Perhaps our undocumented immigrants would be happier in Latvia?
best sardines from Riga. maybe that's it.....
Am I the only person who questions the methodology and motivation behind a report that ranks Kiribati, Mauritius, Cape Verde and Tuvalu (wherever that might be) higher than the US? I suspect the authors and researchers behind the report are the same people who screech that the US is a third world country.
1
If you don’t know where they are, how do you know that they aren’t deserving of their rank? Democracy isn’t the exclusive province of large wealthy nations that we can all find on a map. Maybe Americans still have a few things to learn.
10
One cannot promote democracy abroad if it's dying here at home.
America's destiny is that of an authoritarian plutocracy, in a maximally extractive economy. That is the Republicans' dream.
3
Constitutionally, are we not a republic, rather than a democracy? The parameters for the House and the Senate reflect that.
Sophistry.
A republic is a form of government. Democracy is how that government is put in place and maintained.
7
the real inflection point may come in 2020. if trump gets re-elected then all the prognostications of democracy's doom in America may gain much greater traction.
3
Michele Goldberg's skews the analysis of Freedom House. The decline in rankings began under the Obama Administration.
1
@mcurtis: You forget to mention that the Republican controlled House and Senate were responsible for the downward trend: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2016/united-states
9
Trump is an odious individual and as an American I am embarrassed that he is our President.
Nonetheless, I am also saddened that our political discourse has devolved to the point found in this article: Not one fact was presented demonstrating that Americans are less free today than they were before Trump. I have always regarded the annual Freedom House rankings with interest, but no more. This "ranking" served more to signal Freedom House's solidarity with the Hate Trump movement than it did to actually rate freedoms.
As far as I can see, Americans are as free as they ever have been. We can work where we want, travel where we want, read what we want, and most importantly, call the President a horse's behind if we want, and free to vote him out of office in 2020.
4
Now if there was a rating for Donocracy, a system in which donors and money rule, the U.S. would be #1. We have legitimized political corruption. Most of our elected representatives value campaign contributions more than the voices of their constituents. We have allowed gerrymandering and voter suppression to minimize the voices of everyday people.
We need a democracy scorecard for each state which addresses these issues, as many of them are managed by state legislatures.
6
Thoughts:
“Radix malorum est cupiditas” (the root of all evil is greed) as illustrated by Chaucer in “Canterbury Tales” (‘The Pardoner’s Tale’)
"Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it." William Pitt (the Elder), 1770
“Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.” Voltaire
Today's autocrats are barely distinguishable from plutocrats...
6
Can we spare a little time to think about the Progressive attitude that they are so secure in their smug appraisal of their own worth, so convinced that they alone care about the welfare of all mankind, that they can use any means to beat the rest of us into recognition of their shining virtue?
In the past, the same nations that promoted medical care for all their own, environmental protection, a secure social safety net, were happy to use violence to make sure that their own, and no others, got all these benefits; as long as, of course, they also obeyed their quintessentially correct leaders. I'll refer you to Mussolini and Hitler. Their progressive policies, for their own chosen few, were absolutely in line with the policies of America's new Progressives. Democracy is messy, it takes time to promote its goals, but I'll sure choose it above historical Progressive policies. And if you'd care to study what happened to reporters in fascist nations, Ms. Goldberg, you might also agree.
1
@Mary: Trump kept a book of Hitler’s speeches on his nightstand, according to his first wife. We all know what happened to Khashoggi, with Trump not bothering to take action against the Saudis because of a deal he was to benefit from. Talk about fascists, Trump is the biggest admirer of dictatorial strongmen who oppress their countries. He’s totally owned by Putin.
2
@Mary Remind us when that happened in Canada and Australia.
4
To gauge the level of dishonesty in this column on Trump's erosion of American democracy, focus on one statement pulled directly from the piece (my emphasis added:)
"For the second year in a row, the United States had a score of 86, down from 94 in 2009. According to Michael Abramowitz, Freedom House’s president, it’s the lowest score for the United States since the survey began."
You get that?
The decline started in 2009 - the second year of the Obama administration. And it stayed the same in 2017 and 2018. In other words, there has been no decline in the two years of the Trump administration.
So ALL of the decline was under Barack Obama, something I confirmed by visiting the website.
And yet, this article is allowed to make the clear implication that somehow its a Trump presidency that is jeopardizing American democracy.
It is one thing for a strident activist of a columnist to mail in something like this. But where are the editors?
8
Well, not much was done under Obama to curb the trends that led to this decline: increasing concentration of wealth, and voters not knowing enough about democracy to avoid being taken in by charlatans. He had a republican Congress and was therefore limited in how much he could do, given that the Republicans are champions of these trends.
5
On November 30 of last year, Nicole Wallace, host of MSNBCs Deadline White House, asked NYTs correspondent Nick Confessore to share his impression of a photograph that featured Putin and MBS giving each other a high-five. In a quiet, solemn voice, Confessore said “I see two guys who murder journalists.”
Trump continues to defend MBS, prostrate himself to Putin and is in “love” (his words) with Kim Jung-un. The spineless Republican enablers of Trump’s assault on the First Amendment are all co-conspirators in America’s loss of global reputation.
Ms. Goldberg is right to call attention to the ever unfolding story of our democratic decline. But I have to wonder why the Freedom House report isn’t the lead in every news publication in the country?
Shouts of “ fake news”; the undermining of our courts, intelligence and law enforcement institutions; the declaring of “national emergencies;” cozying up to dictators and rejecting our most strategic allies. The signs are unmistakable.
The world does indeed still have some great democracies. We used to be one of them.
5
"For the second year in a row, the United States had a score of 86, down from 94 in 2009. "
Hmmm.!
What was the score in 2010-2016?
...past two years.. What a coincidence!
Maybe more fauxfax!
4
We are still better than Venezuela and Syria.
Trump is just the manifestation of a long standing pattern of truly bizarre associations in American conservative politics. The "religious" section runs hand in hand with white supremacists and anti-basic services corporates. The "family values" herd stampedes to the most reactionary approach to health and education with the most banal libertarians and tax dodgers. The pollution lobby stands shoulder to shoulder with anyone and anything, as long as they get the laws to let them pollute. As for property developers, how's the Garden of Eden these days?
This cabal of advocates for prehistoric levels of stupidity and maladministration simply needed a public face able to get votes, and hey, where's the democracy gone? Trump is just the bumper sticker for anti-democracy groups. He's an errand boy for ALEC, and the various regressive conservatives factions.
You can have as much or as little democracy as you can tolerate. But god help you if you suddenly find it's gone, because these guys aren't about to go looking for it.
4
"Several of the criminals who helped Trump get elected either have gone to prison or soon will. "
Maybe the reason we got lower marks is because none of the criminals working to get Clinton elected and and Trump defeated have gone to jail yet.....
1
@Objectivist: Hmmm, no one from the Clinton campaign was arrested and faces prison time. Manafort, Cohen, Butyna, and others from the Trump campaign however...
3
Well said.
Why does the picture remind me of Don Quixote?
1
This entire debacle is somewhat reminiscent of the Tragical History of Dr. Faustus. Faust is Trump, Mephistopheles is Stone and Lucifer is Putin. Let's hope that the reckoning is close.
1
some have paid -- Her pro invasion of Iraq speeches contributed to Hillary losing 2016 -- but we should do so much more. Hold Perle, Wolfowitz, Cheney, and their Neo con gang-- and their puppet master, Netanyahou, to account. Cut him off until he makes peace with his neighbors. Good column. That insistent errorer, Marco Rubio, should read it. Has that young republican acolyte ever gotten anything right? What good does it do to ever offer him a chance to say more? He already has proven how craven he is.
1
The US has always held itself to be a bastion of democracy, that "shining city on the hill". However that vision is one through rose-coloured glasses given its history of institutional racism, voter suppression of minorities and others in aid of GOP candidates along with gerrymandering to the same end. The lofty ideals of America have been turned upside down by this POTUS in his MAGA promise to white voters either marginalized by the 21st century economy or unrelentling in their non-acceptance of the progress of minorities, immigrants, women and others. For them success is a zero sum game and white men should always prevail. Their MAGA longs for the 1950s when Jim Crow laws were enforced, women stayed home despite being in the work force in WWII, and immigrants and minorities knew their place was at the back of the line. In Trumpworld lies are alternate facts, truth is fake news and the press is the enemy of the people. He began with his racist denial of President Obama's birthplace and carried on in this vein through Charlottesville and beyond. He has unleashed the airing of vile opinions that were previously only uttered in private. In short, he appeals to the worst in Americans and then doubles down on it. There are no facts, arguments or policies that break his hold on that 30%. Yes, this is the tarnished state of US democracy, no longer a reliable partner to former allies in the top tier for freedom. It will not change until we see his demise.
2
Well, of course, after eight years of Obama! If he owns the recovery, he owns this!
4
As an Australian, I find it bizarre that the US does not have a similar authority to the Australian Electoral Commission, which compiles voter rolls, determines electoral district boundaries, prints ballot papers, counts votes, etc. No matter where you vote in Australia the process is exactly the same. The stories of voter suppression and gerrymandering from the US sound more like some sort of banana republic.
8
Exactly
1
Peoples participation in democratic process also matters. Barely more than
50% voters turn out in American main
election and less than 50% in mid term.
Does it indicate loss of trust in their
representation by the elected politician?
If true it doesn't bode well for democracy. Gerrymandering of electroal
constituncies and the sharp division
between blue and red states making
a handful states as the truly competitive
detracts from the spirit of democracy.
4
When has American foreign policy ever protected democracy?
Pretty much every south american country, and many asian countries had democratic governments overthrown.
3
It fashionable and trendy to cute Trump and money. How many of readers have taken civics in school? How many belong to their PTA, neighborhood groups, civic associations, etc.? A trade union? That is much of the problem in today's democracy. Everyone is happy to let someone else do it. It takes responsible citizens to cultivate democracy. In democracy, we get the government we deserve. Americans have become disengaged.
3
A democracy falls because of a lack of understanding by its citizens of the underlying principles, practices and history of what engendered the democracy in the first place. Ignorance in turn result in the election of similarly unqualified politicians who run for personal rather than altruistic reasons, who then act on their instincts to change the political landscape in their favor. The only long range solution is to educate the still moldable minds of our youth. But education in the US is haphazard at best, with an enormous chasm between the highest achieving states and the underachieving states. Within a state, such as Massachusetts, we have common achievement standards that every school district adheres to and each student must meet. Why not national standards in topics like civics, history, English, literature, math and sciences (and preferably another language). Why do we allow some states to dictate to much of the rest textbooks that reflect obvious historic bias and discredited scientific views? Local control is a rallying cry that arguably helped to lead us into this polarized and uncompromising state of affairs we are under now. Ignorance certainly undermines freedom and consequently democracy.
7
Can anyone remember the last time Donald Trump even mentioned the word democracy, as a value and a goal that the United States exemplifies and should promote?
He prefers words such as "strength" and "toughness," words that autocrats all over the world respond to more naturally.
12
Next time, please support a candidate who is not so terrible that she couldn't even defeat the Trumpster. Please don't support a candidate so corrupt and dishonest she gives the Trumpster a run for the title of most dishonest politician.
5
Hillary lost because of a quarter century of attacks, organized and run by our increasingly powerful plutocracy. Not because of her inevitable human imperfections.
Look at the trends everywhere since the early 1970s.
Look at the extraordinary weaknesses of Bush43 and then of Trump.
Notice that the plutocracy has been successful. During these years our hourly productivity has more than doubled, while median hourly earnings have remained flat.
9
@Garraty
I think Tony's point still stands. Whatever you think the reasons were, HRC was clearly a historically flawed candidate.
She was literally the only Democrat whom Trump could have beaten. The former governor of Maryland and former senator from Virginia would both have sent Trump back to his foul penthouse.
1
"We’re not good at holding elites to account in America; the architects of both the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis have gone largely unpunished."
A sad and accurate assessment of America's reluctance to hold the wealthy and the powerful accountable for their crimes.
May I add to your list two nauseating but compelling examples of use of the president's pardon power to let political criminals off the hook:
1) Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon. Letting him walk did more harm to the integrity of law and order in this country than trying him and throwing the crook in jail would ever have done. Ford "spared us" the satisfaction of seeing Nixon brought to justice. I will never believe that the pardon was not granted pursuant to a prearrangement with Ford.
Also, pardoning Nixon took the withering heat off of the disgraced Republican party.
2) Bush the elder's pardon of all of his co-conspirators in the Iran-Contra scandal. Iran-Contra involved the US selling weapons to Iran to raise money to support the Contras in Central America, which support the Congress had expressly forbidden. Some call it treason.
Also, pardoning the conspirators took the remaining heat off of the Republican party for a *major scandal*. Iran-Contra could have ended Reagan's presidency, but naive Americans accepted his televised apology, which was replete with Reagan's aw-shucksism and sunny smiles.
If you want to see how mightily the pardon power can be and has been abused, look to the Republicans.
7
@Jonathan Winn But her emails!
1
@Jonathan Winn
I must confess, that while I supported Ford's pardon at the time, in retrospect it was one of the greatest tragedies in our history. Back then, I thought that the people who wanted Nixon convicted and imprisoned were motivated by pure hatred. What I now realize is that the important thing wasn't their motivation (because it was true that many of them had hated Nixon for over 20 years), what was important was maintaining respect for the rule of law. Ford crushed that respect, and sent the message that some people are Too Important to Prosecute. This is Ford's tragic legacy.
Excellent piece by Michelle Goldberg putting into perspective the damage this presidency has done to our standing in the world. I hope everyday that we are witnessing the last dying breathes of white nationalism. May the shame it has brought upon America insure us to never again lose our way.
3
I know that the present House Oversight Committee, ably chaired by Representative Elijah Cummings, has a great deal of work to do investigating the vast corruption and venality of the Trump Administration, but certainly the subject of Ms. Goldberg’s column, the shocking descent of America’s standing in the Freedom House survey, deserves some attention. Either by Oversight, or in conjunction with the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Congress needs to fully reveal to the public how this pernicious Presidency has seriously diminished our standing in the world when compared to other democracies. What a completely unacceptable and impermissible legacy this would be.
1
Democracy exists until the rich figure out how to buy enough votes to end it
79
@MoneyRules
America was settled by European trading corporations and indentured servants who bartered years of their life in exchange for a ship's passage + a job erecting corporate settlements. That evolved into 13 colonies wherein England made out like bandits from all the timber, taxes and goods sent back home. That then transmogrified into founding of a new nation, albeit by and for wealthy landowning males. Capitalism has always played as much a part, if not more, as democracy.
5
The columnist relies on Freedom House to support her inveterate hatred for Trump, but she fails to disclose the flawed methodology employed by that liberal think tank (from their website):
"The final scores represent the consensus of the analysts, advisers, and staff, and .... subjectivity is unavoidable in such an enterprise...".
8
@No,
Hey, any news on president bone-spurs' taxes that he promised his base he'd release?
1
@Victorious Yankee
Hey, any chance you might want to address No's point, instead of bringing up some admittedly true yet entirely irrelevant point about our Liar-in-Chief?
1
There is a good read in Lapham's Quarterly Rule of Law issue that points out that both Plato and Machiavelli warned that the two biggest threats to liberal democracy are extreme partisan division and economic inequality. In our present case, extreme partisan division is, I think, a symptom of the inequality and the bad economic outlook for the average person, ep. those without college degrees. Also partisan division should not be an excuse for the malaise of centrism that has brought us to this point. The people are progressive, it is just the corporate politicians who are not, and they are rapidly finding this out. In many ways Trump sounded more economically progressive than Hillary, who is a diehard centrist, but, of course, he is a liar and a fruitcake, who has all along been far right of the economic centrist or even economic progressive position he fooled a lot of people with during the campaign.
1
Since we know any number of Trump family members, his colleagues and the president himself will be indicted, prosecuted and imprisoned, we need to come up with a singular prison sentence for himself.
No country club accommodations, for sure.
If it is 50 days or 50 years, he should spend every minute in a county jail in every one of our fifty states.
He should have to spend that short or long sentence with the very people he persecuted, abandoned or cheated.
1
How much of the reduction in score is the consequence of the resistance working overtime to overturn a duly elected president? Courts inappropriately interfering with executive action? The mob rule dissatisfied with democrat principles? A wealthy partisan spending $25 million to buy advertisements advocating for the impeachment of president? House members advocating harassment of cabinet members and Republicans caught in public? Partisans threatening the children of the head of the FCC? An assassination attempt on House Republicans?
Obama weaponized the IRS and FBI the in the most opaque administration in history, but that wasn't revealed until 2017. The general election ballots in California did not have any Republicans running for the Senate, Democrats having cleverly eliminated Republican primaries. California is the most recessive state in the country. It is pulling down the country's rating.
8
@ebmem, this is clearly a spam comment that got through the times website and I was not going to say anything until you hit on CA. We have ranked primaries, and there was no senate candidate on the GOP tht made it for senate. We had plenaty of GOP candidates for the house. And last, dragging down the country? we are the 6th largest economy in the world.
6
Mr. Trump is not concerned that the US had a relatively low score on the most recent Freedom House rankings of countries which are based on respect for the law, corruption, transparency etc. He says the next time we're evaluated we'll just cheat.
2
@Jay Orchard it is certainly amusing that you don’t think Greece has corruption
2
You cannot compare the USA elections (300m+ people) with Latvia (1.95m) or Croatia (4.15m)
The power to elect leaders should be spread as evenly as possible between the least represented people, say a farmer in Iowa, and the over represented, say a ‘artist’ in LA.
If this country was purely democratic, then the coastal elites would always elect the president. Since one single party has a monopoly on the most populated cities in the coasts, then one party would rule for ever.
In order to get this balance, we have the ‘electoral college’, which gives points to the states, based on various factors.
This is why Hillary won more votes, almost all of them from California, and lost the election, because the citizens of California do not represent the US of A by far.
I know it’s impossible to teach Democrats this, because they think that majority of votes wins it all, but this would be unfair to those states with less people than California.
But since people don’t get it, it would be great if some Opinion writers understood this before fanning the flames of anger in this land.
2
@AutumnLeaf, your comment is probably spam becasue i doubt a new yorker would make such a ridiculous comment. As far as underrepresented, that is part of the design of our system...in the Senate. That body has out-sized power given to the very small states, and CA gets proportionately close to zero. (as does NY) The House is supposed to be representative according to demographics. Unfortunately the House has decided to keep themselves at 435 members since 1918, when the national population was a shadow of today. That is unconstitutional, flat out. CA may be true blue, but we have plenty of GOP congresspeople who the citizens in those areas have voted for. Further, we often vote for GOP governors and for GOP presidential candidates. Lastly, it is interesting that in the whole democratic world no other nation has gone with an electoral college system; that's because it is so obviously unfair that the ONLY national office is not voted on a one person, one vote basis, that nobody starting fresh would go this route.
1
@AutumnLeaf,
Ha, ha, ha, ha...your president ripped little kids away from their parents and chucked them in cages.
If you think the flames of hatred toward such a despicable man needs fanning you are sorely mistaken.
2
@karen What's with labeling every comment you don't like as "spam"? Grow up and realize not everyone shares your views.
"Forgive those complicit in it"
What a vile thing to say. The implication here, that the actions of a political party are so bad they its members require absolution, applies not only to those members of congress and the current administration with whom the author disagrees, but against the millions of citizens who voted for them.
Don't like Trump? Fine. Get someone else elected. But be careful how you do it.
Those who play with the devil's rattles will be brought by degrees to wield his sword. - Fuller
1
The President has done nothing more than expose unfettered capitalism as corrosive to the public good. Changing the President will not change the stench of corruption he has illuminated. Given the fact that the Trump organization has already been charged and paid a fine for money laundering in the good old casino days, it's a fair bet that unfettered money laundering for Russians oligarchs has been a good source of income for quite some time. And we know he's been trying to build a hotel in Russia for decades without success. At least his candidacy provided the opportunity to proceed to the planning stage. To wit, President Trump is nothing but a wannabe oligarch. Democracy is an irritant to the Trump brand and the criminal enterprising breed that surrounds him.
2
This should really be a wake-up America call, but I fear most people will just snooze through the alarm, yet again. So, the question is why so dozy? There are many parts to an adequate answer, but certainly, an important component is education or more precisely poor education. Given the dearth of leadership (Betsy Devos anyone?) in political circles concerning education, I only expect that to get worse--and with it, the freedom scores for the United States.
4
Betrayal. That isn't a word that has described a Washington politician, and for the first time in our history a President, since the Civil War. And yet here we are with a President that betrays everything that America has stood for since our beginning, and with the nod and a wink of Republicans. The Rule of Law, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and basic morality are thrown to the wind, casually, by DJT and his cabal of power hungry abbettors. It's no wonder that we've lost our leadership in the world. We should endeavor to again be the shining example of democracy to the world. Vote them all out of office.
2
We were never free or a democratic republic ( res publica). The system of capital creates internal contradictions to democracy. Slavery, corporate cronyism, a rise in militarism from the 70's, polarization and asymmetric power over labor and resources and, most recently, corruption and impunity contribute little by little to the downfall of democracy. Jefferson and Franklin knew this. So no, we aren't exceptional any longer, but we can awaken to becoming better than we were yesterday and have hope in raising our future to be ethically and morally better than the "adults" who govern now.
4
I have been reading for months now on how dumb Trump is, what a buffoon Trump is, and yet he is smart and capable enough to bring down the American democracy?! Get real. Michelle Goldberg says "Two years into Donald Trump’s presidency, American democracy has in many ways proved fairly resilient." But she is wringing her hands because the full impact of erosion in democracy may not be seen for two years and the U.S. is no longer the champion of democracy around the world. Goldberg should have a bit more faith that the American democracy is strong enough to withstand any real or imagined assault from Trump, et.al. And she should give Americans a bit more credit in our ability to see what Trump stands for. And with our recent actions in Venezuela opposing Maduro, Democrat controlled House, Women's March, press like the NYT, 29 States suing the Trump admin, we still got it.
15
@Terece Lets's wait and see if Americans deserve as much credit as you suggest we do after the results of the 2020 presidential election. If Trump is re-elected, I think it tells us all we need to know about how much faith we should have in our fellow Americans.
I, for one, am extremely skeptical.
12
@Terece
No!! Wait!! Wait and see to what degree the extreme right has been emboldened, how many more youth feel it’s fine to wear MAGA hats, defend the wearing of black-face, and believe that empathy is actually political-correctness-gone-wild. How many more borderline psychotics are encouraged to shoulder automatic weapons to create havoc. Our path toward tolerance, understanding and equality has been subverted. The deep wound of slavery on our country has been re-inflamed.
Fear a split of the Democratic vote, and a solid Trump base: a majority vote could not elect Hillary Clinton. Gerrymandering persists as does truly fake news and the manipulation of social media by Russian hackers and US citizens who want to disrupt the political discussions.
No, the harm Trump has done to our Country is not easily reversed. No, this is not the “most divided our country has ever been.” But we have been set back a long way.
