for a while, but pressure will be put on their corporate bosses to replace them. (Remember what happened to Phil Donahue?) A few harmless, token Liberals will be kept on TV--remember Alan Colmes, the stereotypical, weak-kneed liberal prop placed on set to make Hannity look strong and principled. Some will sue to protect their first amendment rights, but It won't matter if even in the short run the supreme court supports them because the Justice Department won't enforce anything except that which supports the administration's authoritarian agenda.
A few famous Liberals will emerge who find clever ways to justify the new authoritarianism: he or she will say that it was inevitable, that the old system proved itself incapable of dealing with complex problems, that this was the only way forward. But she or he will defend all the iconic liberal cultural causes, not that doing so will change anything. Even Putin allows for token opposition to provide the simulacra of democracy. The business world will applaud the new stability. The Churches will applaud the new emphasis on "Christian values". Everyone else will retreat into private life and let the crooks and cronies run things.
It will be a soft authoritarianism at first. The nasty racialist stuff and anti-LGBTQ stuff will come later. But life will go on for most people as it does now in other authoritarian regimes. Not that much will change in day-to-day life. Most people will keep their heads down and just go about their business. A few brave voices will speak out, and they will disappear. Most people, even those who consider themselves political junkies now, will lose interest in politics. What would be the point? It's one thing to have an opinion; it's another to get thrown into jail for having it.
A new social hierarchy will emerge. Party members, collaborators, and then everybody else. Ambitious young people will join the party saying they don't care about politics, but joining provides the only path for a decent career. They have to think about their families. The universities will fire notorious Liberals and require a loyalty oath from everyone else. Classroom surveillance cameras will insure that nothing "subversive" be taught.
So is all this inevitable? No, but it's more likely than at any other time in our history that something like this could happen. Most people don't want this, but it's pretty clear that Manchin, Sinema, and other business-as-usual Democratic moderates are among the 65% who do not think there's a major threat. They make arguments to themselves that they must protect the traditions, norms, practices of government by following them scrupulously, and that to do otherwise is to stoop to the level of those who oppose those traditions. This seems also to be the Merrick Garland approach. But if the Republicans win in '22 and '24, there won't be any traditions, norms, or practices to be protected, except insofar as they protect Republican autocratic control of government.
I still have some hope that the Jan 6 committee and other court proceedings against Trump next year will ring an alarm that will thwart the Republicans in the midterms. I still have some hope that Democrats and civic-minded independents and Republicans will drive a vigorous resistance in the federal legislatures and courts to avert the worst. But it's hard to see how Democrats can win again if they lose control the the legislatures in '22 and the Justice Dept. in '24.
Democrats in D.C. have got to act now while they still have some power. Forget about BBB if Manchin insists on dragging it out. They need to pull out all the stops to protect the only advantage they have, which is their majority support among the electorate. All the electoral structural advantages are with the Republicans despite their being the national minority, and if they capture the White House and both congressional houses in 2024, they will force constitutional and other procedural changes that will insure that they will never lose again. (I'm also hoping that enough principled conservatives will run as independents as Murkowski did in Alaska after losing the primary to a fanatic. This will either split the conservative vote to make it easier for Democrats to win or at the very least send someone relatively sane to Congress rather than more psychopaths like Paul Gosar or Marjorie Taylor Greene.) I'm not without hope.
But if the Democrats fail, then there will be another rich, historical irony. The Russians, who could not defeat the U.S. as Communists, will finally find a way to do it as kleptocratic capitalists. They will finally achieve their dream of victory over the West by their becoming even more ruthless capitalists than American ones. Then finally will the U.S. have become made over into a country in Russia's image, a country where the oligarchical elites always win at least 80% of the vote. It's not capitalism that wins, though, but the spirit that drives it, which is evolution without grace.