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American democracy is fighting for its life. The coming year will be crucial - Walla! news

2022-01-08T08:26:37.601Z


In the year since the attack on the U.S. Social Rift Capitol has only widened, despite Biden's promise to unite the nation. Right "


American democracy is fighting for its life.

The coming year will be crucial

In the year since the attack on the U.S. Social Rift Capitol has only widened, despite Biden's promise to unite the nation. Right "

Guy Elster

08/01/2022

Saturday, 08 January 2022, 10:05 Updated: 10:13

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The alarming results of polls published this week in the United States illustrate the depth of the rift in which American democracy finds itself, a year after the coup attempt of Donald Trump and his supporters. About two-thirds believe that American democracy is in jeopardy and about a third of respondents said that violence against the administration can sometimes be justified. Only 54% are "proud" of American democracy, compared to 90% in 2002.



The year 2021 was supposed to be a year of reconciliation and unification, as promised by Joe Biden who was sworn in as president just two weeks after the onslaught on Capitol Hill. But even the Democratic president's avoidance of belligerent and ardent remarks like those that characterized Trump's tenure failed to cure American society, which seems to have very few principles in common between its various parts.



Trump supporters still believe his lies about widespread election fraud that prevented him from running for another term.

The fact that the courts, some staffed by conservative justices appointed by Trump himself, did not find a shred of evidence for their claims did not satisfy them.

Maybe the other way around.

Conspiracy theories continued to spread like wildfire in the California forests this year, and former president's supporters promoted laws and placed people they could use in the next election to skew the results as they wished.

2021 was supposed to be a year of reconciliation and unification.

Biden in a speech at the Capitol, January last year (Photo: Reuters)

This coming November, the power of Trumpism will be put to the test, in the midterm elections that will shape the second part of Biden's term. The former president promotes Republican candidates who promote the "big lie," as Democrats call conspiracy theories about the recent election. Judging by the polls and the disappointment of many in the public from the first year of Biden's tenure, Republicans are more likely to rob the narrow majority of Democrats in Congress and make the president's life even more difficult.



Biden has put a lot of effort into advancing far-reaching plans in the economy, infrastructure and society over the past 12 months, but most have been stuck in the Senate, by one person - not a Republican in particular, at least not on paper, but by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. Manchin, from conservative West Virginia, thwarts Biden's flagship reform - Build Back Better - which includes a $ 1.75 trillion investment in the fight against climate change and the reduction of social disparities. Without Manchin's vote, Democrats have no majority in the Senate.



The slim majority of Democrats also allowed them to set up a commission of inquiry into the Jan. 6 events in the House of Representatives, against which Trump and his allies run a bitter salt. A few Republicans dared to vote for his removal and removal from another public office after the attack on the Capitol, and their voice not only did not strengthen in the past year, but faded and threatened. The Republicans who remained loyal to Trump promised to halt the work of the committee if they returned to being the majority party in the House of Representatives in January 2023.

More on Walla!

For four years, Trump waged a war on democracy.

Yesterday came the coup attempt

To the full article

Despite the Trump camp's pile of difficulties and legal struggles on the committee, it nevertheless managed to reveal some particularly disturbing details. In similar conspiracies taken from tyrannical states, Trump's advisers promoted the idea that he would declare a state of emergency and take advantage of it to stop the vote count and the transfer of power to Biden. According to a book published last year on the events - "Danger", one of the authors of which is the journalist Bob Woodward, who exposes the Watergate affair - the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Millie was afraid of a scenario in which Trump starts a war with China or Iran to fortify the White House. There



is no guarantee that next time it will end like this, in a point event after which the transfer of power will be completed. Counting the votes.



Biden received seven million more votes than Trump - the biggest gap ever - and managed to win in traditionally Republican states like Arizona and Georgia, but the distorted electoral system and the great power that local representatives have manages to obscure the overwhelming Democratic majority in the United States.

A series of laws restricting the right to vote were passed in 2021 in some key Republican states, and those that will be harmed are mostly minorities, identified with the Democratic electorate.

By 2025, American democracy could collapse. "Riots in the Capitol, January 2021 (Photo: Reuters)

The Battle of the Strong on the image of America, or on the "soul of the nation" as Biden calls it, naturally radiates out as well. The United States tends to present itself as a beacon of democracy and freedom to the world, but recent years have greatly weakened its status and moral arguments. When dictators and their supporters see the attempt by most Republicans to embellish the events of January 6 - which were a coup attempt par excellence - they will be even less attentive to the sermons coming out of Washington.



More sanctions, less sanctions, the authoritarian regimes in the world know that the United States has stopped believing in the export of democracy by military means following the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In contrast, the anti-democratic axis, led by Russia and China, does not hesitate to help members in times of need as has only happened in recent days in Kazakhstan.



"We live in a turning point in history. At home and abroad, we are in a struggle between democracy and autocracy, from China to Russia and more. .

The prolongation of the internal crisis in the United States is a gift for the anti-democratic forces in the world.

The first to sabotage the proper process of transferring power.

Donald Trump, January 2021 (Photo: AP)

The coming year will be critical for American democracy. If the Republican Party, which has become in Trump's image and likeness, takes the House of Representatives anew, the Congressional Inquiry Committee will cease to exist. It would be a fatal blow to try to get to the truth and find out the extent of the involvement of Trump and his advisers in the worst attack on the Capitol since British forces burned the place in the 1812 war



. Trump became the first president of the United States to sabotage a proper transfer of power process and he set a dangerous precedent. Now, an entire camp in the United States, numbering tens of millions of voters, believes in democracy only if it is the winner and it is wielding swords in preparation for a possible rematch between Trump and Biden in 2024.



"By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing tremendous internal political instability, including widespread civilian violence," warned Thomas Homer-Dixon, a professor of political science at Royal Rhodes University in British Columbia, Canada.

In an opinion piece published in the Canadian newspaper Globe & Mail on the occasion of the anniversary of the January 6 attack, he wrote that "by 2030, if not earlier," the United States may be under extreme right-wing tyranny.



The catalyst for this, he said, would be Trump's return to the White House, presumably with the help of Republican lawmakers who refuse to accept his loss.

"We should not rule out these options just because they seem too ridiculous or terrible to imagine. In 2014, the idea of ​​Donald Trump being president would have seemed almost absurd, but today we live in a world where the absurdity regularly becomes real and terrible routine."

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Source: walla

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