5
To those commenters who are complaining about no mention of numbers during the Obama administration:
2008 and 2009 basically had Democratic white house and Democratic majorities in congress. AFTER 2009, Republican congressional obstruction meant that any progressive initiatives hit a roadblock of sneering denial. That impacted the ACA and a myriad of other things that would have kept the report's numbers higher. You giggled in delight at Mitch McConnell's antics for years, and now when the results come, you snarl that it's all a lie. Oh, wait. You BELIEVED the fascist lies of trump and Miller/Bannon? Sad.
3
Congratulations to Latvia, and best wishes to Croatia that it may surpass our current poor performance.
4
So these reports apparently are released in the first month or so of each year. The author notes that at the beginning of 2009, right about when Obama was inaugurated, the US democracy score was 94. In February of 2018 after two years of Trump the US score is 86. Author then concludes, Trump is eroding democracy. Naturally all readers shake their head in agreement. Problem is, at the beginning of 2016, before Trump was even the Republican front runner, and when Obama was very much our President, the US score was 90. Uh oh. So half of the loss indisputably are on Obama. But the plot thickens even more because by 2017, right about when Obama was leaving office and Trump was coming to power, our score was 89. Hard to say that decline to 89 is on Trump (he hadn't had enough time to subvert democracy yet). So, looks like we have 5 points loss which are attributable to Obama and 3 to Trump. Awfully inconvenient, these numbers...
10
I was wondering why Ms. Goldberg didn't mention any scores after 2009 and before the latest two reports. That would've spoiled the narrative, right? Good job, Bill.
7
@Bill
Just in case it isn't clear, the conclusion you must come to is that it is Trump's fault. Don't let facts or details get in the way of that.
Sadly, this is yet another dull and predictable column that gives teeth to the claim that previously centrist and respected news outlets have become little more than propaganda arms of the DNC. It would behoove this paper to pay closer attention to what Jill Abramson has said about the way in which it covers the president in her book, Merchants of Truth.
5
Without the usual pathos that characterizes these op-ed pieces, it would be worthwhile to discuss how a repeal of DACA is evidence of the erosion of democracy under Trump.
DACA was enacted as an executive order under President Obama, which is to say that it was not enacted as the product of legislation passed in the house and senate, and then signed into law by the president. Rather, DACA started and ended with the president, more or less the same way that laws are enacted by autocrats.
Whether you are a supporter of DACA or not, or sympathetic to those protected under DACA, ending DACA is no more a threat to democracy than the enactment of DACA was in the first place. Someone who has been hired to be a columnist for this paper ought to be able to recognize that.
6
I'm a big fan of Obama, but part of the reason we're here is because of the failure of his administration to punish the criminality of the Bush II administration. It may have been a political impossibility at the time--he had to use most of his political capital to get health care reform, arguably just as important.
But had that criminality been exposed and appropriately punished, I can't help but believe that democracy would have benefited. Holding certain individuals above the law does not promote democracy.
16
@Justin I agree, one of the biggest failings of his administration was that no one paid the price for the 2008 crash, except all those that were evicted. Americans had every right to be angry.
2
@Justin
Ha! You think if democrats had somehow managed to pull off a highly politicized criminal investigation and punishment of a high profile person of the opposing party our democracy would be promoted?
Incredible a person could actually believe that, but I'll take you at your word and assume you actually believe what you wrote. I think the effect of trying to criminally prosecute a man who won the presidency two times, by winning the votes of a substantial percentage of fellow Americans would be devastating to democracy. The many Americans who voted Mr. Bush in would correctly feel that their voices were being silenced, and the response would be that the republicans would open their investigations of the democrats, and try to pay back the favor in kind. You'd see escalations on escalations and an even worse decline of decency on both sides than we're already seeing.
Just imagine Trump were to actually lock Hillary up. I'm sure if there were the political will, we could find something illegal that she did. I mean, a whole mess of Hillary's emails were deleted right after she was told in no uncertain terms...not to delete anything. Assuming that was intentional, that's a crime (destroying evidence). Her people claim it was an honest mistake, but does anyone really believe that? I don't care about Hillary's emails anymore than I care about Trump paying off his girlfriends to keep quiet, but the notion that more investigations is going to promote democracy is pure lunacy.
1
Our Constitution is a short, rather general document. It reflects the political pressures and compromises that weighed on the men who wrote it. They knew it was not perfect and included provisions to amend it. In fact the first ten amendments, the "Bill of Rights", were added simultaneously with the ratification of the Constitution itself. There have been seventeen amendments since.
We need to consider amendments to fix some of the problems we are having because times have changed. One is the emphasis on states. A citizen's vote should have the same weight regardless of where it is cast. Another is computer assisted gerrymandering. Another is the bias toward a two-party, winner-take-all system. Another is the appointment of federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, for life. Another is the outsize influence of private money in politics. Another is the vesting of so much authority in one person, the President. It is time for an overall.
13
As the aristocrat complained, the problem with democracy is that the riffraff think they're part of it.
101
@Kirk Bready and the trouble with socialism is those who want it think it’s for everyone ELSE, not for them. Once reality hits, they are stuck with no choices...too bad, hmmmmmm,m?
@Kirk Bready
Exactly. Like a few years when a Wall Street trader complained to a reporter that a senator/representative who hadn't acted as he wanted that the politician hadn't paid attention to his constituents, meaning himself and others like him. It totally escaped him that the voters in the politician's district might have felt the same way. They believe - correctly - that their campaign contribution gives them ownership of the person whose campaign it was.
@skyfiber
Really don't understand socialism, right? Talk to a Scandinavian to get the facts. You might be surprised to discover that their politicians are more responsive than ours and that they like things the way they are.
8
Brava, Brava Ms. Goldberg!
1
Having just had an election where Democrats took control of the House, I am unpersuaded that democracy in the USA is at risk.
10
@Phil,
Tell that to a disenfranchised black southern voter.
1
Should anyone be surprised?
Thank you Michelle Goldberg for telling it like it is. One would hope people who voted for Donald Trump read your column and have the light bulb go off, revealing the truth.
1
don't hold your breath. as much as Trump's base appears to suport him ,they even more strongly oppose any accomodation to reality, the modern world, planning for the future,,or anybody they think supports that agenda.
3
Wow...your cherry-picked bias is showing Ms. Goldberg. I'm sure Latvia is better in every way than the U.S....you should check it out!
4
I suggest one of the Times crack investigative reporters do a little background check on Freedom House. You may be surprised who's funding this group.
3
Who would that be? At first glance they seem to be an NGO that gets a majority of their funding from the US government.
1
@Jerry
how about you tell us who you think is funding it rather than issuing vaguely sinister innuendo? Google tells me 66% of its funding comes from the US government, which is completely inline with Ms. Goldberg's reasoning.
3
All decency is being eroded under this cruel incompetent man. Vote blue to rescue our Democratic Republic
2
Ever since Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, with a fawning press praising this act as a step toward national healing, political elites have been largely immune from legal accountability for their crimes. We can only hope that the egregious criminality of the current President and his hangers on has changed that attitude, and that we will again assert the principle that we are a nation of laws and that nobody is above the law.
8
More terrifying signs that trump is killing America. And Lindsey Graham has become one of his biggest cheerleaders. Chalk up some more measurement points on the fall from democracy.
Congress, please wake up and smell the democracy. Where is your true patriotism and love for this country? Somewhere below all the $$ from your richest donors and the tweets from the president. But, we'll let you keep on looking, it's down there somewhere. Just hurry.
59
So many commenters refer to Canada, the Scandinavian countries, and to Western Europe, but they fail to see that those are basically homogeneous societies as opposed to us, the US of A. So all comparisons are unfair.
2
@PaulN Ummm, Canada is far from homogenous! Over 24% identify as Francophone, and 2.5% as Indigenous or Metis. By 2030, some 20% will be "immigrants", that is born outside Canada. Perhaps you are hung up on "visible minorities" versus ethnicity. Come visit any time.
1
@PaulN Also without the stain of slavery, civil war or the murder of it's own citizens from lax guns laws you claim makes you free. Americans have killed each other since the 1950's than all the wars she's ever fought, including 1776.
@PaulN
The core issue is one of size, management and temperament. Those nations have populations that range from 8 to 45 million, while the U.S. is a bloated, violent, disparate 330 million with no end in sight to massive increases in population.
In part, but not all, the rating the US got is the result of forcing teachers and schools to teach to a test, focusing on schools rather than critical thinking capabilities and teaching stuff like Civics.
6
Perhaps Freedom House should add a 26th criterion to their scoring system: Head of State is ruled by a foreign adversary, whose (many) dictated terms are entirely detrimental to the country in question.
With that little detail woven into the fabric, our score drops from 86 to about 2.
14
All of the comments regarding fixes to our problems may be spot on, but, how do you get a man, or women and men such as our current legislatures, to agree to something that adversely affects their hold on power and the perks associated with said power? I do not see how any of them will ever vote for these changes. So, what are the options left to us?
7
The downward cycle of democracy will not end soon. It may take years to even bring it to a standstill then more time yet to swing the arc in an upward trajectory.
Part of this is embedded in the nature of politics itself. It is truly exacerbated by the outsized influence of special interest money and the role of the media in general and the internet in particular.
If the U.S. is going to change it will be through the leadership of women and our minority population, particularly African-American and Latino/Latina.
5
@james33
ROFL.
The U.S. has been changing and evolving ever since 1776.
What are the actual examples of our eroding freedoms?
Censorship by big tech and academia?
Speech codes?
Throwing out due process on campuses?
Ever expanding and more powerful administrative state?
14
@Just Saying
The IRS suppressing free speech, but only for libertarians and conservatives.
The FBI spying on the opposition party.
Assassination attempts on Republican House members.
Anti-Semitism from Democrats.
2
What we have in the USA is a collection of fifty states, that are really fifty little countries, all vying for and wanting their slice of the collective federal pie. They all bleat about "states' rights" when it suits their "freedom" agendas, but they all love that federal dollar too.
What is really the biggest "freedom" problem is letting the states, both Democrat and Republican controlled, corrupt the electoral process to their partisan advantage, with by far the biggest offenders being Republican states, whose electorate diminishes daily as its panicked, white, Christian base dies off and is being replaced by "others."
Elections should be a central government controlled system, as it is in every other developed country. Make it paper ballots; make it internet-based; make it mail-in postal voting; make it absolutely anything but the maze of incompatible, state-based, corruptible systems it is now.
Technology is so reliable now that I never even ask for a receipt for electronic or card payments any more. I suggest making VISA, American Express or MasterCard the general election systems data provider, with bipartisan, technically literate, federal oversight.
Now that would improve our "freedom" score.
6
@Anthony Taylor
Make it mail in ballots with paid Democrat operatives harvesting the ballots and screening them before submission. California eliminated Republican primaries so they could game the system to result in having only Democrat candidates on the ballot.
Put the Democrats in charge and we'll be a fascist nation within a generation.
There hasn't been a decade since the european settlement of the Americas devoid of human rights violations. North American history is not different or more polite. We've always been one third far right; if you don't think so, listen to a John Phillips Sousa march. It is a mistake to put the country on a pedestal it never occupied. Better to role up our sleeves and try to make government work properly: hold accountable and punish the wrong doers of the past, the present, and the future. Tax the filthy rich and create equality of opportunity for all.
8
@davey
Start with Massachusetts, and their wealth built on slave imports. Have their minority voter turnout rise from the lowest in the nation.
Reminds me of the lyrics to that Stealers Wheels song: Latvians to the left of me, Croatians to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you.
6
@Jay Orchard
Correction. In the Stealers Wheels song, the clowns and the jokers are to the left and to the right. In our case, we're stuck in the middle with the clown and the joker.
2
“Latvia Above Us, Croatia Below.”
This is terrible, but not unexpected.
The first problem with Americans in general is that most don’t know these are countries, let alone where they are. Ignorance is a fetishized and marketed product in the US. We are Number One... and don’t need to know anything else. It’s allowing the world, and our leaders, to surpass us on one side - and destroy us on the other.
The second problem is that most Americans think our democracy is strong, even bulletproof. The popular myth is of a nation that quarrels and works it out, but then comes together in the end. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, we are in the early stages of civil conflict, which could easily get far worse - and violent.
We treat our Constitution and our government like a football, when it’s more like a Faberge Egg. It’s delicate and precious, and needs respect and protection. It’s not getting any...
15
It seems like only yesterday that Paul Krugman sat down with Chrystia Freeland and Tony Atkinson to discuss the threat of inequality to the evolution of liberal democracy. The year was 2013.
Since that meeting Tony Atkinson the father of Inequality studies has died and Chrystia Freeland the author Plutocratocrats: The Rise of the Global Super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else has left economic journalism and is now Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Yesterday Gabriel Zucman the Paris born University of California economics professor and advisor to Elizabeth Warren appeared on MSNBC to discuss Elizabeth Warren's tax policy.
In their discussion in 2013 Krugman, Atkinson and Freeland discussed a marginal rate of 70% and its major problem of places like the Cayman Islands where for a few shekels money could be stored and not taxed.
The stuff has hit the fan and and democracy is in retreat because there is no leader in a global economy where money is placed where it does the least good for the world and our quality of life.
Why do I mention Gabriel Zucman?
Professor Zucman was a student of Piketty, who was a student of Atkinson and it looks like Inequality Studies is what should have been the focus of what has destroyed or is threatening to destroy democracy throughout the globe.
It is time to revisit the discussion of 2013 titled
Inequality and Economic Growth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l6E3mUNW70
Trump is a distraction
13
@Montreal Moe
Thank you for your comment; regrettably few will read it.
Of late I find myself despairing that enough people will wake to the reality of what is occurring, worldwide.
7
@Montreal Moe
The powerful few who benefit from the status quo will defend it with distraction and misdirection. We do have to stay focused on the root causes of all of this.
1
@Mel Farrell
Thank you Mel.
I have been commenting for a decade and a half and have seen whole trains of thought not printed but occasionally like today seen comments that echo what I had written. The negative reaction to the stupidity spewed by Michael Dell at Davos warmed the cockles of my heart.
I am optimistic because these last few weeks I have seen at least a half dozen references to the Leonard Cohen line "there is a crack in every thing". that is "how the light gets in"
The crack is widening and even the marketing geniuses can't stop the light getting in.
In 1776 the Salon Society of London was where the future was discussed Howard Schultz's Starbucks could not come close to achieving that ethos. I hope Schultz runs because he can destroy his Frankenstein monster. The world needs independent salons and a new economy if we are to survive but the corporate model will never allow places where we can participate in the dissemination of metaphysics and a society where Solon is more important than Steve Jobs.
I am 70 and I am among the dumbest people on this planet because I have more to learn in whatever time I have remaining than anybody.
1
There might be "pressure" from other politicians to "forgive" and not punish trump and his accomplices (like Ford did Nixon), but guaranteed the American public at large (excluding his ever-shrinking base, of course) will DEMAND that they all receive the same justice that we citizens would receive had any of us done the same things they have done.
To "forgive" this bunch and void their legal consequences just perpetuates this sort of behavior again by someone much less stupid - to the eventual demise of our democracy.
It would also say that white, rich, powerful men do not get legal consequences, no matter how egregious their crimes. We need justice for their crimes against us.
9
@Lynn Taylor You want to bring democracy to an end in this country? Start prosecuting figures from outgoing administrations for their legal offenses. This is the reason the Obama administration never even considered prosecuting Dick Cheney or any other figures in the GWB administration. It would have corroded and destroyed our tradition of peaceful passage of power.
Prosecuting an outgoing President or other members of his or her administration must have an extremely high threshold and thus happen very seldom. This extreme act should be reserved for someone who murdered citizens on the scale of the Nazis, or who engaged in clear and unambiguous treason.
Cheney's careless global war games, bad as they were, and Trump's self-serving exploitation of foreign espionage, bad as it is, does not meet the necessary threshold. Just vote him and his ilk out and let them live in infamy.
@Flaminia. I respectfully disagree. NO ONE should be above the law. No one.
I was around when Nixon was pardoned - it did not sit well with "the people."
The day white collar crime is prosecuted as fully as the guy on the street selling single cigarettes (who paid with his life) is the day I know our government is really "by, of and for the people."
1
“the architects of both the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis have gone largely unpunished.”
Two hammer blows to American legitimacy. And maybe the cynicism it engendered allowed trump to rise.
9
Yes, this administration has betrayed America’s highest ideals with resulting institutional corrosion, but"they" have done so with a large majority of support from right-leaning CITIZENS.
Most of these people would vote for Trump again tomorrow if they could. And almost none of them will read your essay.
The situation is much worse than you paint it.
15
@Dale M
"...large majority of support from right-leaning CITIZENS..."
should read:
"...large majority of support from right-leaning ELECTORAL COLLEGE..."
Three million first, and ten million in the last election, were against this. THAT is the REAL large majority. And that is why it's a pity all this is happening.
4
The next to last paragraph is key. Trump MUST be prosecuted after he leaves office. By not prosecuting Bush and company, the United States assured that the next Republican President would be worse. Democracy will not survive a President worse than Trump.
9
@Jason Galbraith
What is it that Bush did that you would have prosecuted him for without making Obama subject to prosecution?
How is it that he is not being prosecuted for having the FBI spy on the opposition party? Nixon resigned because he attempted to cover up the involvement of private political operatives spying on the opposition. Obama used federal employees to spy on the opposition, and they went along willingly/
1
Actually "we" are pretty good about holding even elites to account. It is them - our corrupt politicians _ who are not very good at it for the simple reason of self-preservation. All those responsible for the illegal torture of war prisoners, the politicians who knowingly lied us into the the costly, illegal, immoral and counterproductive war in Iraq, and the Wall Street banksters whose fraud caused the great financial crisis and the great recession would be in prison now if most of us had our way.
1
@Jack Robinson
Valerie Plame was a CIA analyst of weapons of mass destruction. It was her department that informed Bush and the Congress that there was credible evidence that Sadaam had WMD, which was supported by the fact that he had used WMD on the Kurds.
Her husband, in a effort to get a Secretary of State appointment when Kerry was elected, wrote a NYT editorial. Read it again. He never asked if the Iraqis had attempted to procure yellowcake while sitting around a teahouse in Niger. He never visited mining or processing facilities. His buddies told him Iraq had not obtained yellowcake, which is a different question.
He was a partisan walking back the intelligence his wife had provided to the government when, in hindsight, little evidence was found in Iraq of WMDs.
To add insult to injury, a special prosecutor was appointed to investigate the unmasking of Valerie Plame after her husband brought her to the attention of the media. It wasn't even a crime or civil offense to reveal that she was a CIA analyst.
Bush didn't lie, and he did not authorize any violations of the Geneva convention. Valerie and the Democrats lied. Valerie was the person who provided the intelligence that the president and Congress relied upon.
@ebmem She has turned out to be a radical right winger. So...don't think she was helping the democrats. Cheney outed Plume.
While I laud any entity that points at efforts to undermine real freedom, anywhere and everywhere on our planet, any reasonable discerning human being, especially here in this fake Democratic Republic we call the United States of America, can see with crystal clarity that the American brand of freedom is an illusion, a carefully developed and nurtured illusion, built on a base of predatory capitalism, with the .01% and .1%ters fully vested in control and ownership of all that is valuable throughout this land, including it's most valuable evergreen renewable resource, viewed as such by these Masters of Mankind, that resource being none other than its people, from birth to death.
And the people, the deliberately kept in the dark, kept deaf, dumb, blind, and stupid people, all the unwitting subjects of massive 24/7/365 all-encompassing perception management, blithely like so many mindless bovines, accept the reluctantly swept from the table breadcrumbs, these Masters dole out.
To presume that freedom, in all of its definitions, was meant to be enjoyed by other than our Masters, is folly.
Freedom can only be won by the masses when it is wrested, with great force, from the dead claws of these Masters.
Study the history of mankind, and then tell me I err.
4
The ultimate example of transactiononal amorality predates “president trump” by 30 years. Letting corporations hoodwink Americans with the fool’s gold of “engagement policy” was the most egregious abdication of policy making responsibility on the part of our political leaders since Nixon went to China.
3
In the rankings, every singe developed country ranks higher than the US. Every single one, that is, except South Korea.
Just based on this illogical fact, and based on my experience in having lived in several of the countries above the US, this is a worthless study.
It's a worthless study - except for the not so hidden agenda.
5
The Rise and Fall of the American Empire will soon be written.
It is inevitable, I suppose. I just never expected to watch it happen first hand.
I guess our grandchildren would do best to learn to speak Chinese and Russian.
1
Since a corporate "coup de tat" has been gradually happening in America for the past 35 years and dismantling democracy was essential to it happening, it is quite startling that members of the media and much of the American electorate have just started to take notice of what is REALLY happening.
This is clearly the result of one not paying attention and because of "self-interest" continuing to blindly elect those that have been ultimately integral to democracy's destruction. Trump is just a symptom of this 35 yr.malaise and now that it is all taking place at "warp speed', people are just now standing up and taking notice?
You better hope it is not too late, however, in this case, "hope" will not be enough.
5
@Deus
The current attempt by Democrats to unseat Trump is a better example of a coup d'état.
Democrats were happy with the Electoral College when Bill Clinton/Al Gore were elected with 43% of the popular vote, but are outraged and ready to overthrow the government because Trump was elected with 46% of the popular vote.
Once upon the time the US was a model democracy. Not so any more. The US is not a parliamentary democracy, meaning that minority administrations that govern by executive order are common. The cabinet consists of mostly unelected secretaries and apparently, we now learn, the president can even appoint family members to government posts. The electoral system frequently produces minority rule and the parties in power in each state are actually in charge of planning congressional elections. The rich and powerful can spend as much as they want on political campaigns and the required budgets are at least ten times larger than in other democracies. The system only allows for two political parties and one party government, limiting the real choices of the voters. The government of the people is tied by the SCOTUS where unelected, ideologically motivated lifetime appointees frequently veto and question laws passed by majorities in Congress. All of these factors have led to cynicism on a level where participation in state and federal elections is often below 50%, leaving most of government devoid of real legitimacy. I could go on but I guess my point is made. Nobody should be complacent with blind patriotism. It is time to do something about this: to show that our generation too can be as great as those who led the world in democracy before.
4
@The Hawk
In a pure democracy, every public policy choice would be subject to a referendum. We would experience the tyranny of the majority. Same sex marriage would be illegal. The plebiscite in California, of all places, demonstrated that the majority did not see the need to redefine marriage in 2008. Obama and Hillary were opposed to same sex marriage in 2008.
In 1779, only landowners voted in state elections, for president and House members. Senators were selected by state legislators [who had been elected by the landowners, who were also the only taxpayers in the country.] The federal government was funded by the states, who were assessed their share based on the census count. The landowners, who were overwhelmingly men, elected the government and paid the bills.
It was never a pure democracy, and the federal government had responsibility for national defense, maintaining the federal judiciary, authorizing federal borrowing and paying back the debt, and adjudicating disputes between the states. All other government services were provided by the state and local governments.
