Dear Americans doing a version of "it can't happen here,"
"It" does not refer to something totally unprecedented, it refers to the US experiencing something similar to Turkey, Hungary, Poland, India, Israel, and some others too, known as "democratic backsliding."
And yes, it very much can.
Yeah, when I taught Intro to American Politics last semester & prev year, I told my students that the course was going to be on democratic backsliding — our institutions and their shortcomings, and our heavy reliance on norms as opposed to rules. I hope they came away getting the danger we’re in.
We cannot regard the repeated promise of mass arrests and political purges as mere rhetoric, but as something with horrific historical precedent. Everyone has a duty to convince the radical leftists in their life to vote. Plenty of time and it's the only thing we've got.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've had ominous warnings and plenty of actual threats and horrifying plans from the usual suspects.
I'm ready to move on to what we DO about it.