1
The United States promotes democracy around the world, but its electoral process falls short when evaluated on the basis of democratic principles. The United States was classified as a "flawed democracy" in the 2018 EIU (Economist Intelligence Unit) index and ranked 25th anong countries, alongside Estonia and Cabo Verde. The Scandinavian countries rank in the top 10, which also includes New Zealand, Australia, and Canada.
This flawed democracy elected a minority president. If strict democratic principles applied, Hilary Clinton, like her or not, would have been elected. After all, she got 3.5 million votes more than Donald Trump. The flaw is in the Electoral College, where a vote in Wyoming carries 3.6 times more weight than a vote in Wyoming.
Other flaws in the system include the disproportionate representation in the senate, the lack of a voting representative in the Congress for the citizens of Washington DC, and the gerrymandering of congressional voting districts. The system was set up over 200 years ago. It's time to change.
172
@Charles Skeen
"The United States promotes democracy around the world", except when it suits their purposes better to help those looking to grind it into the dirt - Pinochet, Noriega, Batistuta, to name a few.
America, acts the same way as the great colonialists have always done - to advance their interests above all else, whatever the cost to those without the might to resist that aim.
34
@Charles Skeen
Correction: Obviously, what I meant to say was that "a vote in Wyoming carries 3.6 times more weight than a vote in [California]."
Let me suggest another badly needed change to improve the American electoral process, that is, the adoption, for congressional races, of open primaries followed by a final ranked choice, instant runoff.
34
@Charles Skeen
"The United States promotes democracy around the world."
As in Chile, Vietnam, Iraq, Argentina, etc.
12
The article has the following quote: "Authoritarianism is on the rise all over the globe — according to the Freedom House report, this is the 13th consecutive year that global freedom has declined. Trump’s presidency is a consequence of this trend, but it’s also become an accelerant of it". Out of the 13 years, Trump was president only for 2 years, but the author blames Trump for decline of democracy in the world. This shows the author's bias. Freedom declined not because of Trump's strong policies, but because of the weak and destabilizing policies of the previous President. Even Saudi society has more freedom now than a few year ago. In America press is trying to oppress Trump's freedom of speech while the press has been attacking him much more forcefully and negatively than before. Look at Venezuela, while Trump supports democracy there, the left supports Maduro. Michelle is not an independent analyst, but a person with TDS.
10
The present situation is the result of having a Republican majority in charge. Trump is the direct result of that majority.
4
@Alex E
So Obama was president for the other 11 years?
1
Yes but in the two years of Trump, he has vocally,endorsed the absolute worst of some of them. Brazil, Russia, Saudi Arabia. The latter being the foremost sponsor of radical religious extremism on the planet. The idea that Saudi is adding freedoms is nothing more that smoke and mirrors. Trump is probably personally the weakest president in 50 years. I’ll take Obama’s “weakness “ over Trumps strength, any day. Only one requires thought.
3
US ranking is too high. How can a country that passes laws criminalizing boycotts (BDS movement) be considered relatively free? That’s the hallmark of an authoritarian state.
7
The electoral college is the albatross of American democracy.
Countries all around the world see an American president elected, without a majority of the vote, now twice in less than 20 years. They realize America is rigged. We should too, we are not a democracy.
478
@PNicholson
Bill Clinton/Algore were elected and reelected with less than a majority of the popular vote. W was elected with a minority of the vote, but Algore did not get a majority in 2000. W was reelected with a majority of the popular vote. Obama was elected and reelected with a majority of the popular vote, but he is the exception, not the rule.
All of the presidents have been elected with a majority of the Electoral College, which is how our Constitution allocates power between the minority and the majority.
Foreigners, unfamiliar with the nuances of our electoral process, were unaware that Bill Clinton was a minority president. Four times in the last 28 years we have had a minority president. Three times we've had a president elected by the majority of voters.
One of Trump's statements that resonated with the electorate was that the system is rigged. It wasn't until late in the election cycle that the extent to which the DNC had rigged the system to anoint Hillary as the Democrat nominee and it wasn't until after the election that it was revealed that Hillary had controlled essentially all of the money raised by the state Democrat organizations that Trump's assertion was confirmed.
@PNicholson
So, we’re to have mob rule, is it ?
"[T]he architects of both the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis have gone largely unpunished."
I'll say. In fact, we gave them hugs tax cuts and deregulation.
18
How democratic is a democracy?
US Australia and UK have changes of political parties, prime ministers and presidents, The Judiciary in the UK/ Australia is independent and in the US not too bad. Compare this to Germany - same party rule and same chancellor - France - after an election the electorate are ignored. Italy - a corrupt shambles, and many other European countries are in effect a one party state with a nobbled judicial system.
I appreciate some of the points in the article - and Mr Trump's love of dictators worries me, but I think it missed the point
4
Thanks for this. The Freedom House report crystallizes what many - most? - Americans have experienced or sensed since the 2016 election.
Of course, the Trump apologists will be out in force in the comments, which only further highlights the challenges we face. And, at this point, I'm not sure there's any coming back from the damage that has been done.
7
At least we are still free enough to be home to Freedom House, which is free to issue an objective report without pressure from the government. If the US rating suddenly goes up to 100, watch out!
A couple of things stand out to me, an unabashed leftie and a former Brit.
First, the "socialist" countries of Scandinavia all get a perfect score, save for Denmark which comes close.
Secondly, it's a wee bit ironic that the written constitution of the US apparently safeguards freedom less effectively than the UK's unwritten one - though in all fairness, given the gross inadequacy of its institutions in the face of Brexit, I fully expect the UK's score to go down next time.
5
It would be very easy for the United States to achieve a high score, but that would take political will.
First, the country should make it mandatory to vote, and to automatically sign up everyone as they apply for ID, such as a driver's licence.
Second, there should be a national holiday for people to vote, and furthermore there should be paper ballots that are mailed in.
Every single effort should be made to achieve 100% participation in Democracy (like many of the other countries on the list do), and to take citizenship seriously.
Just ask anyone in a country at the bottom of the list, what they think, or go ask people in the countries that are NOT even on it.
I suspect they would trade places in a heartbeat.
7
I am all for prosecuting everyone who has broken the law. I am all for impeaching the President if he committed impeachable offenses. I am a little troubled by this call for a "reckoning" for causing "institutional corrosion." It sounds almost like Goldberg is calling for some sort of retributive process to punish people for "crimes against the state." As I said, we need to punish criminals who are duly tried and convicted. But, we do not need an Inquisition. That cure is worse than the disease. As Lincoln said while the Civil War was entering its final stages, " With malice toward none, with charity for all let us bind up the nation's wounds." If that is the best course when our citizens are literally killing each other, then surely it is the correct course now.
5
@Horace Unfortunately, as the article states "We’re not good at holding elites to account in America; the architects of both the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis have gone largely unpunished."
The crimes committed by G.W., Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice for example were laid out clearly. Had we fulfilled out international obligations, they would have been prosecuted, with at home or in the Hague.
American exceptionalism as it applies to the "elites" is indeed at the root of the problem.
5
@Horace
Perhaps if Lincoln hadn’t forgiven southern secessionists we wouldn’t have Jim Crow. By not fully punishing the guilty there was never a sense that the South lost the Civil War. Instead, it was looked as an armistice and Trump is a resurgent, not as a secessionist but as as racist.
@BWCA
The "guilty" were punished, even though the southern states' rebellion mirrored the colonies' break from England only 85 years earlier. i.e. They died or were maimed, with women and children traumatized by both war and war crimes by the other "guilty" side. In civil wars, there are no good sides - just death and loss.
From the Freedom House report:
"The great challenges facing US democracy did not commence with the inauguration of President Donald Trump. Intensifying political polarization, declining economic mobility, the outsized influence of special interests, and the diminished influence of fact-based reporting in favor of bellicose partisan media were all problems afflicting the health of American democracy well before 2017. Previous presidents have contributed to the pressure on our system by infringing on the rights of American citizens. Surveillance programs such as the bulk collection of communications metadata, initially undertaken by the George W. Bush administration, and the Obama administration’s overzealous crackdown on press leaks are two cases in point."
8
Michelle Goldberg places blame for America's democracy ranking on President Trump. ("...a score of 86, down from 94 in 2009")
Notably, Michelle omits the decline in score under President Obama. (a decline inconvenient to her narrative).
Freedom House' president Michael Abramowitz (quoted in the article) was a former editor for the Washington Post. You may be able to anticipate his point of view.
At least this article is on the editorial page.
14
@Ami You should give the score under President Obama, although in 2009 it was 94. Please!
2
Prime communist propaganda,and dishonorable. The US is the most advanced and wealthy society in history. Citizens from every socialist failed backwater sewer country at war with criminal drug gangs only dream of trying to reach the shores and border of the US or any civilized western Nation based on Democracy.
3
People from El Salvador try to get into the US at any cost. True. Any place is better than El Salvador for those refugees.
1
Canada is not more democratic than the U.S. You have division of power and an elected President. We have an unrestrained simpleton picked by the Liberal Party leading our country.over the cliff.
8
At least this piece is labeled opinion.
It is so seriously wrong. We, along with Great Britain are at the
very top of the list of countries where Democracy is working well.
Democracy means rule by the people. The elections of Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and then the election of the opposite party to at least one house of Congress ande exactly how our system is supposed to work.
Trump has contributed mightily to revoking the anti-democratic bureaucratic fiats of the Obama admininstation (at their silliest, whole-wheat tortillas in public schools, at their worst, refusing to enforce the laws against illegal immigration.) His appointments to the Supreme Court will help prevent the Judiciary acting as a dictatorship by denying the meaning of the Constitution in place of the correct process, changing it by vote of the States.
Great Britain is in the process of a democratically mandated Brexit from the highly non-democratic EU.
In the USA the Democrats attack democracy with ad-hominem attacks , for example, those against Brett Kavanaugh and now the governor of VA.
This piece is more of the same, carefully designed propaganda of the anti-democratic far left., that collapses when looked at from what real democracy means.
7
@Doug McDonald Yes, the world's leading two party systems are model examples of democracy and the House of the Lords in the UK is real democracy - I guess all countries should have one. I guess in your view the judiciary acts like a dictatorship when it rules against you and as a bulwark of democracy when it rules in your favor. Another great democratic instinct! Congratulations.
@Doug McDonald It doesn't say the US isn't near the top of the list, it says we've lost ground. Under Trump. UK is in a free fall right now, we'll have to see how it works out. I wouldn't say their current state is a model of democracy. It's a test of democracy to be sure.
Trump is a fool that wants to be a dictator. You blame the left of being anti-democratic. I'm a former Marine and proud of serving my country. I'm a liberal. The threat now is from trump and his rich buddies. They are not promoting democracy, they are promoting themselves.
1
@The Hawk
Obama spent four years stating that he lacked to legal authority to implement the dream act absent congressional action and then autocratically violated the law by implementing DACA in a successful attempt to get re-elected.
The Democrat Party, with no input from Republicans allowed, passed Obamacare despite the fact that the majority of Americans did not approve. The House passed a cap and trade carbon bill in 2009, but the 60 Senate majority refused to take it up for even a vote. Those two events cost Democrats the majority in the House, after the TEA Party [Taxed Enough Already]
By the summer of 2012, the unemployment rate was finally ticking down from 10%. The overwhelming majority of private sector jobs being created were part time, low wage jobs, as employers braced for the Obamacare mandate, which would require them to either offer health insurance costing $5000 per employee, or pay a fine of $2-3000 per employee. Obama declared that the employer mandate would not be collected in 2014 and 2015. The autocratic action of a dictator, hoping to be re-elected by temporarily suppressing the predictable damage of his signature accomplishment.
Ms. Goldberg is welcome to move to Latvia. Go ahead, make my day.
But it's also interesting that when President Obama broke the law by spending money that was not allocated by Congress to pay for various parts of Obamacare, Ms. Goldberg and her comrades didn't say a word.
When President Obama made a partisan appointment to the NLRB and attempted to avoid Senate confirmation by declaring that the Senate wasn't in session (the Supreme Court ultimately ruled against Obama), no one on the left said "nyet !".
The list goes on and on.
Obama did it: it's good.
Trump did it: it's a harbinger of the downfall of America.
That's why when President Trump, awful though he may be in certain ways, is not wrong when he talks about fake news.
6
When are the hysterics in the Democratic Party going to face up to one crucial, not alternative, fact. We [yes, I'm a Yellow Dog Democrat] nominated the wrong person in 2016. That's why Donald Trump is president. Not Russian meddling. Not voter suppression. Not a hostile press. Now we are continuing on that suicide march. Hobbling along since we shot ourselves in the foot already. And are about to shoot ourselves in the other one if that sad list of "wannabes" is any indication.
14
@MDeB
The Democratic Party nominated the wrong person in 2008. That was the rookie fatal and really, really stupid political chess board move.
"America now falls below not just Canada and the Nordic countries, but also Greece, Latvia and Mauritius" -- So be it, if this is true. I prefer to live in the US than in any one of the aforementioned countries or, for that matter, in any other.
4
@Tuvw Xyz This type of blind patriotism is a break on progress. It is not limited to countries either. I have seen it in many organizations, from university departments to private companies. The management always says that what they are doing has worked for years and they are already the best, right before they fall.
4
@Tuvw Xyz
I dunno, Canada and Scandinavia look pretty good to me, but the weather is better in California.
2
Thanks, Ms. Goldberg for such a frank, concise, fact-based column.
3
The current situation did not come about just by chance. ALEC was founded in 1973. It seems to me those on the right have had not only an agenda, but a business plan as well, with a well defined strategy and adaptive tactics. They have been in it for the long haul. They know what they want and have not been shy about pursuing it.
Where is the same commitment from the left/center?
There is talk about the 2020 election, and which personality will occupy the presidency. What is the plan to get to 2028 or 2040?
As mentioned in other comments, constitutional amendments take more than a simple majority. Is that process likely in 2020? Doubt it.
What can be done?
Vote. Get the house and senate. Pass legislation to increase House membership to ~550, thereby making representation more equitable. This will partly offset electoral college problems.
Increasing or decreasing the number of supreme court justices can be done legislatively. A threat to do so may encourage more impartial activity on the part of the justices, but only if the there is a veto-proof Congress.
We're learning that democracy is work, hard work, and there is no coasting that will improve the situation.
13
@Mac
Thoroughly agree. E. J. Dionne's book, Why the Right Went Wrong tells the story of how conservatives, starting with Goldwater, planned how to rule the country even if their policies were not supported by or beneficial to a majority of voters. The Left needs to make plans and to realize that regaining true power will take work and won't be easy.
6
Oh gosh it’s great to know we’re still free.
1
This article seems to lay the blame at trump's feet. But, it has been a long time coming. It started years ago with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the US Supreme Court allowing corporations to be citizens, and Republicans at the local, state, and national level methodically disenfranchising American citizens.
14
" But perhaps it could at least figure out a systematic way to repudiate illiberalism. "
The only way we can accomplish this is to lead by example. We must clean our own house & demonstrate clearly to the world that we are serious about maintaining democracy. Even if we don't succeed immediately, we must initiate & maintain a solid good-faith effort. No more letting ourselves be pushed around by screamers on the fringe, no more swallowing of lies by the oligarchs in power, no more "what-aboutism" or making excuses. I believe there are enough good intelligent rational & democracy-loving citizens in this country that together we can restore some sense of national unity & make forward steps toward the ideal of democracy. Let's at least make an earnest attempt, even if democracy is a lost cause.
5
When this wretched Administration is finally gone, I sincerely hope that we have the political will to have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission with the force of law behind it to bring the perpetrators of these crimes and offenses to justice.
Part of the reason we find ourselves here is because, since Nixon, up through Iran/Contra, Abu Ghraib, and onwards, no one is held responsible. You can’t expect to have a functioning society when the people at the top commit crimes and go off Scott-free. So it should surprise no one that we don’t.
If we want to start functioning again, this is where we’ll need to start.
628
@Pat
The "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" you mention doesn't have to wait. It is called the US House of Representatives and it sits today. They can and will hold hearings which will begin the process you describe.
61
@JMM
It is a good thing that the House can hold hearings to "begin the process you describe." That good is limited by the political nature of the House opposition. Whatever they uncover can be undermined by whataboutism and charges that it's just political.
Real Truth and Reconciliation requires that people admit to their transgressions and then are forgiven. I can't see politicians in the USA agreeing to that at this point.
32
@Pat I understand your point, but doesn't it overlook the fact that at least a third of our population views Trump as the answer to the establishment?
I think the real issue is in how much reality can differ between left and right. If this cannot be addressed, we will forever be divided. Frankly, I often wonder if this division we see today is in place (as much as anything) because it benefits the 'ruling class'.
24
Last night I watched a short trailer about Richard Nixon as the end of his presidency approached. His taut expression seemed to say 'I have been caught', yet there seemed a twinge of guilt in him. Also his vehement claim at the time 'I am not a crook!', clearly a fear of his, of being seen in that light.
Then there is Donald Trump, who habitually and constantly lies, at times changing his story in the span of a day, sometimes in the span of a few minutes. He does so shamelessly, he appears completely without guilt or shame, though he is all too ready to say to others 'you should be ashamed'.
How he came to be president still astonishes many of us. How could such a deeply ignorant, crass, amoral huckster have been elected president, supported even by those moral guardians who proclaim themselves 'evangelical Christians'.
How ironic that in the most radical and contorted versions of that theology, it is the anti-Christ who arises in our midst, bringing with him the end of days. And those who elected Donald Trump are the very same ones who awaited him, this man who is the antithesis of true Christ-like values.
663
@Tim B I wish people will save your comment as I have.
It is what so many of us are thinking. You have put it into words beautifully.
44
@Tim B
Trump was able to pull this off because the Press refused to pursue him and his obvious lack of fitness for the job of President.
All the experts tried to warn American voters, from Psychiatrists to National Security Advisers, all the experts were screaming that Trump was not fit for the office and terrible things could happen if he was elected; and, the media refused to investigate those claims and inform the public about the potential harms he might bring.
60
@Don Siracusa Thank you so much, Don.
19
For a true Democracy in the US a number of not so easy to implement things have to happen (but probably never will):
1) Get rid of the electoral college
2) Limit political campaign contributions from individuals and forbid PACs.
3) Change the number of Senators/state to better reflect the population of the state, Some states should have only 1 senator and others more than 2 but no more than 4 with the total still limited to 100.
4) Implement instant runoff (vote ranking).
5) Congressional districts should not be drawn by the dominant party in a given state. It is quite feasible to do it by a computer program that ensures reasonable boundaries without bias.
6) Forbid former members of the Federal government (in Congress or Cabinet) to be paid for lobbying Congress. They should still be able to lobby pro-bono for issues they feel strongly about.
6) Require that at least 1/3 of the minority party in Congress approve the appointment of a Supreme Court Justice unless at least 2/3 of the Senators are of one party.
768
@serban Six things that will never happen because they would have to be put in place by those who benefit from the current system.
63
@serban
I would add implement term limits for congress and the senate. As already observed the ruling party will never permit such modifications since its hold on power would most likely be weakened by such.
48
@serban
A good list of topics for discussion, all with merit. I have one major criticism; as someone who writes code for a living, I would not trust a computer program to tell me what are fair election boundaries. Computer programs give instructions for what output the computer should produce from the provided input so assuming the computer is infallible ignores:
a. That the programmer themselves could have 'messed with' the code.
b. That the program has no 'bugs' or unintended consequences of unanticipated combinations of input data.
c. That some external agency (e.g. Russian hackers) may have found a way to corrupt the input to output algorithm.
No; we need PEOPLE to make the decisions, computers are merely tools like calculators.
71
Truly disturbing. Rather than overly focusing on Trump, we should acknowledge the corrosive effects of 40 years of neoliberalism, dating from Ronald Regan, but pursued by corporate puppets from both political parties. As poor and middle class Americans have witnessed their wealth being transferred to America's political elite through the institutions of US democracy, they understandably have lost faith in such democratic institutions. America also has a wretched history of genocide, slavery and exclusion, meaning that the nation's commitment to genuine democracy for all has always been tenuous. Now is the time for common people to rise up and claim the sovereignty promised since the birth of the nation but never fulfilled. Without a significant and sustained redistribution of wealth, democracy in the nation and the health of the planet will collapse.
790
@Literary Critic Yep. Well put! Both political parties have contributed to the decline of the middle class. And a happy middle class is needed for any country to thrive. I sure hope the people do "rise up and claim the sovereignty promised since the birth of the nation but never fulfilled." (Beautiful sentence, and so true.) Economic equality; social, judicial, and environmental equality. These are what America should fight to achieve.
90
@Literary Critic
Nothing will change until Scalia's "Citizens United" is abolished and K Street is reigned in.
Money, money , money has corrupted most everyone in Congress no matter what party they represent. Those very few elected officials who are honest don't have a chance against the wolves who are waiting for them.
126
@Literary Critic Yes, money is truly at the root of the possible decline of democracy, everywhere. Hope for us though surfaces in the mid term election. The House sits in the middle of a strong resurgence of leadership that understands the problem and stands to recover our leadership, here and elsewhere. It will remain a struggle though so I hope we are up to it.
33
I wonder how much better our ‘democracy’ would be if we had an independent press instead of one that works hand in glove with one major political party.
@EGD...I suppose it depends on what weight you give to facts and alternate facts.
I was taught that every cloud has a silver lining, and I've been thinking about what it might be with regard to the current presidency.
Things may get to a point where we have to get over our complacency and remember that it takes more people protesting and voting to make a democracy work.
Maybe we'll finally take another look at improving education, and actually do something.
Many evangelicals with visibly un-Christian attitudes have been unmasked as hypocrites during Trump's presidency. It's always good to know that it wasn't just your imagination.
Finally, I hope we'll find out more names of businesses we trusted that have wholeheartedly supported this presidency so that we can boycott their products and services and put them in the same kind of peril they've put us in.
8
Over twenty years ago there was a film called "the Siege" in which terrorists bombed NYC and Marshal Law was declared and Muslims were rounded up and thrown into holding pens. At one point Denzel Washington's character asks if this was the real reaction the terrorists wanted. "Bend the law. . . shred the Constitution just a little bit." It's little wonder that this movie did not have a comeback post-9/11.
The decline in Democracy began worldwide in 2005, according to Freedom House--4 years after 9/11. I understand that it's difficult to really face one's self earnestly and that job will be left to future historians but are we letting them win?
1
I won't forgive the Trump crime family and corrupt appointees, or complicit GOP. Lock them up. My ancestors came to this country to escape authoritarianism, during colonial days. Not giving up on liberty and justice for all!
4
The policies that led to our current state started with goldwater, accelerated under reagan, gingrich and shrub2 and are off the charts today. Hopefully the people in this country will wake up in 2020.
6
This column is sadly short on specifics.
If Democracy is reliant on the right to privacy, then the intrusions on privacy by Facebook and Google need to be addressed, by legislative protections (which would make it easy for a person to opt out of the sharing of personal information - not the current maze that the average person finds challenging).
If Democracy is reliant on the integrity of the rule-of-law, then immigration laws need to be enforced in a consistent manner.
If Democracy is reliant on each vote being meaningful, the primary process that governs the ironically-named Democratic Party needs to shed the concept of super-delegates that provides the elites with control of the Party.
If Democracy is reliant on a free press that gives fair exposure to a range of ideas, the NY Times needs to hire at least one columnist who does not come down on President Trump each and every day.
The NY Times is one of the most glaring examples of one-sided and conformist group-think, with little tolerance for diversity of ideas. I followed the link in this column and read the latest edition of Freedom in the World - much of the decline took place under President Obama - but this is NOT mentioned in Ms. Goldberg's column. Why?
4
@Maurice Gatien
There are other news sources out there that offer quite divergent points of view. It is your selection of what to read that gives the narrow view. And the various sections of the NYT have their own partisans and critics. I happen to often dislike the Arts and Music coverage, the lack of epidemiology reporting etc. but I don't denounce the entire paper because of it. I go to other sources. If you want more diversity, choose your sources more diversely, no?
2
Imagine if Trump had demanded that corporations build plants in underserved parts of the country in exchange for the big tax breaks he handed them and to dismantle regulations? But no he just handed over that stuff and then did nothing. All his "promises" were to bring back the good old days that aren't coming back. It's the equivalent of saying to people today: the age of smart cell phones is over. What the American people need and crave are dial phones. And millions of Americans believe that is the answer. As in the days of old, when agriculture declined (like coal and steel), people moved to the areas where the jobs were. I have bad news for you....either move to where jobs are or reinvent yourself to the new economy and demand free community college education and give those tax cuts only to the companies that bring the jobs to you. But you would rather be led by a petty thug who essentially shows up at your door and demands protection money from you. And you continue to hand it over. Again and Again. Democracy at work.
Per forgiveness, I use a physics definition of entropy: "The amount of energy in a given, closed system unavailable for work." Anthropomorphize and voila! It's not their fault. Blame Newton. I used to think this sat at around 10%. But I think there's clinical use for this 35% of stubborn, unmovable Trumpsters. That's a scary percentage. Combine with gerrymandering and voter suppression and voila! We won't survive another round of this. Please vote.
1
The election of Trump and the days since are the greatest renewal of pure democracy in the history of our country. The election of 2016 will be seen as the savior of America, not the view point of this biased antiquated club.
1
@Pilot...Trump is a vulgar bigoted narcissist. An embarrassment to our country home and abroad, and the antithesis of the principles on which are country was founded.
6
The old Bread and Circus has been Trumped. It’s now Lead and Loyalty Rallies. Guns, Hate, Fear Of “ The others “, and unquestioned obedience to The Great Leader. We’ve seen this Movie before, it does NOT end WELL.
Just saying.
7
"We’re not good at holding elites to account in America"
That pretty much say sit all. They can do their dirty business, and if they fail they are not jailed, impoverished, or even disgraced.
Elections might have consequences, but degrading our institutions and our faith in them apparently does not.
4
There is no denying that our country has taken a huge hit thanks to the travesty of the 2016 election, but as Goldberg says our country HAS proven more resilient than many of us thought, what with the Democrats regaining the House and many criminal convictions of those close associates to the charlatan-in-chief. Having said this, the systemic problems in America that have existed since BEFORE we became independent from Britain, have never fully gone away. Continued struggles with voting rights, race relations and criminal justice, to name a few issues, are a constant drag on our freedoms. Still, to compare a multi-ethnic country of 300 million to Greece or Croatia or Latvia is just plain stupid. People love lists and here is yet another meaningless one, proving nothing. India claims to be the "world's largest democracy" but anyone who knows anything about India knows that China is a freer society with much more opportunity than India will ever have where their "democracy" still lives under a rigid caste system and extreme poverty has only grown as the country's economy has supposedly improved. So labels and lists are meaningless. One can compare a Macintosh to a Granny Smith if one wants to, but not to Clementines or Mandarin Oranges. I expect more intellectually probing opinion pieces from The Times, sorry Ms. Goldberg.
1
@ManhattanWilliam
Globalism has made mandatory the knowledge of countries such as Greece, Latvia and even the Cayman Islands because tax havens have made countries like Cyprus an existential threat to democracy and have made the age of the oligarchs our greatest threat.
For would remain democracies like Canada, Latvia and its economic alliance with Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia and Lithuania is our refuge as the USA joins Russia and China where oIligarchy is welcomed more every day.
William, the Global Economy isn't easy and Michelle can only give us some small appetizer of what is to come. I find it sad that you can't understand that that we can't understand anything if we don't know Latvia, Greece and the Cayman Islands.
Michelle has noted a decline in America’s position among democracies. But she hasn’t explored the role of propaganda in converting almost half of Americans to a dystopian paranoid take on America, supporting a Trump. Until this brainwashing apparatus is disassembled, the followers of Trump as a Messiah dividing the waters separating them from utopia will continue as lemmings to the slaughter.
3
Well, George Bush quipped: “I am living proof that ANYONE can become President.” He was referring to inability, of course, ignoring his connections. Trump comes even closer to such verification, but his strength isn’t family connections, but a well-oiled ubiquitous propaganda machine with TV, radio, evangelical pulpits, the NRA, and virulent videos on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.
Propaganda sells Coke, toothpaste, and Trump.
5
Trump and his base have brought the USA to this situation. I am sure they do not care one bit. Isolationists don’t care what others think.
I am struck by the President’s weakness. Yes, he avers the fear mantra, but does he mean it? We also read about his deep personal insecurity all the time. He says people are not nice to him. He wonders why his paper doesn’t write one nice article about him. Just one! He has no allies other than tyrants and users.
The worst thing Trump could do to this country would be to start developing working relationships. Thankfully, he appears to be unwilling or unable to do so.
At this point, human nature is working against him and the Rs. World leaders have made up their minds about him. More impactfully, he has made up his mind about them, and that will not change. And now we are hearing him say the Ds are “radicals”. President 40% is not abandoning the fear mantra. And it will be his undoing. The majority of Americans see him, and we know him.
3
Attacking the First Amendment ( free press). Attacking the Fourth Amendment (Privacy),
Giving the richest Americans plutocracy rule and massive tax cuts, their own media.platform (FoxNews propaganda, Twitter, Facebook, Dark money funded election campaigns stripping power of state legislatures through multimillion dollar Republican campaigns for 40k/16 week/yr state offices, stacking state appellate courts nationwide to rip off mineral and land rights from individual states by out of state anonymous funders, stripping public schools by promoting billionaire backed charter and online schools, with no accountability or mandate to take all kids, no responsibility for brick and mortar maintenance or on staff nurses, allowing the banks to high risk gamble with our hard earned deposits, Ice being the largest law enforcement with no regulation, separating families at the border to put into private facilities that we pay for but can't see, destabilizing the nuclear weapons balance and making us unsafe, gutting the state department, antagonizing our allies, hobbling businesses that don't ay Trump inc. Yup. We are definitely leaning to banana republic- tin pot authoritarian
4
Many factors contributing to a weakening of American democracy:
1. Gerrymandering of legislative districts;
2. Electoral College trumps popular vote;
3. Lifetime supreme court appointments;
4. Racism - our vote counts but their's shouldn't
5. Conservative media indoctrinating listeners against alternative viewpoints;
6. Fear mongering by the right wing;
7. the GOP's decision to hyper-politicize government to the point where compromise is not possible;
8. The mainstream media's focus on dog whistles and false equivalence (Both sides are at it!).
11
Follow the money as to why our democracy has weakened from the infamous Citizens United case to the tax cut for the top 1%. Or go back to Clinton(Bill) and his unravelling of banks when Gramm-Leach-Blilley was passed whiche helped bring in the 2008 recession. The servile attitude toward Silicon Valley and the rush to automation makes me shudder for working men and women, already trying to make it in the wage-stuck places where they find themselves. The Democrats have spoken up for those in society who need a push from those left behind in terms of race or ethnicity to new social awareness and protection for other groups. There can be no progress unless we can push for stronger economic equilibrium for our country. We must find the candidate and support he/she for the 2020 election and oust Trump et al. We easily lose sight of the goal because there is much clamoring and noise with the present distruptor. The gouging of the middle class and those below that line are in as much need of care and protection as other groups and only when that realization carries meaning to the wealthy and educated who do not want Trump either will he sail on.
7
@Katalina
Oh, for pete's sake. That financial reconstruction mess was passed by the GOP in 1999, as Clinton was all but packing up to leave the White House.
It was the REPUBLICAN Gingrich/Hastert Congress that repealed Glass-Steagall and replaced it with the Gramm, Leach, Bliley Act of 1999 (all GOP politicians).
3
America was never seen as a representative of liberal democracy—except by Europe. In the postwar period, only European countries saw the US as a political stand-bearer. South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia largely saw the US as a greedy, blundering global empire. Democracy died in Congo partly because of America; socialism was stunted in Cuba largely because of America; civil society, and cities, crumbled in Vietnam largely because of America.
I like your columns, Ms. Goldberg. But not when they paper over American imperialism.
7
The erosion of democracy is indeed happening, but Trump is only a symptom. Democracy is being eroded intentionally by the elites, mostly billionaires (er, excuse me, “people of means”), who, empowered by the Supreme Court’s absurd equation of money with speech, can buy the government they want. For the most part, these days that means Republicans, with their point man being MItch McConnell. The Senate included an actual curb on our right to boycott in the first bill they brought to the floor this session! Our police forces in the meantime, are being armed with surplus military weapons, and many, from Ferguson to my tiny town in Massachusetts, are taking part in a quiet program that sends them to Israel to learn “anti-terrorism” tactics. In reality, they are are learning population and crowd control tactics. (Search “deadly exchange” for examples.) The brutal suppression of protesters at the Dakota Access Pipeline and Ferguson is only the beginning.
10
Our country is founded on a document that is over 200 years old. Meanwhile, the world has evolved into something that our framers could have never foreseen. Has democracy run its course, soon to be replaced by some, as yet unknown, form of governance?
@PJM
Not unknown, I think. Singapore, Maylasia, China in a way. An authoritarian, but basically capitalist system allowing corporate freedom to some extent.
1
I have been wondering what will happen post Trump, which is inevitable. Our country never seems to have the stomach to face what has just happened, but we will really need to dig in and undo so much and hold so many accountable. As a voter I am going to be looking at Dems who are tough enough to push for wholesale reversals on so many of the Trump administration's policies on our environment, immigration, foreign relations and who will hold the wrongdoers accountable publicly.
4
Openess, equality, transparency are not easily achieved but well worth striving for. Moving in the direction of these ideals creates a happier society with a robust middle class.
Corruption thrives in opacity, especially with a weak free press. Erosion of democratic norms is a gradual process, but the further we go in that direction, the harder it will be to turn back.
It isn't that Trump is ending America's place as leader of the free world, but his efforts may mean we cede power to other nations, such as China or Russia. This loss of soft power may result in a weaker export market for Ameeican made goods, especially if American made is viewed as inferior by other nations.
1
Michelle, thanks for this article- I'd never heard of Freedom House or its work. I encourage readers to click on the link to the actual report (which in addition to eye-opening analysis has a great cartoon of a very stable genius and his gang of tyrants). The report criticizes past presidents, including Obama. Here's a sample as to our current despot-in-training:
"At the midpoint of his term, however, there remains little question that President Trump exerts an influence
on American politics that is straining our core values
and testing the stability of our constitutional system.
No president in living memory has shown less respect
for its tenets, norms, and principles. Trump has assailed essential institutions and traditions including
the separation of powers, a free press, an independent
judiciary, the impartial delivery of justice, safeguards
against corruption, and most disturbingly, the legitimacy of elections. Congress, a coequal branch of
government, has too frequently failed to push back..."
3
Many good suggestions in the comments, but only one significant change is needed to save democracy.
People must vote. About half of us fail to vote, even in presidential elections. Voter suppression is a small part of that. Apathy and ignorance are the major problem.
The best solution is to have vigorous citizenship experiences for all children in all American schools. For democracy to work, people have to participate. The rest will take care of itself.
17
@Barking Doggerel
While I agree on the premise, what happens when people vote in Republicans who, in turn, restrict the ability for minorities and students and other groups to vote.
Everyone should vote, surely, but some of those votes are literally to remove the ability for others to vote going forward. It's all well and good to vote but there also needs a sustained push to make voting access a priority in our country (national elections on a weekend rather than a ... tuesday, gerrymandering, voter ID laws, removal of polling places from democratic towns and cities, lack of early voting or mail-in balloting in Republican states, etc etc etc).
Until then, some portion of having everyone vote is counterproductive, when one entire party is focused on restricting the access to vote. A vote for a Republican might literally be the last vote you're able to cast.
5
@Barking Doggerel: Without disagreeing with anything you say, there is a simple solution to not voting. Require all eligible citizens to register to vote and then fine them when they don't vote. Almost everyone gets a driver's license; why not make voter registration part of that process? Mandatory voting exists elsewhere, such as Australia, and it works fine. Lets do it too.
5
It is quite simple. You can not have democracy when bribery is decriminalized. Which has occurred in the USA via "campaign contributions." Legislation is not determined by the needs of the people but by the money of the lobbyists and billionaires. An unprecedented scandal that most people feel helpless to change. Thus billions for loosing wars around the globe, billions of tax cuts for the rich, poor health care for many and poverty numbers that keep increasing.
25
Democracy? What democracy? We are an oligarchy managed by the wealthy, for the wealthy, and as a democracy, has perished from this earth.
And it is rather doubtful that this will change unless the Democrats can again become the party of FDR and not the party of Clinton.
21
@Mike: We are also a plutocracy because ownership of the U.S.Senate (the least democratically structured component of the government) doesn't come cheap.
4
@Mike
We are little but a sandwich, lots of bread but the middle good stuff missing.
Anything that continues to hew to the wealthy/poor extremes while destroying the healthy middle is sinking the U.S. further in the post-1960s trajectory of rot and ruin.
@Mike
I’m all for banishing the venal and duplicitous Clintons to political Siberia but the party of FDR?
That would be the Democrat Party of segregation and the internment of Japanese-Americans in camps.
Just change the victims for current mainstream Dem political thought and we’ll see who gets oppressed and locked up next time, I suppose.
The Fairness Doctrine abolished under Reagan should be reinstated and maybe updated. Opinion should be clearly identified as such and not as news. I doubt if Donald Trump could have won the electoral college without Fox so-called news.
23
@EK
Leftists fear and despise speech they cannot control.
It explains their decades-long war against conservative and independent news outlets.
The First Amendment is merely a speed bump in their ruthless pursuit of power.
2
@EK
Fairness Doctrine did not apply to cable, only to 'over the air' TV and radio. What you are calling for is government censorship of the media.
2
It’s simple. Democracy is not a spectator sport. It requires us all to inform ourselves, and to participate.
Unfortunately, too many Americans are apathetic.
18
@Mary Ann
Too many "Americans" don't know the difference between a Democracy and a Representative Republic either.
4
@Mary Ann, You can't draw that conclusion from a system that purges voter lists, creates barriers to voting based on false pretenses, undersupplies voting machines in "enemy" districts, requires time-off from work to vote, disenfranchises felons, and then after all that, leaves the final (presidential) decision to unelected "electors".
Democracy isn't a spectator sport, but what we have here, now, isn't exactly a model of democracy.
2
@Mary Ann
That's what happens when your country becomes little more than the cash register for massive amounts of the world's outlet discount goods. Do we really so vain and stupid to think the 130 million 3rd worlders who've come to the U.S. since the mid-1960s did so from a deep love of American democracy in action?
1
I am most worried about what comes next. It is an inescapable truth that the US has done some downright horrendous things over the course of its existence, and we are by no means a perfect country with no stains. But what if a country like China or Russia starts to command the world order? It would be devastating for Putin or Jinping to be calling the shots with soft power or military action.
7
@Gregg That's already happening.
1
It’s true that the Constitution has been the under constant anti-democratic attack by Donald Trump and his “willing accomplices” up until last month in the Republican-controlled Congress. The tipping point may have been reached when New Democratic House Speaker faced him down over his autocratic attempt to shutdown the government while holding 800,000 government employees hostage for a $5.7 billion ransom for his wall. That has been rapidly followed by restive Republicans in the Senate opposing his withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and Syria. We are hopefully in the final stage of the battle by an authoritarian who has been trying to change our democracy into an autocracy. But, we cannot rest until this scourge and swamp is removed from power.
20
@Paul Wortman
The Constitution is under attack by Red Guard-style leftists who no longer believe in free speech or freedom of assembly, or the presumption of innocence, and who demand to control the thoughts you think and the hats you wear.
Any totalitarian or authoritarian impulses in this nation come entirely from an aggrieved Left.
2
I'm from Canada, and we score 99. But when you look at all levels of goverment - the US is much stronger. One party can control the goverment with 38% of the vote. Our local government is a pool of patronage and corruption due to unbelievable low turn out.
Our current Prime Minister gave a $600M to the Media - is there a more blatant bribe?
That a wacky character like Trump got elected (most likely for 1 term) shows the robustness of the democracy.
8
@Tom Speak for yourself Tom. I have never been more proud to be Canadian, and never more proud to NOT be American. Try to keep some perspective on Canada's problems, and enjoy the 99 score!
2
@Tom Well I know that Canadians are robust-- have to be with those winters. But our president is robust too, a "reality" show star, a real man's man and quite a ladies' man too (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). Why, he was willing to rush into the Douglas High School shooting unarmed!
Here's my idea for a joint Canadian American "reality" version of "Survivor". We drop Donald somewhere on Baffin Island with nothing but a canteen, a Swiss Army knife, and a rusty compass...
3
If the US has slipped on the Freedom/Democracy index, I have some ideas as to why: (1) The increasing intensity of the security regime. Did you know that to visit Arlington National Cemetery, one has to now pass through airport-style security?
(2) The punishing of those who engage in speech that some find offensive.
(3) The spread of disagreement capitalism, the boycotting of people or entities for taking stands with which some disagree.
Yes, I understand that these practices are not necessarily written in law.
7
@Steve Brown The same with the St. Louis Arch.
The biggest anti-democratic trend is going to play out in the federal judiciary, and for decades after Trump is gone. Even putting aside his district and appellate court appointments, Trump will likely get one more appointment to the Supreme Court, giving it a solid 6-3 pro-business, anti-regulatory, states' rights color. Don't expect voting rights/gerrymandering cases, for example, to get a sympathetic hearing there.
21
All you had to do was watch the behavior of the Republican Senators of the Judiciary Committee, let alone their nominee, during the Kavanaugh hearings, to see what a farce American governance has become.
48
@Cowboy Marine Isn't it interesting that Lt Gov Fairfax is given the benefit of the doubt about an encounter this century - but vague recollections from the previous century should somehow be taken as gospel?
It is a farce of American Governance that outrage over sexist or racist or abusive behavior is accepted within one's own party and denounced when outside it.
1
@Cowboy Marine
You mean those dastardly Republicans defending the presumption of innocence for a man dragged before a kangaroo court concocted by agenda-driven Democrats?
@Paul It's not really all that interesting, because the comparison is false. Two different people, situations, and offices. And no one is giving Fairfax the "benefit of the doubt" per se - it's been what, three days since the accusation came out? I think people are considering the source, perhaps. As we should.
4
"History will teach us that [dangerous self-serving ambition hiding behind the false appearance of zeal for the rights of the people] has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism...and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants."
"The Federalist" No. 1, Alexander Hamilton
Republicans claim devotion to the Constitution. They "revere" "The Federalist," (85 essays by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison) as providing insight into the reasoning, understanding, thinking of the Founding Fathers' wording of the Constitution.
But Republicans have delivered to America an ambitious demagogue, a specious zealot of the rights of the forgotten man. They have known who and what he is and they elevated him to office of the president and they protect him in this highest office as he flagrantly attacks the foundation of our republic.
Republicans also attacked our republic in recent history. They undermined our democratic election process in 2000.
What do we learn from this?
When villainous attacks upon the very principles which support our republic are not held accountable, the villains will attack again.
It is not just Trump and his circle of cronies who must be held accountable. The Republican Party has rotted; is despotic. It has been undermining our republic. It seeks to install a plutocracy.
38
Latvia and Croatia are NATO members and as such the United States is legally bound to send our sons and daughters into battle to fight wars for them. They're also members of the European Union.
By comparing these trivial states to the US and the UK, you bring to our attention the absurdity and obsolescence of NATO as well as the wisdom of Brexit.
2
- Article 5 of NATO was invoked only once since it’s inception, and it was by the US , in the wake of 911
- The Trump administration counts the TOTAL military spending of all members, to bring it’s share to 72 % and to cry foul.
Yet the US uses the lion’s share of its military spending on issues absolutely not related to NATO, while for countries such as Germany, Canada, and all of the smaller countries , our NATO and NORAD commitments consume almost all of our military budgets. The American share of the collective defence of the western alliance is not the issue. At issue is whether America still believes in collective defence or do you want to go at it alone. If you choose the later, tell us clearly because the consequences are enormous and and we will have the take decisions accordingly.
5
@Charles
No reason to be concerned, back in the 90s we, the Croatians, made it very clear to everybody we can fight our battles on our own.
Croatia is a trivial country? Clearly you haven't traveled much.
2
@Charles
You might wish to leave off watching the Fox "newstertainment" for a while and read a bit. The most recent and biggest Nato intervention - in the last 20 years, was at the behest of the US when it invaded Afghanistan. And as it turned out, it was all for naught, since the US is withdrawing having not won a thing.
THIS article - as opposed to your Fox-like change of subject - is about the US's descent from being 'Number 1' to being middle of the pack relative to democratic freedoms. The US is actually being compared to Canada, the UK, Norway and Sweden who rank highest. It situates at or near the same level as Lativia and Croatia.
NB. If you read the report that this feferences, you'll find that Norway & Sweden rank 100/100. Canada 99/100. Latvia 87/100 and the US is at 86/100.
But do you care? Or will you keep wearing a MAGA cap and keep chanting, 'My country - right or wrong'. and 'We're number 1' - when clearly you aren't. Instead of making the US great again, trump and his scoundrels are making it worse and parts of the world worse with it.
4
It just took 18 months.
8
If you read the report the decline has happened over 8 years.
1
@northlander
It just took 60 years. We were on a healthy trajectory till the 1960s.
2
We absolutely do not hold our elites to account. Apparently, no one was responsible for the tragedies of Vietnam, Iraq, and the financial meltdown. No one is responsible for making our government a subsidiary of our military-industrial complex while failing to educate every child in the country. No one is responsible for ravaging the environment, leaving the mess to future generations.
We elected the perfect politician for this era of zero accountability.
35
Croatia and Latvia? Two countries noted, during WWII, for their extraordinary collaboration with the Nazis against Jews. I have never met, or heard of, a Jew from either of those 2 countries who survived. So glad to hear they are up and coming democracies.
How good are they in acknowledging their past histories, Michelle?
5
@Rosalie Lieberman My grandparents and their kids survived but they left in 1931 thanks to my grandmother.
1
Dear Rosalie Lieberman,
There are a total of 117 Croatians who have been credited with the title Righteous Among the Nations by the state of Israel. Also, for your information, the number of Croatian anti-fascists during WW2 was far greater than the number of Croatian fascists. The fact that you have never heard about this does not prove anything other than the fact you don't know much about the things you write about.
P.S. Do you use the same standards to judge people from other countries, such as France, Holland, or Belgium. Please don't, you would be surprised!
1
I didn’t think she was holding them up as model democracies as pointing out how far we have fallen.
Human beings purportedly have been on this planet for about 1 million years. Recorded history is much less, but, so far, NO EMPIRE has ever survived.
Hitler proposed 1,000 years for his. His so-called empire only lasted a few years and then imploded.
The United States started with the best of the best! People willing to die for Freedom, regardless of the costs. It had a real Constitution with so many built in safety nets. It was a country of IMMIGRANTS!!!
Bob Dylan wrote and sang about “The Times they are a-changing.”
This planet and our universe has been changing since its origin. Nothing last forever UNLESS you can coupe with positive Change.
America, wake up! When you have a cancer in your body, what do you do? You remove it or you die! Your surgical instrument is your vote! Use it or lose it!!!!
10
A completely predictable result of the election of the Trump family ( I use the the term "family" to be inclusive of his immediate family and his henchman). But let's not stop there in assigning blame for the demise of the democratic process. Let's give credit to the Republican leadership, particularly McConnell, Ryan, Sessions, Graham and Nunes, among others, who knowingly aided and abetted the Trump administration. Trump, by himself, could not bring down the country because, frankly, he's not smart enough. It is the manipulators behind him that are doing the most damage. Also, let's not forget those Americans who voted for and continue to support this anti-democratic regime. They, too, are complicit.
51
@Etienne The Seeds of Destruction were planted long before the Trump family rose to power. Regular Fiat by Executive Order instead of legislation for permanence was established by others not thinking about what the precedent means for others who might follow.
It was the Democrats in the Senate that killed the filibuster on appointees and judges (leaving an exception which everyone knew was coming down) - It was a Democraft that promoted the idea of holding off the voting on a judicial appointment in the final year of a president. Too many look to the short term political gain - rather than the long term. It was those seeds planted before that made the current reaping possible.
For too many leftists - it is anti-democratic if you don't believe as they do. My-way-only is very much anti-democratic. The My-Way crowd help fuel a reaction to their voices - that made Trump possible.
2
@Etienne Let’s also give credit tobthe 100 million Americans who didn’t vote in 2016. Nothing kills democracy better than failing to participate in it.
6
@Doug Lowenthal Excellent point.
1
Extreme governmental and political dysfunction has hobbled the U.S. and its people for generations during which the country ranked much higher on international democracy rating scales. It's been many decades since the best interests of the American people were reflected in their federal government. The current rebellion and changes within our Democratic party to make it a distinct and powerful opposition to the Republicans are the most promising political development we've seen in a very long time. In that sense we are moving toward more genuine democracy than we saw, for example, during the Bill Clinton-Democrat years. Freedom House can take a hike.
2
A Banana republic in hock to corporate and monied interests? A tin pan Dictator propped up by corporate and monied interests.? Cabinet of Cronies whose self dealing and grifting focuses on profiting from Office. A culture of nepotism that defines their term of service?
The qualities that make this Administration uniquely qualified to lower the democracy flag.
19
At the moment we have an unbalanced president, who is a racketeer on a power trip, building camps for children and holding hostages, most recently 800,000 federal employees . In 2018 Trump was shocked that American democracy was still alive because the people got the whiff of dictatorship. Trump who is basically a mobster who wishes to become an oligarch.
In one way we are lucky and unlucky in that Trump is stupid, ignorant and knows nothing about what a president needs to know while he believes he is a genius who cannot abide experts and will not take their advice preferring to go with his gut.
The executive branch has been stripped of experts who knew how to operate government and replaced with fraudulent incompetents or outright criminals. He still controls the Senate and the Senate which can rubber stamp whatever Trump does or grow a spine and make a deal with the Dems to preserve democracy and keep Trump in line.
The House could impeach Trump, and with all of the Dems and half of the Republicans they could impeach Trump and remove him from office. The point is not to do it but to make it clear that if Trump does not stop destroying our county, the House and Senate could in two weeks have Trump removed from office. That, of course, assumes a sufficient number of Republicans who are patriots and loyal to the Constitution. Republican politicians who are patriots and have a spine? When pigs fly. Not without pitchforks and millions the streets, that may work.
21
@Sheldon Bunin The House cannot remove him from office - they can only impeach - it requires the Senate to remove - and two thirds of the Senators to agree on anything is unlikely - when they rarely can gather 60 votes to bypass a hold.
Which part of the Constitution do you feel they are disloyal to?
@Paul it takes both houses to remove a president from office. The
Senate cannot do it alone so the House must Impeach, it is the Senate which must convict with a 2/3 majority vote, Once and only if that is achieved can the president be removed from office.
I am sorry if I did not make it clear assuming that NYT readers would understand the basis civics of the thing.
My point was that Congress should not (shorthand) "Impeach" the president only make a credible threat to do so unless he acts responsibly which would include hiring some experienced people who know what they are doing for a change.
According to this article, American freedom scores have been in decline since 2009. And, "the architects of both the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis have gone largely unpunished."
I'm no fan of Trump, but I'm also no fan of misattribution. How does Michelle Goldberg get from those facts to indicting the Trump administration for "illiberalism"? After all, Obama was President from 2008-2016, when the decline apparently gained momentum, and it was clearly Obama who failed to prosecute the corrupt bankers.
I'm also no fan of bias, in the news or the op-ed pages. Seems to me that Ms. Goldberg needs to check her implicit bias.
9
@Unconventional Liberal: I'm with you on Obama. He was a whopping big disappointment. Of course he faced nothing but resistance, but he could have jailed some bankers, and he could have asked the Supreme Court to rule whether he had the right to nominate the next justice no matter how long it took the Senate to confirm one of his selections. He could have demanded single payer and 'settled' for the public option. But he didn't.
9
@Unconventional Liberal
History is hard, Unconventional Liberal--even harder when you don't even try to make sense of it. Yes, Obama was President when the recklessness of the financial elite left our economy in shambles--or at least the middle and working classes.
But the deliberately destructive financial schemes thrived under Bush and the Republicans--who were always pitching the idea that what's good for JP Morgan is good for America. Rabid greed is always 'illiberal,' right? And, once again it was a Democratic administration left to clean up the mess, as will likely happen again after Trump's defeat--or collapse.
Thievery and corruption on that scale is not just about bad or unfair practices running loose. It's fundamentally and unmistakably undemocratic. The financial elites have always enjoyed pointing to spectacular financial corruption in other countries, be it Malaysia or Russia, while at the same time blaming our collapses on the mystical unpredictability of 'free markets.'
Such hypocrisy and cynicism make us smaller, not greater or freer. That what the Freedom House report is telling us, even if many among us refuse to listen.
5
@mlbex For 18 months, he had a Democratic House and a 60 vote Senate. Federal Gun Legislation, Immigration Reform, Environmental Reform, Carbon Tax - all was within their grasp. but they dithered and wasted time - and that opportunity lost.
4
Well, I read the entire article, and a still trying to figure out why the United States has less freedom than it did under Obama. Please clue me in.
9
You're interrupting my chanting of "USA USA!" while I wear my bright red MAGA hat knitted in China...
5
If the US has fallen from 94 to 86 over 9 years as you suggest, simple math suggests a lot of the fall occurred during the Obama presidency.
8
Seriously? The sky is falling? That's your thought? Really? Don't be fooled by your hatred of the President. America is the most democratic country in the world, regardless of who is president. In two years there is another election, that is the way it works. That is democracy.
5
@Joe the simplest definition of democracy is rule of majority. That simple fact has not held true recently in America's election of it's president. And not just the current president, there are others.
5
@Joe
How do you figure, "America is the most democratic country in the world . . " when Donald Trump became president with a minority of the vote.
The Economist Intelligence Unit annually evaluates countries according to adherence to democratic principles. Its latest report ranks the USA at 25th. The top five are Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand, and Canada.
4
@Jim McCaffery Thank goodness we are not a simple democracy. Minority viewpoints, if not minorities themselves, always suffer when the Majority rules. We are a Republic for very good reasons.
Do you think you bear any responsibility for this by the constant drumbeat of anti-Trump articles? People overseas get their news from CNN and the London Daily Mail. How do you think we are portrayed?
4
@Jackson - That's right ! If the press would just stop reporting the facts about Trump, other countries would still be looking up to us !
18
@Jackson
Okay, Jackson. So let's get busy silencing the free press--perhaps by continually chanting 'enemy of the people' and 'fake news,' even when facts say otherwise. If we can only stop all that negative reporting--by any means necessary--I'm sure our democracy rating will climb.
Why don't we have more deep thinkers like you in Trump's inner circle or in the Senate. Oh, that's right, we do.
2
@Stretchy Cat Person If they would stop inventing bad things, or reducing their standards of journalism to report gotchas, or always viewing everything through a negative lens, that might help too.
Facts are in short supply - but with the new House that will start to change - but innuendo about them seems abundant.
Michelle, it’s too bad that America’s bona fides as only an accidental HQ and facade of this Disguised Global Capitalist Empire couldn’t count as a positive factor in scoring on that Freedom House 100 point scale, eh?
Heck, ‘we the American people’ didn’t try to turn our country into what we originally staged as the first “Revolution Against Empire” in the “New World” [Justin du Rivage].
Maybe we should request that Freedom House adjust and improve the accuracy of their 100 point scale by incorporating segmentation by socio-economic class — say the 1% vs. the 99% — as Kamala Harris did in her presidential campaign announcement (which many in the media seemed not to fully report or analyze):
“The wealthy seek to divide (and conquer) America.”
BTW, the polar opposite of a country’s democracy, and the danger that “Democracy Dies In Darkness”, is not just nasty, confusing, ‘dividing’, foreign-sounding, and pseudo-academic terms like; oligarchy, plutocracy, totalitarianism, fascism, inverted totalitarianism, etc., etc., but the good old simple American term that our founding fathers and patriots knew in their DNA as, ‘Empire’ — which they all clearly understood as “the disease of Republics” and democratic repubics.
2
The road to Bananaland is insidious: a death of a thousand cuts. In France, when your family consists of a nurse, an optometrist, and two kids, and you can't feed your children after the 21st of the month, you know something's wrong. It's not quantum mechanics. Result: Gilet Jaunes. And it's not political. It's economic. And you do something. Say something! And Macron listened.
The Republicans have been carving away at our financial security for decades. Now Trump is going for bone marrow. But as long as you can work two minimum wage jobs and pay the rent on your trailer - in the land of the free and the brave - you'll drink the Kool Aid and Make America Great Again.
Somebody voted for Trump. And you don't miss the water until you're up Pudding Creek without a paddle. Maybe you miss it...
And where are our saviors in all this - the Democrats? They're in Symbolism Land. And God help us if they don't win (again).
4
Michelle: You're already discussing whether Trump and his associates should be brought to justice after a Democrat wins in 2020? Don't count your chickens before they're hatched - it jinxes the eggs.
5
For better representative government......if you'll allow me, please consider Ranked Choice Voting.
7
Junior Bush, candy-giver to Michelle, deserves full credit for what Trump is. It was he who w the suppot of the centrist Dems and all the GOP, terrorized us and the world, turning the USA into irrational Islamophobic police state.
Trump is our 3rd dictator, meaning our 3rd consecutive commander in chief who uses "national security" to enoy his "unitary executive" powers.
Yawn.
I'm no fan of Trump, but I'm also opposed to lazy, dishonest commentary.
Here's a hint for the slow reader; Ms. Goldberg cites the US score in 2009 as the peak. Why didn't she use 2017, Trump's first year in office? Because most of the decline occurred under Barack Obama -- something that escaped the scrutiny of her and other commentators as it was happening.
Why was this ignored as it was falling under Obama? Because it is an essentially meaningless score that became a meaningless column filled with pointless generalities and jeremiads.
Wake me up when the Doomsday Clock people move us another two seconds closer to midnight.
6
The Republicans are terrible. It's not just Trump. The US didn't learn after Bush.
3
Mongolia's score is 85 vs. America's 86. This doesn't sound right.
Also, China (a country where millions of Muslims are in concentration camps and all citizen have a social credit score calculated for them to keep them in line) has a score of 14. Iran, where people debate everything and there is at least a semblance of democracy with elections from the city council level to the president, is 17.
3
Hi Michelle
I just went to the Freedom House website and the homepage, a map, has a striking image with it's shading of "free" versus "not free".
In North and South America there is only one country, Venezuela, that is shaded as "not free".
Now look east across the Atlantic to Africa, the Middle East, Central and far East Asia.
See all the "not free".
What do they have in common with the Western hemisphere's only "not free" country?
Answer = Communist/Socialist government
2
Today The United States of America sits as the freest nation in the history of mankind. Pick up some Chomsky, Michelle.
2
I don’t want to see anyone forgiven once this abomination is out of the WH. I want them prosecuted starting with Trump, Mitch, Ryan, Miller and so on. If they can’t be prosecuted for treason and betrayal of their oaths of their offices then they should be entirely voted out and rebuked. Lock them up and vote them out!!!
3
If we ever do truly get to size up the problems of this presidency as the disaster that it is, the Republican party should be held to account.
McConnell's stealing of a SC justice should be included. His refusal to bring bills to stop the shutdown too. Devin Nunes should be called out. Mealy-mouthed wimp Paul Ryan as well.
How can Republicans listen to Trump lie every day—every d--- day! blatantly!—and see all the corruption surrounding him, and then try to preserve his power, instead of kicking him out in disgust and alarm?
7
Thanks for writing this, Michelle. I am reminded that in the Economist’s latest survey of global democracy, the United States was identified as a “flawed democracy”.
6
@Ranger
Rob the "flaw" in American democracy is it's Presidential Electoral College.
2
The truly alarming thing is that a significant number of Americans support these anti-democratic actions and philosophy - just as long as it doesn't affect THEM. They believe that an autocratic leader can keep them safe; that democracy allows for too much freedom for those they consider "scary": non-whites, women, non-Christians. If loss of freedom is the price charged for eliminating or reducing these threats, well that's okay with them. Trump certainly understood the power of using this mob to his advantage, by playing on their fear, and he keeps playing them like puppets.
Of course this cowering and cowardliness in America isn't new. We've had waves of it since our founding, stoked by a handful of elites who fear the "unwashed mob", and see them ultimately as the one thing in their path to control. What's checked these waves in the past is the majority finally awakening to the threat posed to their own freedom. We might finally be seeing a stirring from this slumber, but it will take continued reporting and exposure by the media, the also dormant Fourth Estate, which too often since Watergate has been in bed with the oligarchy. And having gained a big foothold already, this autocracy will not retreat without a fight. Will Americans step into this fray or retreat from it? As long as that goes unanswered, our democracy is in peril.
4
Us American people have become numb to the fact that we are, and have been, living in a “managed democracy” for some time. It’s those who are doing the “managing” (or controlling) who are undermining democracy.
This is not a position that states that the phrase “the institutions of democracy” is an oxymoron. It’s an observation that such institutions have the intent of preventing management (or control) of democracy.
1
Freedom House lowered the U.S. ranking because it holds America responsible for democracy worldwide. It holds other countries responsible for democracy within their own borders.
Freedom House downgraded the United States primarily because, in Freedom House’s view, not enough U.S. soldiers are fighting and dying to make other countries more democratic.
According to Freedom House’s key findings, “A long list of troubling developments around the world contributed to the global decline in 2017, but perhaps most striking was the accelerating withdrawal of the United States from its historical commitment to promoting and supporting democracy. . . two long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and a global recession soured the public on extensive international engagement, and the perceived link between democracy promotion on the one hand and military interventions and financial costs on the other has had a lasting impact.”
No other country lost points for not participating in Afghanistan or Iraq or for withdrawing their forces after suffering a small fraction of the casualties the United States accepted. For example, Canada withdrew its forces from Afghanistan in 2011 after suffering 135 combat deaths while the United States is beginning to withdraw its troops after 17 years of fighting and 2,313 combat dearths.
3
@William Case
Yes, we have the largest economy in the world and are militarily the most powerful. Since WWII we have been the world leader and have promoted liberal democracy.
Our abandonment of that leadership and the reversal of our influence, now in favor of autocracies, is felt around the world.
11
@Jim Hugenschmidt
The United States sacrifices more lives than all other allied or coalition nations combined and then gets downgraded when it get tired of going it virtually alone.
2
Trump is bad enough, but probably the major player aiming to destroy democracy in America over the last decade is Mitch McConnell. From blocking as many a he could of Obama's appointees and legislative initiatives to stealing a Supreme Court seat, he has faithfully fulfilled the role required of him by the oligarchs who have funded his career: to limit voting, depress unions, trash the environment, enable the transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to a small elite, whatever he can do to help the plutocrats make the U.S. into a low wage, extractive economy the desire.
28
Looking back over half a century...bay of pigs, Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, S&L, Lewinsky, Walter Reed, Iraq WMDs, Plame, Blackwater, Abramoff, NSA wiretaps, failure to prosecute anyone for the 2008 crash, backdoor bailouts, and on and on. Yes, Trump is dragging us down even further, but we've been on a very long slide.
14
The billionaire oligarchy who wants to run this country (yes Mr. Koch, you) should be ashamed of themselves for perverting democracy in name of profit. And now the nefarious world players are also taking their queues from the setup. They understand that greedy politicians will lie, cheat, steal (and Lord knows what else) to do the bidding of their donors. Our justice system is bought and paid for, and vast numbers of voters manipulated based on single issues, driven into frenzy by fake news. The future is indeed grim, with global warming coming at us - the rich are set up to survive unscathed, as millions lose everything they own. No wonder they are paranoid about the border and immigration.
6
As soon as Trump and his deplorable party no longer run the federal government, Democrats need to pass strong ethics laws to prevent the recurrence of crooks like Trump and his Republican Party ever being able to get away with open corruption again.
9
An increase in corruption and a decrease in transparency -- the two yardsticks that signal the decline of democracy -- are the hallmarks of this administration. Blatant self-dealing by Trump, his family and his cabinet; appointing lobbyists to head the government agencies they are intent on destroying; ending the daily White House press conference and Trump's repeated attacks on "fake news," echoed by dictators around the world, should have been enough to warrant his removal long ago.
11
US is not an A+ or even an A democracy for many decades. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and above all, the ridiculous electoral college, making it a B- or a C.
It is so easy to fool the dumber than any any other western nation voters, just let them vote. Never mind that their votes would be manipulated, twisted, and might not even be counted. Just repeat the brainwashing mantras: freedom, liberty, greatest country on earth, and they will not only buy it, but would preach their democracy to the rest of the world.
12
Regarding a reckoning, we need to get serious about punishment for white-collar criminals. The current 'pick-your-own-country-club' (as recently reported in the NYT) model is an insult to We the People. Those with the most power and privilege who betray their responsibility should serve the hardest time in the toughest prisons. Then they could meet some of the people they've hurt the most.
12
Ms. Goldberg' contention that America's democracy is at risk is absurd. She provides no support for such an outlandish claim other than inferences of Fake News, Iraq war and support of Saudi Arabia after Khashoggi murder. Not a mention of our leadership in Venezuela, Cuba and Syria.
1
"It usually takes more than two years for a democracy to collapse."
This alarms Ms. Goldberg as, apparently because of Donald Trump, our democracy is at actual risk of "collapsing." I always appreciate her earnestness but my lord...really? Like I tell all my "sky is falling" friends, just trust the Constitution, vote for someone else if you're not happy and if all else fails there's always Canada...or apparently in Michelle's case, Croatia.
2
A disgraceful report card for a disgraceful administration. We Americans should be alarmed and deeply ashamed. This must stop.
2
It is less important where we rank now, but where will be in the next edition. Right now we could be on the brink of allowing rule by edict, aka a Dictatorship. Yesterday I heard that great legal scholar and Chmn of the Judiciary Committee declare, while urging Trump to declare an emergency on the Southern border to get his way, because this will be the defining moment of his Presidency. The definition itself was not stated, but it might mean the moment Trump seizes dictatorial power, not with a bang, but a cheer from the likes of Lindsey Graham
6
When the Supreme Court allowed corporations to make donations as if they were persons, our democracy ended... Citizens United...death Nell.
11
"We’re not good at holding elites to account in America; the architects of both the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis have gone largely unpunished."
Elites? How about the murderers of My Lai. Or Kent State. Or all those Iraqi "insurgents" shopping in bazaars.
My uncle, a British soldier in WWII Italy, saw an American lieutenant order the murder of surrendered Germans who had fought to the last bullet before surrendering. The GIs cut them down.
Being American means never having to say, "I'm guilty."
8
The article says "the US had a score of 86" and "America now falls below not just Canada and the Nordic countries, but also Greece, Latvia and Mauritius." According to the map on the Freedom House website Greece has a score of 85.
Please double-check.
We can't have democracy and a king.
Trump believes he is a king.
Democracy gets in his way, so Trump is doing everything he can to make it go away.
Republicans don't care.
The NRA and the Russians are giving them enough money to look the other way. Plus overturning Roe v Wade beckons
The GOP is too dumb to realize Trump will soon see them as an obstacle as well. A threat to Trump's rule.
It will be better to be on the Mexico side of Trump's wall.
There won't be anything good left on our side.
3
it is so uniquely American and arrogant and always the same, particularly among caviar liberals: pick one or two obscure European or African countries that we know nothing about, preferably a tiny country, and compare it to the US to show HOW BAD things have become that we're sandwiched between them. Which only demonstrates the ignorance of the speaker. Go learn something about Latvia and Croatia, don't use them as epithets!
1
This column grasps at straws, desperately hoping a conclusion by a left wing group, without any evidence, supports her obsessive hatred of Trump.
1
To most of us, it seems it was your oppressive hatred of Americans norms and rule of law that led to you voting for Trump to begin with... so it’s a little funny to see you turn around and try to claim your opponents are actually filled with oppressive hatred.
Go ahead, keep chanting to “build that wall” to keep out migrants and to “lock her up” about political opponents, while claiming some false moral high ground. It would be entertaining if it wasn’t so... sad and destructive for democracy.
Trump is a big part of the problem, but the problem is bigger than Trump.
I don't know how you can call a society democratic when the person who gets the most votes is NOT the winner of an election.
Or when districts are gerrymandered to badly that a party can get only 50% of the vote but fill 75% of the seats.
Then consider that the highest court in the land is widely out of touch with the opinions of the majority of the people.
We are a long way away from being a healthy democracy.
13
The decline in the Freedom House rankings of democracy in the United States is directly attributable to their assertions that Russian meddling in the United States directly influenced the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. And how do we know this--because it is all over the news. So if the NYT says it, it must be true. There is no need for such messy that evidence demands. So, following media reports, Freedom House states that democracy delines in America; then Ms. Goldberg can report in the Times that there is a decline in democracy in America because Freedom House says so. We truly live in a wonderful country where we have such wonderful people telling us what is wrong.
1
One of Obama's failings was to give the Wall Street robbers a pass. No prosecutions were explored, much less begun. If, as I wholeheartedly hope, there is a Democratic president in 2020, there should certainly be a prosecution of Trump and his family. If there is not, they will not go quietly like Nixon, they will be busily engaging in media stunts and fomenting discord and division in our country. They must be jailed for our democracy to be reinstated. No pardons, no passes, bring them to justice. And if it can be done before 2020, all the better.
13
I read through the document pertaining to the US. The score is summarized by adding many 4 point subareas where the authors feel free to deduct a point whenever they feel perfection is somehow not obtained. Obviously many of these points have vastly different impacts on freedom, and deductions are subject to bias.
One area that gets over-emphasis in my view is Russian interference in our elections. Another is polarization between the major policies.
1
I would still like to know what historical period Trump is referring to when he says "Make America great again"
4
If you read the actual report, you quickly realize how partisan (anti-Trump) it is. I’d urge anyone reading this column to read the report for themselves.
1
@Simon Luck Anti-Trump, or, biased against Trump given the evidence? It could be one in the same due to the outcome of the study.
It's almost hard to believe in two short years we've gone from being the de facto torchbearer and voice of global democracy, to the sympathetic partner of autocrats such Kim Jung-un, Vladimir Putin, Rodrigo Duterte, and Trump's big time buddy in Saudi Arabia, the crown prince MBS.
Our claims of being a great democracy are not bereft of hypocrisy, especially on the domestic front; we systematically slaughtered Native Americans, enslaved black people, and to this day as a nation have yet to completely shake off the chains of racism and gender discrimination.
Nonetheless, we at least used to be guided by a moral compass that saw democracy as an ideal to aspire to and share with the world. That status has effectively been relegated to the dustbin, and I wonder how long, if ever, it will take for us to regain it again in the eyes of the world. Perhaps never.
2
Sad, true! We've just come through Super Bowl week-end--capitalized? This gave us another look at our capture by commercialism. And it revived discussion on Colin Kaepaernick. The NE Patriots and the LA Rams are for-profit franchises who are part of the entertainment industry, and who are paid a lot by TV execs, advertisers, and sponsors. Now add the Pentagon which has paid the NFL millions to wrap their games in flags and other icons of patriotism. So, patriotism is a prop for the consumer industry as represented by the NFL. And CK has said that the emperor has no clothes. Meanwhile, the brain-damage suffered by players is becoming more and more evident. Add to that the pain-killer addiction that ex-players are now reporting. This may be a long way of saying that our priorities are not people-oriented but money-oriented. Not much wrong with money, but like anything else, when it becomes an obsession and a driving force, who cares about democracy? As for “Several of the criminals who helped Trump get elected either have gone to prison or soon will…” the criminal-in-chief will use the House of the People tonight to spread his disgusting messages. If that goes unchallenged in real time, forget about democracy in America.
5
United States democracy has been in decline since Ronald Regan. Trickle down economics is an abject failure but the Republican Party continues to push it, along with tax cuts, as a recipe for success. Vulture capitalism, derivatives and predatory lending, along with corrupt rating agencies brought about the 2008 recession which eviscerated the middle class. Not to mention the republican party’s continued attack on unions and collective bargaining. Also, as Bernie Sanders said, “if people didn’t pay taxes, we wouldn’t have a country.” Think of want Brownback did to Kansas as a good example. But, as our president stated, not paying a lot of taxes makes him “smart.” I have got news for the republicans; wearing a flag, lapel pin doesn’t make you a patriot!
We need to rethink the electoral college, but most of all, overturn Citizens United. The saddest day of my life was when I had to acknowledge that our supreme court can be bought and paid for too. Politicians don’t represent their constituents, they represent their donors. Add to this gerrymandering, obstructionism and a president, who calls the free press “the enemy of the people.” May I remind everyone that Donald J. Trump had to settle a 25 million dollar lawsuit before he could step foot in the White House. Guns, endless war, greed, power;a refusal to recognize our African Americans as the people who helped us to build this country. America has no moral high ground upon which to stand!
9
There is no sacred duty to promote democracy around the world, and our foreign policy should be transactional. I really could care less if autocrats are killing journalists in their countries. The autocrats are the ones we deal with in foreign policy, not the journalists, and the foreign journalists do nothing for the interest of the US.
It’s fascinating that this author believes that courts blocking Trump’s attempt to eliminate DACA, itself an outrageous attempt to sidestep congress, is a symbol of democracy working. In reality, a partisan judge blocking a simple repeal of a questionable executive action taking by the prior administration is democracy at its worst. Trump has every right to make the opposite decision as Obama on this issue. I disdain Trump generally, but on this one he is right on target.
3
In 2011, the Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature gerrymandered voting districts so egregiously that the courts ruled that they disenfranchised minorities with “surgical precision”, and ruled the districts unconstitutional. And yet, due to the legal maneuvering (read:delay, delay, delay) of the Republicans, funded by anti-democratic forces, in 2019, North Carolina still operates its state legislative elections under unconstitutionally drawn districts. Thus, for those North Carolina citizens aged 30 or under, they have never experienced a free and fair election. And THAT is how you kill off democracy.
7
"If a Democrat wins the presidency in 2020, there’s going to be a lot of pressure to move beyond this foul moment and forgive those who were complicit in it. "
I very much doubt that. My reading is that most Democrats are cognizant of the fact that Donald Trump along with a complicit Republican Party are a real threat to Democracy and Rule of Law.
I am also optimistic that the Democrats will do it in a non-partisan, non-political way. To do it any other way jeopardizes the very Democracy and Rule of Law that Democrats hold sacred.
It is not up to Congress to punish Trump. They are there merely to remove him from office. And it will only be done at the behest of a Republican controlled Senate anyway.
If the Republican's fail to remove him from office. The probabilities are that the voting public will do the job in 2020 and remove the entire Republican Party from Office. (2 more years of Trump's chaotic administration will cure even the most ardent Trump supporter).
Trump is like a barnacle. Difficult to get rid of. But I think Muller's team of untouchables (as well as the courts) will hold Trump and his henchmen to account.
Muller likes nothing more than putting guilty men in jail.
4
A sober assessment of the thrashing of U.S. democracy by 'our' proto-fascist bully in-chief, currently abusing the power of the presidency at will...as per McConnell's republican complicity. As this administration matures, or rots, it looks more like a pluto-kleptocracy to some of us. And given Trump's legal peril, it is amazing how bullyish he continues to be, in the trampling department. I would understand despotism more in less democratic nations (i.e. Bolivia), but in these United States, supposedly a beacon on the hill? And calling the press the enemy of the people? THis is disgraceful and quite dangerous. Even if Trump is stopped right now, the damage inflicted thus far may not be reparable for years, witness the awful loss in trust in our own democratic institutions. And the corrosive climate of working with obstructionism...as opposed to cooperatively. We are in deep trouble; but, are we sufficiently aware of it...so to fight it?
4
Seriously Michelle -- how did they score these various dimensions? What objective measuring techniques did they use? From what I read it sounds very subjective.
And lo and behold their graph of the US starts declining under OBAMA? Whoa.
Just on the surface, from a psychometric point of view -- this report looks more like a political screed gussied up with a few numbers. I.E. there doesn't appear to be much science here.
So exactly what freedoms have Americans lost or seen erode? We still get to vote don't we. Religious freedom. Yes. Right to bear arms? Check. Right to pursue your own economic interests? Check. Pursuit of happiness? Intact. The report puts in snide anti-Trumpian comments that are nothing more than opinion. They aren't quantified. Trump attacking the free press because they push a liberal narrative while waging war on Trump -- what does that mean? The media hides behind freedom of the press to push a fact free partisan agenda -- is that good for democracy? Don't think so. The FBI interposing itself in the 2016 elections? Not good. The IRS playing winners and losers based on political ideology. That's not good. Regime overthrow in Libya and elsewhere -- not so good either.
The left needs to learn to be able to identify science based analysis versus opinion using numbers. Huge difference. Do I feel like my DQ (democracy quotient) has dropped precipitously in 2017. No, and I doubt many honest people would say theirs has.
1
"Under Trump, America is no longer in the top tier of democratic countries."
Give me a break! America has not been at the top for a long time. Do you think American children were well educated under Obama?
3
Under Trump capitalism and exploitation of captive markets have combined with share buybacks and money printing to shore up the economy into fragile state of illusory well-being. Our economy is like Roy Cohen partying like predator in denial at Studio 54 before his AIDS diagnosis. Trump has groomed this nation for abuse of its freedom, denial of fact, and a gross distortion of reality.
The weak and vulnerable among us have suffered by far the most. The debacle of the Metropolitan Correctional Center as convicted are carelessly co-mingled and abused with detained, without heat, blankets, or care during the latest Polar Vortex will come to be the symbolic face of Trump's American Carnage here in New York.
Trump's fixation on "The Wall" is nothing less than a massive land-grabbing abuse of eminent domain under which communities, the public, farmers, and wildlife will be stripped of millions of acres that Trump intends to lease at criminal discounts to the fracking industry, who will repay him in campaign 'supports.' They in turn will be secured by the Juarez Cartels who will pay handsomely for 'tunnel rights' as they use the cover of fracking to move drugs in and cash in need of laundry out of the United States.
Trump and all who closely cluster around him are traitors and world class criminals for whom "Freedom" is an existential threat and if Trump has his way our Freedom House ranking will fall to the low 20s, above Russia at 20 and Saudi Arabia at 7.
2
A change of administration will not restore America's standing on the world stage. It may take generations for the stench of the past few years to fade.
It is not Trump or his henchmen that the world will be leery of, It is the American people who elected a man so unfit for office. They bought a sales pitch that was blatantly based on lies and deception. He drove a stake of hatred and fear into the heart of our society. He gave purchase to bigotry and zealotry.
Before we can begin to rebuild, we first have to decide who we are as a people and where we want to go as a nation. We need to take a long hard look in the mirror and recognize the Trump in all of us.
1
We are correctly reminded by Michelle's column of the shortcomings and serious unindicted crimes of Trump's two years in the Oval Office. We need not accuse him again of being an autocrat and a wannabe dictator. We just need to know that those other global tyrants and dictators and autocrats believe him to be so.
For a person who so infamously commissioned a larger than life cardboard selfie, using other peoples' money, it is so telling that this presidency we cannot discard has been so sadly two-dimensional. Even the shadow of where he walks must be artificial.
1
This report is a political stunt. It claims that an unelected court blocking the elected politician from doing what he campaigned on isn't "democratic", it's totalitarian.
Thank you for this OpEd. "Choose a clown, expect a circus." is a bumper sticker I read the other day. After an agreeing chuckle I wondered, perhaps there is method to Mr. Trump's madness? Perhaps he truly is a Russian asset?
2
It's interesting that a former Soviet state like Latvia is ahead of the nation that thinks of itself as the "Leader of the Free World", and that a former communist country like Croatia is not far behind. Maybe the U.S. needs to do a little soul-searching.
As a Latvian, I can't avoid a little feeling of smugness here.
3
The US has been sliding down long before Trump became president.
The first action that is necessary is to cancel the lease on that DC hotel. It has always been illegal but has been ignored. Turn it into housing for the poor. Everything trump has touched should be reversed. Greed is our biggest adversary.
2
I hate to break to the anti-electoral college crowd, but not one single prime minister in Europe earned more than 100,000 votes. None of them even ran a national campaign in their own name. The most votes Winston Churchill ever won was 38,000. That is why they keep their kings and Queens, even sainted Canada. The people do not decide the leaders the party does and the party can swap them out on a wim.
4
@MkmOf the top 10 admired nations all but 1 are constitutional monarchies, the exception is Switzerland.
1
@stewart - That is lovely Stewart. I was making a comment about the US Electoral College. The reason the Queen is the head of state in Canada is because your ruling class fears the democracy of the people. By the way the most votes Justin Trudeau ever received was 26,391.
I do not need to read the report to understand the decline of my country of birth, decline as concerns democracy and most other matters of primary interest to me.
My annual 30 days in New England + Albany NY give me ample direct observations as a basis for comparing that part of the USA with Sweden, a part of the USA that geographically-geologically-climatically is much like Sweden.
Nowadays I experience little in my USA NE + NY that matches up to whatever I choose to compare. I write about that here in comments and at my blog so say no more about those but do add a comparison that is never touched on in this newspaper.
The USA still classifies us citizens using a system which is completely the invention of racists. It appears that readers and even columnists are not familiar with the history of that system. Time they learned.
The black race box in the USCensus Bureau system came into being so that a white race box could be used for those people seen as superior. The boxes are still there with many people, the president included, believing that if you are in the white box you have better genes than if you are in the black box.
If you want to provoke yourself to thinking about this, read Times coverage of Kamala Harris, and read even her book. In the Times, whatever the truth about KH she is placed firmly in that black box.
Not a satisfactory practice for a democratic nation.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
2
I think Americans have a tough time wrapping their heads around collateralized debt obligations, and bringing someone to justice for violating said obligations.
Americans understand treason.
1
Freedom House has all the credibility of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Same with the writer.
Riddle me this: If America isn’t the most free, fair and liberty-centered country in the world, why in the world are people milking themselves to get here?
2
"Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, abruptly said she was resigning after a trove of leaked emails showed party officials conspiring to sabotage the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont."
Brazile, the former interim chairwoman of the committee, said in an excerpt from her upcoming book published in Politico that she discovered a deal from August 2015, months before Clinton secured the party's nomination, that said Clinton's campaign would “control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised.”(NYT)
"The agreement was reached between the Clinton campaign, the DNC and Clinton’s joint fundraising committee, Brazile said.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) similarly said Thursday she believes the 2016 Democratic presidential primary was rigged for Clinton."(The Hill)
I agree Ms. Goldberg, our democracy is in trouble when a Democratic primary is secretly rigged to favor one candidate and deprive the voters from a fair, democratic system.
2
Wow. I expected to read something about the rampant voter suppression across many states in the US, but not a word. This is not to take a swipe at Goldberg's column, which is generally top-notch and insightful, but a reminder that voter suppression (much of which is race-based, because USA) is given such short shrift in our press. We're only talking about the foundational act of any democracy...
2
Our country will never be truly democratic until several structural changes are made.
Among those changes are the elimination of the Electoral College and the Senate, public funding of elections, non-partisan drawing of Congressional districts, and the removal of all barriers to voter participation.
The current state of our democracy is in large part due to these structural deficiencies. For example, Trump lost the popular vote by 2.8 Million votes yet won the Presidency because of the archaic, elitist and anti-democratic Electoral College. Our democracy will never reach it's potential until basic structural changes are made.
It's time.
10
@Joseph Thomas
I agree fully with your statement, but I should add that the founding fathers never wanted for the US to become a democracy. That commitment remains very much alive . today.
"Down from 94 in 2009" means the U.S. has been falling for some time and certainly began dipping lower after 2009. That would be a 2019 honor shared by both Obama and Trump, Democrats and Republicans.
So too, who and when drove the U.S. down to 94?
1
@Maggie
According to the Democracy Index put together by the Intelligence Unit of The Economist (2108), the US is a flawed democracy. It ranks 25th in the world; behind three Latin American countries: Uruguay, Costa Rica, and Chile.
1
This is a real measure of the success of America. It is not simply the stock market or our GDP. Those are indices that measure the benefits for a small percentage of Americans finances, but not the quality of life.
1
Our "spreading of democracy" hasn't been the moral crusade that the author is implying and I would argue that our "transactional" relationship with other nations has been a trend for the last hundred years or more. Trump hasn't invented the concept (Europe's exploitive relationship with its colonies and history of strategic intervention/promotion of internal upheaval there is well documented), its simply more obvious under his leadership and far easier to protest because his rhetoric to most people is abhorrent. He makes it easy to identify injustice. Perhaps he is aided by major media outlets, in response to the attacks they are under, are also reporting his indiscretions more diligently than past president. However, it is worth mentioning that imperialist tendencies that lead to the transactional relationships with smaller, resource rich nations are a staple of democratic leadership as well and we should be mindful of that.
All that said, Trump's domestic policies on immigration and women's rights are counterproductive and unjust, totally counter to a democratic and equitable society. I am not surprised that our democracy is rated lower than those nations (some of which had to overcome the puppet rule of the USSR in the last 50 years i might add), nor that Trump's existence encourages and normalizes rabid conservative populism. Hopefully this propels us toward the opposite of what he is touting in 2020.
3
"America may never again be taken seriously as the global champion of liberal democracy."
Germany went from the villain of this article in paragraph 1 to a hero of it by 4. If Germany can climb from Nazism to a model for America in 75 years, I think the United State's global value as a promoter of democracy can recover from Trump at some point.
119
@Jay
Germany was able to rise above its wretched history with the help of the United States as a superpower and promoter of democratic values. The formation of the EU reinforced Germany's commitment to the principles of freedom and democracy. The difference, as the US slides towards illiberalism, is that there is no other country powerful enough to help guide America back towards true democracy. China, the rising superpower, is a model of repression and authoritarianism. Meanwhile Russia and Trump are actively undermining the EU and other democratic alliances. American values have been declining for a generation as big money controls politics and everything from rampant income inequality, to voter suppression, to corruption of the election process has taken root. If Trump wins in 2020 real democracy will probably be lost forever.
On top of all of this the global community must confront the existential threat of climate change, which will be a disrupter like no other event in human history. The world desperately needs a strong leader just as the EU is coming unglued and the US is descending into tribalism, corruption and dysfunction. Bleak times are ahead.
18
@Jay
Germany underwent a major cultural shift following a military defeat, the loss of a large proportion of the young male population, the total destruction of its government and the division and subjugation of half the nation.
The Germany of today is not the same Germany that we defeated 74 years ago. The country that rose from the ashes did so with the assistance of its conquerors, who helped build a new government, constitution and infrastructure.
Our democracy (or republic) will survive Trump. The question is for how long. Unless we as nation can overcome the perils of "factionalism" (see Federalist Paper #10), we will suffer from the inefficiencies of dysfunctional governance.
10
@Jay: It's not just Trump. It's also people like Mitch McConnell and his blocking of Merrick Garland. We now have a stacked Supreme Court. It's the Gerrymandering that pre-determines electoral outcomes. It's voter suppression. The Republican party is authoritarian.
20
To “forgive those who were complicit in it” is indicative of a pardon to this reader, and none of the criminals Ms. Goldberg referred to deserve either. If this president and his family/administration associates (because that’s what they are, if we are being honest) are found guilty of crimes, they surely don’t as well.
Trump’s base voted for him on their sheer hatred of people of color. They do not understand how government works or that the Constitution was written to protect this country from despots like him. If we do away with the Electoral College, we essentially take it away from his base, and then, perhaps, we will be able to set this country back on track.
What remains absolute and constant is that we cannot and will not be the beacon of democracy the world over if we do not remove him and his despicable administration from office.
2
@Katherine S., while I agree that racial issues drove some Trump voters, that explanation is both too judgmental and too simple to explain his win. Economic pressures were clearly a factor: resentment about loss of opportunity, the 40-year redistribution of money to the wealthy, etc. The NYT has had several excellent articles about this aspect of things. We must not demonize most Trump supporters, we must re-claim them. That is a much harder (and more worthy) task.
2
@Katherine S. "Trump’s base voted for him on their sheer hatred of people of color."
I think you're bang-on here, Katherine.
Trump was the Birther-in-Chief well before 2016. He was spewing birtherism at the same time his to-be base was shrieking and howling at Tea Party rallies, carrying stuffed monkey dolls, signs about lyin' Africans and Confederate flags. White supremacists came out from the shadows in 2016 because they heard the dog whistles; they understood what was really being said when shouts of “build the wall” erupted at Trump rallies.
I am so tired of Trump supporters who claim that they're good people or expect others to be civilized in their presence, to abide them. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept, and Trump supporters voted for the loudest racist of them all. This makes them racists, too. All of them. They voted for a man who bragged about grabbing women's crotches. If you voted for a sexual predator, you not only abide sexual assault, you endorse it.
3
@Nicholas Hogan I’ve been a faithful reader of the NYT for quite some time, and am exceptionally aware of what they have published with regard to trump and the elections held since 2016. The average income of a Trump voter was $70k according to several highly respected and truthful sources.
I have always wondered why people in any given state look to the federal government for economic solutions while demonizing them at the same time, yet fail to elect governors and legislators in their own state to help rectify issues regarding local economies, job creation, education and the like.
To your point, however, wealth distribution under Trump hasn't gone the way of his people now, has it? Yet they still show up to his rallies screaming that Mexico is going to pay for a wall. These are people who themselves cannot be bothered to read the NYT, as you suggest I do, because their cult leader had deemed them and every respected journalistic source as fake news.
I agree with you that it’s best to “reclaim” Trump supporters, but I truly don’t see how that will happen. These are people who are vulnerable in that they believe in Trump so thoroughly; we know that Russian operatives targeted them FIRST in their opposition campaign, and they will continue to be targeted because of this vulnerability. Until they stop this maniacal belief in him, or until they or their families are genuinely hurt by his policies, we don’t stand a chance of “reclaiming” them.
1
"If a Democrat wins the presidency in 2020, there’s going to be a lot of pressure to move beyond this foul moment and forgive those who were complicit in it. We’re not good at holding elites to account in America; the architects of both the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis have gone largely unpunished."
If the US does not rid itself of the perpetrators listed above, they'll just do it all over again. Time to pull this malfeasance out by the roots.
6
Taking climate change seriously means shifting to emission free energy sources fast and electrifying industry, transportation, and agriculture. It also means transforming our diplomacy from denial and obstructionism on climate issues to helping lead on a number of fronts. One is dealing with climate migration fairly and humanely. People are already fleeing extreme drought, fires, and creeping sea level rise. We need aggressive international treaties to deal with climate migration. Rightist opponents of democracy will use fear and we must fight it with solutions. If people are confident we are seriously addressing climate disruption we can achieve some sense of solidarity among leading nations, even some gains in economic prosperity if we act fast and decisively. That means putting Trump et al in the rear-view mirror. A little dispensing of justice in that process would help.
8
I don't think everything changed under Trump. The electoral college and the grand purview granted mostly white conservative judges on the Supreme Court has been here for a long time - I mean, in the last two decades we've had two presidents "elected" who lost the popular vote, and one of them, Bush, was cynically put in place by the Supreme Court. I'd love to know whether Freedom House put the U.S. in the top tier when official apartheid in the South was the order of the day. Many instances of executive overreach - including Obama's use of drone assassination - have been occurring with little protest. It isn't that Trump isn't bad, but he isn't the evil seducer that took us all from our state of innocence. Things were in a pretty bad state pre-Trump.
10
I couldn't agree more. The American politically system is a bad set-up in a 21 century context. Electoral college, campaign financing, election of judges. Life-time service of Supreme Court justices, etc.
We are now paying the price for failing to adjust this 18th century set-up to our modern times. The power-hungry are exploiting every inherent weakness, and are holding the country at ransom.
4
@rwgat
The U.S. has been in trouble ever since the mid-1960s - all of America, not just for the 12% black population. We rise or fall as a whole nation, not via solipsistic identity segments. Otherwise, the one nation becomes tectonic platelets shifting and colliding under each other. We lived this in the political form in 2008 and 2016: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. What America cannot seem to do is grow up and gain both the wisdom to self-control its vices
The race industry desperately needs to mature past the closed loop blame game rut. We get it, the black reparations movement has been on the upswing with increased vigor since 2008. The latino entitlement movement has been on the upswing with increased vigor since 2016. But be careful. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. Such collisions harm all and produce little of value but more Newton's Cradle. This is where America's been stuck since the 1960s.
Americans are addicted to and entertained by flashes of movement and the next new thing but, sadly, remain unable to mature past perpetual selfish half brain adolescence. We will not fix the Electoral College and gerrymandering by both parties till we fix some of the big movement ideas that haven't worked well for 50 years. Till then, all the identity groups, all the political and economic groups, have a seat at the table where everyone expects to eat but not cook.
"The arc of history bends toward justice," according to President Obama. We really need to believe this in order to sustain our efforts toward this democratic ideal.
To believe that "America may never again be taken seriously as the global champion of liberal democracy" is to yield to terminal pessimism. We can't afford to let that happen.
Albeit at great human cost, we stumbled through McCarthyism, slavery, a civil war and Jim Crow. The Trump presidency will be an aberrational nightmare unless we stay asleep at our citizenly switches.
6
Martin Luther King, actually, in 1963, I believe.
2
So the decline in score began in 2009? I wonder what happened that year?
6
This raises an old question: Can a free people govern themselves? The commentaries, observations and particularly The Federalist Papers display a view that a constitutional convention would be necessary time to time to adapt unforeseen changes due to expansion and trial and error. Putting aside the blatantly ignorant views of so-called originalists, these architects of out government could not have foreseen the danger of a propaganda machine like Fox News aligned with a chief executive.
Yes, Ms. Goldberg, we are in a little trouble.
8
In fact , American democracy is flawed from inception. We do not have one citizen one vote. Hillary and Gore got more popular votes , but Trump and W Bush became president. Ridiculous . Wyoming and California have same two senators, North Dakota and South Dakota have 4 senators same as Texas and New Tork. Representation in Congress is very unfair. Then in presidential election, about 4 billion dollars is spent and campaign starts 2 years before election. The candidate who can raise more money have more chance to win. Our government is always on auction block and it is by the rich, of the rich and for the rich.
16
All true. Yet, nevertheless, we won abolition, women’s suffrage, the 40-hour workweek, social security, and the EPA. We have seatbelts in cars and unleaded gasoline. Every one of those things was enacted despite the factors you name, which were as powerful then as now.
The simple fact is there’s more of us than them. Their effort is dedicated, simple-minded, and consistent. That’s how they’ve prevented social legislation for 40 years, and reverted the Supreme Court to steadfast revanchism. Our effort is more diffuse and sporadic but, when united, implacable.
We are coming together. The process is so slow and wavering it’s almost imperceptible. But look: in 2008, Obama and Clinton debated the margins of what became Obamacare, and he was elected opposing the individual mandate. In 2020, the Democratic nominee will almost certainly be running on Medicare for All. (I expect the NYT to publish its first editorial on the subject, opposed, the day after the election. Mum’s the word.)
Already, we have a bill in the house for publicly financed elections. There is a proposal for the first time to really move to clean energy and tax carbon emissions. For the first time in 40 years, an elected Democrat suggests a 70% marginal income tax and another a 2% wealth tax. The terms of the debate are changing.
But, actually, the terms aren’t changing, not by themselves. We are changing them. With every letter to a congressman, every Indivisible meeting, every kitchen-table discussion.
1
@ASHRAF CHOWDHURY
That "inception" flaw was that half the population couldn't vote till 1920 and only gained legal rights over their own bodies in the 1970s.
I think of the emergency in freezing Brooklyn Federal Prison, which the prison administration hid, then refused assistance for the inmates, took the weekend off, while 900 men froze. Elected representatives were refused entry. This is endemic to the corrections system, throughout America. Those in charge will skate.
I think of the report of the DHHS, who has violated a court order to find lost children, and underreported their numbers by thousands more than the 2700 previously known, and says it isn't worth while to fix this, another emergency. No consequences for anyone in charge. This level of error is criminal.
In both instances, the administrators of these programs should be liable for the crimes of neglect and abuse, and pay for the damage they have done.
I think of Yemen and the 13 million who may die within two months, in what has been said will be the worst famine in 100 years, as our representatives look the other way, while their friends profit.
Those who participate in crimes against humanity should pay.
Many of those who faced trial in Nuremberg were administrators and wardens, and their verdicts reflected international standards.
13
Sounds like a report from a bunch of hacks pontificating from their ivory tower. Anyone who has experienced and are experiencing life in other countries knows there is no comparison, there is America and there are the rest. (Small countries, with more easily manageable problems don't count. By that measure a tiny village somewhere could be the most democratic, and even better than all the countries.)
4
Please explain how governing a small country like France (60 million) is easier than 330 million. Pretending other countries offer no lessons because they’re smaller is convenient, because the US is the largest democracy among industrialized nations.
You might want to spend more time in Europe before touting the US as the best and most freest. It’s pretty had to travel in England, France, Spain, and Scandinavia, and arrive home convinced of American exceptionalism.
Indicators of their governments’ greater responsiveness to the public include better support for education and infrastructure. Try to find a young person who doesn’t speak passable English. Ride the TGV from Paris to Bordeaux. Then tell me what a great country this is.
1
@James K. Lowden
I wasn't really talking about countries such as France, which is a major country. Although we can learn a few things from them, I'm certain that America will come out ahead of even them in a properly designed study. But, my comment was really about mingling countries of all scales into one survey and using that to make comparisons (the thrust of this Op-Ed). There is a theorem, I believe, in statistics, stating that as the number of constraints ("criteria") increases the probability of failure increases. If they added another 25 criteria, they could have proven that America is the least democratic, and even the tiny village will be praying that it is still democratic. Basically, as you increase the number of criteria, a larger sample (society) will start encountering them and failing some of them, compared to a smaller society which may not even encounter them or pass more easily. If you really want to design a proper study, you either limit it to countries of (approximately) the same scale (preferred), or apply more criteria to the smaller countries than for the larger countries. This study falsely projects the façade of comprehensiveness, while in reality it is fundamentally flawed; we don't need to read their report to know this, the very fact that they put Mauritius, Latvia, etc. into the same pool is good enough to question its merits and general applicability.
Michelle is absolutely right in suggesting that Trump has made the US an accelerant of anti democratic and authoritarian regimes across the globe. When the US doesn’t hold itself out as the shining city on a hill for all the world to see When we don’t set the example for how not to be an authoritarian nation and when we allow our President to act like speak like and encourage racist authoritarian policies we send the wrong measage to nations struggling to become free and democratic. What is also troubling is that a major news network like Fox allows the opinion side of its on air broadcast personnel to bolster the authoritarian bent of this president under the guise of being just opinion journalists Limbaugh Hannity Ingraham Coulter and Pirro have done a great disservice to the nation a great disservice to democracy across the globe and a great disservice to legitimate journalism in America Shame on the Murdoch family for allowing it to continue
5
I hope one good thing comes from Trump being POTUS for now.
That in 2020 the pendulum swings VERY far to the left and his "work" is undone and then some.
3
@Matt while I'm no Trump fan, please be careful for what you wish for. Obama and Hillary are a major reason behind the very far swing to the right that we have now. Not sure that we should be hoping for any far swings. perhaps a pendulum that stops swinging should be our goal?
2
After 8 years of Republicans calling Obama “socialist” and screaming about “overreach”, I’m looking forward to a resurgence of the democratic wing of the Democratic Party.
Obama signed Obamacare, originally designed by the Heritage Foundation, which explicitly left private insurance in place and did not offer a public option. Obama sought a “grand compromise” with Bohner that would have curtailed social security. Socialist was the furthest thing from accurate.
In a few years, if the stars align, Obamacare will be gone, and Medicaid with it, replaced by Medicare for All. It won’t be socialism. But at least we won’t be in the thrall of private insurance or have to kowtow to our employers for coverage. That’s the kind of awfulness I look forward to.
2
@tj
Both Clintons were and remain bedrock centrists. That's why the 1990s worked well, intractable problems kicked down the road since the 1960s fixed, national debt brought not just under control but down to zero. Sadly, the U.S. probably will not see the likes of a bona fide sane, good governance centrist holding down the job of president for some time to come. America blew it in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016. There's only so many changes one gets.
With an electoral college gimmick that allows the Presidency to be claimed by one trailing by 3 million votes, and a Senate that allows only two votes per state regardless of population, the US hardly qualifies as a democracy and probably should be deleted from the list.
13
"Still, I hope we can summon the political will for a reckoning with how thoroughly this administration has betrayed America’s highest ideals. "
Yes, we can hope, but as the author points out, our recent history suggests that it will be buried and forgotten. I have serious doubts that we the people will even be allowed to see the Mueller report. So the lessons will not be learned and the bad actors, most of the GOP and all of Trump's associates, will get away with, if not literal, though I wouldn't be surprised, then figurative murder. Aside from God level hypocrisy from the Republicans, plug Obama into any one of Trump's transgressions and the mind reels from the hyperbolic reactions from Fox and Fiends and the GOP, the denial of what is manifest betrayal of not only our ideals, but in concrete terms our nation and its interests is pernicious and a clear danger for the continued survival of a democratic United States.
The application of Occam's Razor cuts through a lot of unnecessary speculation. The simplest explanation for a raft of decisions and policies that benefit Russia and disadvantage the U.S. and our important friends and allies, is that Putin is working through Trump to achieve Russian objectives. If it talks like a traitor, acts like a traitor and tweets like a traitor, I call that president a traitor.
5
Trump is simply a right wing demagogue whose affinity with authoritarian despots is well documented. He is also a weak leader with little interests in policy details and has supported the Republican agenda of tax cuts for the rich, deregulation of the environment for the benefits of the fossil fuel industrialists, and the conservative religious right obsessions against abortions, gun control, immigrants and minorities.
He is a man whose entire business life has been steeped in privilege and corruption and in many ways his administration has been a continuation of that
business model. Of course this is the way of the authoritarian states that he admires like Putin’s Russia and also the means of Trump’s wealth as a money launderer. Unfortunately this may also be the
preference for the wealthy oligarchic elite that control much of wealth and power in our country.
If it is a choice between the rule of law, democracy, and greed, they may prefer wealth, power, and the corruption of a more authoritarian state. Trump may represent a symptom of their and our growing corruption and cynicism about the idea of justice and freedom and truth! So goes our democracy and its ideals!
4
Those of us who care what happens to this country have a responsibility to educate the majority who are on the sidelines and don't make an effort to understand politics and government and get them energized. This happens not thru fear mongering or propaganda, but by sharing information and refuting the nonsense being spread by the dead-enders.
3
Who really cares what a bunch of pro-European intellectuals at Freedom House think after they tabulate their carefully selected bias-confirmation data tools? These are the same fellow travelers who rub shoulders with the UNESCO crowd, and their game is blatant anti-Americanism.
But hey, if Michelle Goldberg cared to inform herself about Latvia's superior "freedom" (she clearly doesn't), she might discover that Latvia has a legal "Latvian values" test, for instance, which requires cultural conformity and fluency in Latvian to obtain citizenship. It has allowed Latvia to disenfranchise significant portions of its Russian minority, which make up 27% of the population. They are classified as "non-citizens" even though most were actually born in Latvia and have lived there their entire lives.
How's that for "democracy"? Latvians designed that law to maintain their ethnic purity, and to force their Russian minority to leave. Try that sort of ethnic and racial purity on for size, Michelle, if you prefer Latvian "freedom" to ours.
9
I wonder where we got the high marks on the past with such low voter turnout. Not sure the report is totally non-biased?
2
Great point about America not holding elites to account. If Trump and his family are proven to be criminals, as appears obvious, accountability is critical. We will never heal properly if they plea bargain with the nations highest office. The Republicans demand law and order we should give it to them
6
@Sean same for Hillary and the Clinton Foundation? I did recommend your comment since I do agree with you. However, all elite criminals should be held accountable, not just the right side of the aisle.
1
Ms. Goldberg doesn't place the blame where it really belongs and that is with the Vichy GOP, the collaborators of the grifter in chief.
The Reality Show Con Artist was never running for President; he was running for ATTTENTION and was only in it for money and vanity. He never wanted to win. That he is such an easy to spot fraud actually absolves him of he sin of his own election.
The real problem is the Vichy GOP is propping up this charade even though they all know he is unfit and probably under the sway of foreign powers.
Even the "sainted" John McCain helped to set his parties know nothing, double down on dumb template by nominating the former Governor of Alaska to the second highest office in the land and acting as an obstructionist to everything President Obama tried to accomplish.
The Vichy GOP has prioritized power over county through voter suppression and by changing laws to minimize Democrats after they lose elections.
Too much emphasis and attention is given to a buffoon who is only looking to enrich himself and not enough to a party that are really the ones undermining our freedoms and our right to fair elections.
7
The speed of the decline is startling, though at least the conceit that "it can't happen here" is pretty well kaput. And let's not have any more idle talk that "they're all the same," that political leadership hardly matters -- Trump, his GOP toadies, and his backward base, own this. The bizarre notion that he has been useful in exposing the country's deep flaws and inequities can only be true for the half-wits too jingoistic to perceive or concede them. Next time reckless voters feel the need to "shake things up," to play at revolution, let them give their heads a shake instead -- installing a blustery amateur in the White House brings nothing but disgrace. Events are slowly turning for the better, with the midterm results and the most recent polls. If the courts don't settle it sooner, in two years we can consign the Trump disaster to the famed "dustbin of history."
So two years after America said a tearful goodbye to its first Black President (2 terms), 2 years after Trump wins with the help of many of those Obama voters, and now, less than a month after the Democrats take back control of the House of Representatives- bringing in a new wave of underrepresented groups, Ms. Goldberg has decided that our Democracy is in decline?
And using small, relatively homogenous Countries as proof is not much of an argument.
Americans ability to adapt and absorb different folks, while arguing publicly with ourselves IS who we are. And that's why so many folks are still risking life and limb to come here.
To make an argument that Latvia or Croatia- fine Countries surely- are more "pro" democracy in light of our flexibility- the whim of our citizens, the essence of democracy- is silly.
4
This is nonsense. While policies of the current administrationy have been generally very bad, there haven’t been meaningful changes to the laws that would suggest that democracy is in peril. The United States shouldn’t have scored so high in the first place. But, just like college “rankings”, this one is useless anyway.
5
"it usually takes more than two years for a democracy to collapse." So what are we waiting for to impeach, indict and imprison the trump? It is too late if we wait for the US to collapse! Just look at the trajectory of the freedom graph downwards for the US at https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2018 - it is frightful.
I wonder what the disparity of freedom based on wealth is - I bet there's an equally obscene level of freedom for the top 1% (free from taxes, laws and rules that do not apply at all to them) compared to the rest of us where freedom is unaffordable at all (innocent in prison, awaiting trial with no lawyer or bail money).
The freedom inequality gap - in the FREE category of countries with high wealth inequality and hence high freedom inequality will quickly rid freedoms the 99% had as we knew them before the trump era.
Gasp! Oh no! Freedom House has decided America is a bad country because we didn't elect their preferred party. Whatever can we do? I know! Let's take away everybody's health insurance and force the whole country onto Medicaid! That will make Freedom House like us. And, who knows, maybe someday we can even hope to be liked by the United Nations. Then maybe Michelle Goldberg can feel like America is a real democracy.
2
Trumps call of Fake News haven’t impacted freedom of the press in this country an iota, not a single opinion has been stifled; it has certainly increased the revenues of the NYT. The notion that any institution in a democracy, including a free press, must be exempted criticism and political pressure is itself an anti-democratic notion.
The US, as the worlds cop, has no choice but to make nice with Saudi Arabia, every President since Eisenhower has. If our rating has suffered because we didn’t pass a toothless resolution tut tut’ing Saudi Arabia’s murder of an opinion writer, well then so be it. Europe tut tuted and kept right on buying Saudi Arabia’s oil. Highly rated UK and Germany kept right on selling the Saudi’s all sorts of tech goods. We are the ones who have thousands of our young people in harm’s way manning the Aircraft Carrier groups that keep that oil accessible to Europe, and China for that matter. The US doesn’t even need Saudi oil, we are an oil export nation.
3
Nothing is permanent in politics. Especially trump and trumpism. Of course the USA will get its mojo back! Bank on it
Take a look at the work of the World Justice Project sponsored in part by the American Bar Association. In its Rule of Law Index, were it not for Italy, the US would be at the bottom of the G-7. Of all 113 countries we do poorly for rich countries. When it comes to access to civil justice, we're 94th! Tied with Zimbabwe I believe.
4
Freedom House?
You can't be serious. It is anything, but a think-tank; rather a centre of Orwellian thought control.
2
Wow, this story is a real eye opener. I realize that Trump’s antics have had an impact, but for the US to decline to the tier of a lesser democratic country is stunning. I had never heard of Freedom House, a US government-funded, non-governmental think tank and research institute - https://freedomhouse.org/. I hope the study cited in this story will spur a lot of people who have been sitting on their hands, or ignoring the exploits of their party leader, to action.
"Still, I hope we can summon the political will for a reckoning with how thoroughly this administration has betrayed America’s highest ideals. "
Yes, we can hope, but as the author points out, our recent history suggests that it will be buried and forgotten. I have serious doubts that we the people will even be allowed to see the Mueller report. So the lessons will not be learned and the bad actors, most of the GOP and all of Trump's associates, will get away with, if not literal, though I wouldn't be surprised, then figurative murder. Aside from God level hypocrisy from the Republicans, plug Obama into any one of Trump's transgressions and the mind reels from the hyperbolic reactions from Fox and Fiends and the GOP, the denial of what is manifest betrayal of not only our ideals, but in concrete terms our nation and its interests is pernicious and a clear danger for the continued survival of a democratic United States.
The application of Occam's Razor cuts through a lot of unnecessary speculation. The simplest explanation for a raft of decisions and policies that benefit Russia and disadvantage the U.S. and our important friends and allies, is that Putin is working through Trump to achieve Russian objectives. If it talks like a traitor, acts like a traitor and tweets like a traitor, I call that president a traitor.
1
Has the Trump administration betrayed "American ideals" or only exposed them for the fig leaves they've often served as? Perhaps we're seeing a bit of slipping of the mask of what Sheldon Wolin terms "inverted totalitarianism."
And American preaching of spreading democracy around the world has always been a mixed bag of altruism and propaganda. Out of the other side of the US mouth was Dullesian/Kissingerian support of authoritarians who kept the unruly freedom-yearning masses down so that neo-imperialist vulture capitalism could conveniently have fertile ground to exploit. And often it was allied one way or another with plain old missionary work - John Foster Dulles and the Rockefellers, for example, fancied themselves as good (and white) churchmen modeling upright propriety.
"The world consists of Christian believers in free enterprise, and others." - John Foster Dulles
We don't need to examine Allen Dulles's sordid sadisms here. Nor Henry Kissinger's...
But we should examine whether we have been good stewards of the American Experiment, at home and abroad. Is this the "land of the free?"
1
There is little doubt that democracy in the United States has been deliberately whittled down. Whether the erosion is a deliberate goal, or, the result of a generation of ignorant political leaders is open for debate; but it has been happening since the George W. Bush years; and, it has a distinctly Republican stench.
Denny Hastert literally changed the way that the House of Representatives worked when he, as speaker of the house, decided that he would only bring legislation to the floor if his party could pass it without democrats. Clearly, his actions undermined the intent and purpose of the Constitution. What happened to him for his coup? Nothing.
Mitch McConnell recently undermined out Constitutional system of checks and balances further when he decided that he would not bring legislation related to the shutdown up for a vote because the President Trump wasn't likely to sign it. He usurped the Constitution. What happened to him? Nothing.
Within days Donald Trump will test the limits of Constitutional checks and balances when he takes Dick Cheney's vision of a president as "unitary executive" to a new level by usurping Congress's role in budgeting by declaring a national emergency.
Donald Trump is merely the last player to undermine our system. But the Republican party has been testing the limits of presidential authority and congressional checks and balances since Nixon and Reagan.
1
Yet folks from all over the world are doing everything in their power to immigrate,or sneak into OUR country. I guess that's because we are losing statis in the eyes of loser politicians
By the way, the subtle omission by ginsberg that the last time we were in the top tier was in 2009. That was based on data BEFORE obama. That's really when we started going down hill.
2
"Democracy is on the decline in Trump's America"--ya think? It's been on the decline since the Reagan era, going steadily down in a sewer of gerrymanderers, Wall-Street gamblers, gun fanatics, forced-pregnancy advocates, purveyors of private prisons, vote suppressors, anti-intellectuals, paranoid conspiracy nuts with their own cable networks and radio stations, promoters of war on false pretenses, science deniers, wage thieves, and the like. Trump may be accelerating the decline, but he didn't come from nowhere. He's the product of a GOP which has been working hard at this outcome for decades, and it should be no surprise that it's come to this now.
2
Trump is just the cherry on top of the pie that is rotting on the inside and has been rotting ever since St. Reagan famously proclaimed that government is the problem rather than the solution.
Granted that bloated bureaucracy is the Achilles heel in any institutional structure; our government is no exception to that rule. However, to castigate our government as a problem is plain insane and going overboard. Such grandiose charges against our own government has finally led us to Faux News and Trrumpsters who do not believe in any of our institutions, all the while clamoring for building a wall that will be paid for by Mexico.
With the erosion in public trust over the past four decades or more, it is little wonder why we have fallen so far below other countries. The most recent and egregious example of this is the free pass given MBS and the Saudis after it was clear that they had orchestrated one of the most heinous murders.
Such erosion in our country's values is dangerous because it deprives us the moral authority to hold other countries responsible for their transgressions.
Sad, truly sad.
Ms. Goldberg states that the underlying motivating force of American foreign policy used to be promoting democracy!
Maybe that was true in 1945, but that was an anomaly.
American foreign policy since 1945 has been about the spread of rapacious, winner-take-all exploitation masquerading as concern for human rights and democracy to make it justifiable and palatable to the American people.
Does Ms. Goldberg know how America orchestrated the overthrow of Iran’s first democratically elected president in 1953 when it appeared that it might harm profits to the oil companies?
What about America’s military training right wing death squads in the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to terrorize and silence the indigenous people?
That was in the 1980s, but in 2009, when the Honduran business community and the military staged a coup to remove the legitimately elected leader from office, Hillary Clinton wrote in the hardcover edition of her book, Hard Choices, that her strategy was to have the military sponsor another election right away so she could, “render the question of Zelaya moot.”
Surprise! The military backed candidate won the election and the Honduran people topped the list of countries with the highest per capita murder rate in the world for several years when the citizens refused to accept the results that Hillary and the Honduran business community, represented by Clinton crony Lanny Davis, mapped out for them.
Just Orwellian doublethink.
2
Steve Bannon spoke of the “deconstruction of the administrative state” and he guided Trump’s approach. This lower score is one measure of that deconstruction. That sound you hear is alarm bells.
3
Was it a mistake for President Ford to pardon Richard Nixon, or was it needed so the country could move on? Even if it were the right thing in 1974, would it still be the right thing in 2020 or 2021? Eventually, does America need to have its "Kill The Emperor" moment? I don't see any of the current White House crowd offing themselves in a bunker, and I don't see Americans hanging any of them upside down in the street. How do we ever expect to let these folks know that they are NOT above the law.
With her present opinion piece, Ms. Goldberg and her sympathizers are directly contributing to an illiberal American press by spewing fake news.
Are you really serious in believing and printing that the United States ranks somewhere around Croatia and Latvia on any measure?
There is only one country in the world where people line up in droves to get in every day, and it's not Greece or France or even the Scandinavian countries. Those are only way stations and more easily accessed than the U.S. from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.
Freedom House has become so politicized and partisan that its reports are no longer credible. Its USG funding should be curtailed and the Democratic Party should subsidize it going forward as its rightful owner and sponsor.
Freedom is alive and well in the United States. Just ask the millions of people who want to enter this country to live and work in the USA every year.
2
It's not "Trump's America" that's the problem. It's the American people themselves. They worship false gods: the military welfare complex (I think a lot of Americans are just itching for the next war to "unite" us), the "American Dream" (a load of nonsense), the health care system (always ready, willing and able to empty your pockets and force you into bankruptcy), "shareholder value-style capitalism" (give nothing back), evangelical Christianity (wrapped in the "prosperity gospels). There are others. Suffice it to say that Trump has merely been a catalyst in activating the worst tendencies in Americans.
2
Conservatives used to be idealists who were patriotic in their defense of core American values such as liberty. What has happened to them? Is there still anything they value, other than greed and blind partisanship? Increasingly, they are enemies of America's ideals.
It took the U.S. two centuries to rise to its current position of respect in the world. In only two years, look what Trump and his supporters have done to trash our international reputation.
2
I have to disagree on at least one point. I don't think there is a lot of pressure to forgive those who were complicit in this foul moment. If Trump had been a mistake, democracy would offer forgiveness. However, Trump was not a mistake. Trump supporters are not just complicit in weakening democracy but proactive. There is a sizable portion of America who reject western democracy as a principle. Democracy therefore has no compelling reason to offer forgiveness. We should be sharpening swords.
2
@Andy,
Locked and Loaded...
I am astounded by many of these comments. If people don't like what democracy produces, they should try engaging with and understanding their fellow citizens, instead of giving up on democratic norms that have sustained us for more than 200 years. Europe? Most of those countries are ethnocracies run by shadowy, unelected elites, where ordinary people have no rights, only privileges. The UK and the US are in a mess precisely because we are open societies designed to release - rather than suppress - the forces that challenge us. Look at the catastrophic twentieth century in Europe and compare that with what happened here in the US - and the UK.
2
"The current overall U.S. score puts American democracy closer to struggling counterparts like Croatia than to traditional peers such as Germany or the United Kingdom."
It's because Germany and the United Kingdom still have a Middle Class.
No here.
Thanks to the ignorance and gullibility of our uneducated rural loser class, America no longer had a Middle Class.
And it's all because of ronnie reagan.
After hearing the Hollywood actor rip on Labor Unions (ignoring the fact that reagan was in a Labor Union himself) those clueless children gave away their Labor Union protections for a song.
Labor Unions were the ONLY thing that gave those losers a dignified life and they handed it away to a Hollywood elitist.
And they've been whining like children ever since.
2
We have two major political parties in America. One has been fairly responsible in upholding the constitution whereas the other has been very busy in the last 40 years undermining the constitution as much as possible -- by restricting people's right to vote, and if and when the "wrong" people vote, by making sure that their votes mean nothing through gerrymandered maps and a host of other means of sabotaging election outcomes. One party's strong support for the Citizen's United decision that literally auctioned off political influence to the highest bidders have all seriously undermined democracy as most of us grew to know it. Can we salvage something before those given to authoritarian ways get a stronger grip on power? I am an optimist who also keeps praying that Democrats will regain the White House, the Senate, and hold on to control of the House in 2020 -- else democracy will remain in the intensive care unit.
2
The heads of our intelligence community recently gave sworn testimony in a congressional hearing that was diametrically opposed to positions taken by Trump on important national issues. Trump then stated that he had discussed the matter with the intelligence officers and was told by them that they were misquoted. Misquoted? They weren't even quoted. The whole world watched their testimony in real time and Trump tried to tell us that we didn't see what we saw. Trump continually attacks our important institutions like the FBI and the special counsel investigation. He calls the free press fake news. His actions are nothing more than an attack on democracy. He is a clear and present danger to that democracy and should be removed from office by whatever means are legally available.
9
America was great when we were more of a egalitarian society when even famous people like Jimmy Stewart fought with “regular” people in WW2. As we become more and more isolated politically and monetarily and stay beholden to corporations, we will continue our slow yet eventual decline. Thankfully, demographics is on the side of progressivism and eventually, hopefully, we can start to turn it around.
6
"We’re not good at holding elites to account in America; the architects of both the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis have gone largely unpunished."
Too true. Our foray into Iraq was based on fallacious premises, while the financial crisis resulted from unchecked greed. Both were egregious infractions of power and law.
However, two notable differences exist between those instances and today. One, the intentional trampling of many rights and protections afforded under the Constitution. Two, the blatant disregard of our principles and obligations to our allies who we've supported, and been supported by, to promote global freedoms.
True, our track record hasn't always been consistent or unblemished by prejudice or political self interest. But since the end of WWI we've tried, by and large, to actualize the promises inherent, if not specifically stated,in the Constitution. Women's rights. Economic opportunity. Civil rights.
Trump doesn't know and doesn't care. His essence is about denying accountability. The Republicans have promotef the interests of a few at the expense of many since Reagan, cloaked by a mask of false morality. Trump's amorality and fear mongering unleashed simmering hatreds, and has been used as cover by "conservatives" and evangelical zealots to push parochial agendas at direct odds with constitutional principles.
Our institutions have held Trump at bay, but accountability is more than a moral litmus test, and so far it's looking elusive.
5
No matter how they are presented, our motives have rarely represented our ideals. Nevertheless, we have held those ideals aloft as a visible facade. We have been unforgivably lax in holding the architects of our worst actions accountable. Nevertheless, we have at least paid lip service to condemning them.
But now, the facade has fallen away in many areas. We are seen to court the approval of the world's most totalitarian leaders. We ask that our alliances be based on transactions rather than shared values. We no longer even pretend to be welcoming tho the oppressed and hungry of the world. Our social services are moribund. Our policies are openly dictated by a corrupt cabal of Plutocrats. We officially deny climate change. We deny the authority of the international Court of Justice.
Is it really any wonder?
9
Ms. Goldberg notes that the Freedom house score for freedom in the US has dropped from 94 in 2009 to 86 in 2017. What she neglects to note is most of that drop occurred during the Obama administration.
And the drop under Trump relates mostly to his withdrawal from democracy promotion around the world, and as the report notes "...two long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and a global recession soured the public on extensive international engagement, and the perceived link between democracy promotion on the one hand and military interventions and financial costs on the other has had a lasting impact." The report also notes that the difference between Obama and Trump has been words, not actions. Obama didn't do much to counter China and Russia or promote democracy, either.
So let's get back in the worldwide democracy promotion business so our freedom score can go up!
7
@J. WaddellThank you for pointing out the implied criticism of Trump( and most white males)built in to the articles in the Times. Obama was no saint.
1
@J. Waddell,
And remind us kitten, what political party controlled both Houses for 6 of President Obama's 8 years in office?
The same one that allowed 9/11, couldn't get bin Laden, crashed the economy and has petulantly shut down the government 5 times?
The Koch party of course.
2
Oh, it’s a lot worse than this. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, of which the US is one of 30+ other members, has produced comparative reports for decades, documenting in embarrassing detail how the US stacks up against our peer nations in every major area of life: healthcare, infant mortality, financial security, education, economic equality, etc. The US falls well behind in nearly all the categories.
As far as democracy is concerned one measure is “degree of representation” — the extent to which a citizen feels that his or her political views are represented at the various levels of government. With first-past-the-post voting and an exclusionary two-party system, this measure is bound to be low here. There are some signs of hope, though. Maine and some other states are starting to introduce “ranked choice voting,” where even if your first choice doesn’t win, your second choice might, and so on.
But money is the real problem. Our system is gamed and bought. If you analyze and identify the key beneficiaries of legislation coming out of Congress, you’d find that the text favors the interests and their lobbyists who bought the most access. The healthcare industry will always trump the individual patient.
17
America never was in the top tier. Remember those college ratings: they never really had it right, except, perhaps for the top half dozen schools.
Great Britain, which we think of as an enlightened democracy is really an oligarchy ruled by one: the queen. Control is maintained by thousands of cameras monitoring activities around the country. It's a velvet glove police state.
America is little better. We have a police state. The average person can witness some of this in interactions in traffic court. You have no rights anyone will respect. Tell me, what is democracy anyway?
2
@Rocketscientist
The UK may be an oligarchy, but the Queen does not rule. The monarchy is constitutional; the queen/king may not voice a political opinion publicly or to Cabinet members. The king/queen may not dictate to parliament what they wish the agenda to be. The king/queen may not close the government in disapproval of parliament's actions. A prime minister can be challenged by the people, through their members of parliament - yes, MPs do occasionally listen to their constituents. A far cry indeed from the kleptocratic rulers of the US, answerable only to their donors.
3
@Rocketscientist. Great Britain is a constitutional monarchy: the Queen is head of the state, who reigns but does not govern.
1
@Rocketscientist
Too many traffic tickets????
2
There will be no forgiveness this time. When Democrats take back the nation from those who sold it to Putin and Kim, and those who were complicit in the hijacking of our government, there will be a reckoning. If the government doesn't punish them, you can bet the people will still have an appetite to set a precedent that won't be ignored by bad actors in the future.
2
"If a Democrat wins the presidency in 2020, there’s going to be a lot of pressure to move beyond this foul moment and forgive those who were complicit in it. We’re not good at holding elites to account in America; the architects of both the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis have gone largely unpunished."
And this would be a grave error. We need to show in no uncertain terms that we will not tolerate anyone hijacking democracy. Unfortunately, I have very little confidence that that there will be any serious repercussions for anyone of consequence. After all, it's a tight-knit crew at the top. They watch out after each other.
9
@Cwnidog If Donald Trump doesn't die in prison after he leaves office, I don't expect to see Democracy last more than the next 20-25 years in this country before it is tossed out the window altogether. If he can use a foreign power to manipulate our democratic systems and walk away scott free, we're pretty much toast and nobody will ever attempt to win an election fairly again.
9
@sam Democracy last another 20 to 25 years ? helminth, it has come and gone !
Unfortunately, the Trump presidency is a symptom not the main cause of the decline in freedom and democracy. The problem is a non-representative electoral system that favors a minority of voters. For a long time now the US deliberative, executive, and judicial bodies do not follow the will of the people, from gun control to voting rights to health care to any key issue you can think off.
Note: Michelle, beware of the cultural (WASP) bias cliches; it is not just the Nordic countries and Germany and UK who score high in the freedom index. Portugal and Spain are as high as Denmark and Germany, respectively. It would be good to show once in a while that southern European, Hispanic countries have as sound democracies as the Northern countries do.
20
The United States will never be a true democracy until the Electoral College is abolished.
27
The United States is a republic, the key is in the name. The 10th amendment ensures it remains a republic. The electoral college is a democratic leveled between the various states.
3
@Ricardo , and the service delivery systems (industries ?) have been nationalized. To avoid the inevitable is to encourage the periphrastic character of the political system prevalent in the USA. Repeating failures in hopes of better outcomes is ludicrous .
1
"Using 25 indicators, including electoral processes, individual rights and the rule of law..."
I'd suggest the the USA hasn't been a truly representative Democracy for some time, unrelated to Democrats or Republicans (or, indeed, BECAUSE of Democrats and Republicans).
The political process is in no way 'representative' for the average citizen -- what you or I think is of absolutely zero consequence to the government, no matter which party is in power.
At least since Citizens United (2010) and probably much, much earlier, the American government is controlled by big money.
Similarly, money decides who gets what quality of 'justice' and who will dispute that, in just about any situation you can think of, money determines who wins or loses.
Blaming what's wrong with America on Trump (or any other single politician or party) completely misses the problem. When it comes to money, they're all as bad as each other.
18
@dbsmith, We have met the enemy, and he is US. No qualifying platitudes necessary here. We have the facade of a democratic republican government that we have asked for, and we are too idiotically vacuous to understand it is OUR doing.
1
@dbsmith
Trump is the first blatant example of how money talks and integrity walks. He's the biggest crook, conman and grifter ever born. 50 years practice makes him NUMBER ONE. I hope I live to see him pay for his poison that he spreads with greed and hate.
2
It's disturbing how many readers would like to remove the electoral college. I would encourage them to research the consumer/producer dynamic. Unfortunately, removing the EC would create a bigger issue with urban areas over representing their priorities. Obviously not a concern for those that live along on the coast, in cities, and feel entitled that they understand what is best for the entire republic.
3
@AntiDoxDak so you believe the vote of people living in cities should count less than those in the country? i wonder how many people who agree with that just happen to be conservative/republican and trump supporters.
11
@AntiDoxDak actually, since it is cheap to campaign in rural states, a 60% plurality in Alabama could be exploited as easily as on in Queens.
And under what system of government do we give dirt a say?
7
@AntiDoxDak, No one is "forced" to live anywhere in the U.S. You write as if people in lower-populated areas are being held hostage. One's vote should count equally from sea to shining sea. After all, the president should represent the country as a whole, not based on geographic location.
3
"We’re not good at holding elites to account in America; the architects of both the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis have gone largely unpunished." This also applies to the so-called "mother of democracy" Great Britain - Tony Blair was at least complicit in the futile war in Iraq and is now gleefully travelling through Europe telling everybody what they're doing wrong.
But in all honesty, a whole generation of Americans rose up in anger to protest against the war in Vietnam, although some of them were too patriotic to refuse the draft and went to suffer death or serious injury for the values which they had always thought to be those of their country. Just because so-called elites hold the strings of power in their hands, it does not mean that all citizens of a nation share their rulers' cynicism.
From my still-safe haven here in Germany I have watched as the US and Britain let what little democracy they ever had slip away and into the hands of people who think God has given them the right to ride rousghshod over the rule of law ( in Britain Conservatives like Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg and the US - well, you know who.
13
Sadly, many of our fellow citizens are ok with corrupt, traitorous autocrats as long as they believe that their taxes will be lowered, while continuing to receive the same government services.
I have faith in our democracy and believe that we will weather this storm. But we do need some truth-telling to find our way again. Unity after a body blow, like 9/11, the Iraq War, or the Great Recession doesn’t occur if we sweep the dirt under the carpet and pretend that these events were surprises.
14
It is nice to know the US is now below a former SSR, and what was part of a Communist state (Yugoslavia). And, we have Trump,, the GOP, the 1%, conservative media, and its nationalist base to blame. It makes sense, now, that Trump is the product of a GOP plan to create a one party state. It makes even more sense, since 9/11, the GOP plan was to move this country towards the autocratic direction, with the so called "Patriot Act". They already created a "wall", by requiring passports to leave the US (travel to Canada and Mexico was by photo ID before 9/11). Now, they want a physical barrier, as a means to not only keep people out, but to keep people in. I am surprised the US, is not lower on Freedom Watch, but if Trump does get his wall, the US will continue its slide to places like Russia.
It took 500 years for Rome to fall; it is taking the US lest than two decades.
9
Of course America is declining and no longer in the top tier of democratic countries. As long as Trump and his people are misleading our government is as long as we will lag behind other still great democracies. Of course we are alarmed by the major problem in our democracy, Ms. Goldberg! As long as authoritarianism, tribalism and autocracy mark our democracy under this president is as long as we will be below Latvia and above Croatia in Freedom House's list of democracies on a 100-point scale.
2
@Nan Socolow, our current position was a gift to placate big moneyed interests. Good article Micelle Goldberg !
1
It's one thing if Trump is gone in 2020 and the country and (slowly) rebuilds itself and re-establishes civic norms. It'll be quite another if he is re-elected - and/or he refuses to leave office. The latter prospect may seem like a stretch - something out of a 3rd world banana republic - but it's entirely possible with him. That would be a sure way to see America's democracy ranking slide way, way down.
7
I think the increasingly wide-spread point of view of Jon below ("I’m beginning to think the measure of “democratic” is simply whether the administration is sufficiently Leftist enough for these people") is what will destroy us, not just as a nation, but as a species. The nonpartisan aspect of Freedom House is unquestionable; and yet something bizarre, pathological, and insidious is causing people to believe what they want to believe (i.e., that Freedom House is "Leftist"), no matter how little evidence exists to support those beliefs. This Fairy-Tale school of thinking will be our downfall, I predict.
15
@PW
I agree and am thinking, given the number of such comments recently, that the NYTs is printing comments from troll farms (that may originate here) to make this Leftist attack take hold.
"A properly functioning democracy depends on an informed electorate." - T. Jefferson
Tilt.
"The country is headed toward a single and splendid government of an aristocracy founded on banking institutions and moneyed incorporations and if this tendency continues it will be the end of freedom and democracy, the few will be ruling." - T. Jefferson
Check.
"If Republicans realize they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism, they will abandon democracy." - D. Frum
Double check.
30
If I had to choose one reason I would say general citizen non-involvement is (or was) the culprit in the decline. Include the Electoral College as many here are blaming, but also the Congress increasingly through various norms and rules. They have morphed, been distorted from their creation and need reform. By one means or another (gerrymandering, voter suppression etc) the majority's collective will is blocked.People have to also get out and vote. We should have a national holiday to vote.
Include the SCOTUS ruling that money is speech. Include inequality and our increasing corporatocracy.
With the alarm of Trump and Trumpism the internet and social media have been helpful, maybe instrumental, for those who are wanting to become more informed involved citizens. The internet and social media are not only for those with nefarious goals.
We are on a long path towards becoming more democratic. This setbacks can be useful if it does destroy us, if the citizenry stay involved.
Democracy is a culture and a process, a practice. As per it's definition this requires involvement.We did not and do not not get handed a democracy on a silver platter.
1
@Potter Sorry, I meant: These setbacks can be useful if these do NOT destroy us, if the citizenry stay involved.
1
It seems quite clear that the U.S. has begun an unstoppable slide into decay. The many comparisons in recent years between the U.S. Empire and that of Rome are apt. We are following Britain into a sort of degenerated Third World status, relying upon other nations for their productivity and tourist revenue. And it doesn't seem amiss to see a rather near future when the "United States" becomes exactly that - a more loosely confederated group of smaller autonomous nations.
8
What are the criteria used to assess a democracy? Obama never met an Executive Action he didn’t like, and his frequent use of them is as autocratical as it gets. Was that democratic? Obama vowed he’d provide a transparent government, and was anything but.
I’m beginning to think the measure of “democratic” is simply whether the administration is sufficiently Leftist enough for these people.
11
@Jon
According to the column, electoral processes, individual rights, and the rule of law are 3 of the 25 indicators.
Obama isn’t the President.
30
@Jon
Obama used executive action because Republicans refused to pass any legislation and refused to compromise no matter how much Obama and dems tried to. They were obstructionist then as they are now
13
@Jon
Freedom House is nonpartisan; what evidence can you supply to justify your claim that it's "Leftist?" Just a funny feeling, perhaps?
2
The report gives South Africa and the United States the same same Political Rights mark. Does anyone really believe that is is the case?
We here in Canada get top marks for civil liberties and political rights, yet we have fairly broad restrictions on what you can say and our libel laws would put most American newspapers out of business considering some of the outrageous nonsense that gets published. The House of Commons is specifically exempted from libel and defamation since almost all political discourse inside would become illegal were it not.
When going through the data more oddities emerge and the amount of countries that were given a 2 seems bizarre. Why does Jamaica get a 2 for political rights? Why was Ghana assigned a 1? The report thinks that the government of Jamaica is just as effective and corrupt as the government of the US, while Ghana is a shining beacon of democracy and political rights? Really?
Another 2 country, El Salvador. El Salvador? The place where everyone is getting murdered and the government doesn't seem to have the ability to establish order?
To put it lightly, I question the reports methodology.
16
Donald Trump ran as a populist and is governing as an autocrat. Those who knew Trump best knew his campaign promises were just part of the Con job.
If we are able to survive this period of relentless attacks on our democratic institutions by the Donald Trump and his co-conspirators in the GOP, we need to make sure the American people never again repeat this mistake of failing to properly vet our Presidential candidates before the election.
17
The “vetting”process is well along right now and nominees will be named by mid - late Sept.
People like President Trump do not get ELECTED because they promote totalitarian ideals. They get ELECTED because the ELECTORATE is dissatisfied with the status quo of the political system.
Our system works just as it was designed and it should. The concept of the Electoral College was to provide a balance. To prevent a few population centers from controlling an entire country.
The Democrats and the Republicans ignored vast swaths of the country over the last few decades. The heartland has been rotting this whole time and the proverbial Nero, which means the Swamp, is fiddling while Rome, which means the country, is burning.
Of course many of these changes are inevitable. Technology, trade, preferences all change and that changes the underlying structures.
But efforts to do anything have been non-existent. Or, more humorously, have incredibly delusional. Like Mrs Clinton's references to bring high tech to West Virginia coal mining communities. By building solar and wind energy production facilities as well as training in disciplines like programming. Really? So she thinks they're going to train drillers, blasters, equipment operators, etc to be proficient in Ruby on Rails, PHP, SQL, etc in a few months? That even they'll make the cut they'll earn what they were making before when so man others out spruce to India, China, etc for a fraction of the wages.
It's no wonder that these down trodden picked a rich old white man, multiple marriages, bankruptcies, etc.
2
@Mark Yeah, Hillary Clinton offering out of work coal miners other options besides mining coal that nobody wants to buy anyway is just absolutely outrageous.
Realistically, it doesn't matter. She could have told those people that each one of them would get a million dollar check from the government, and they still would have voted against her because they hate the idea that brown people can enter the country 2,000 miles away from where they live.
Nobody wants to buy your coal, and if you insist that the only job you will perform is mining coal, then you don't get to be surprised or disappointed when life turns out badly for you. People who adapt survive and thrive. People who do not adapt are left behind. That is how the world works. How much coal has Donald Trump "brought back" in West Virginia since taking office? It's almost zero. The number of jobs in coal have continued to decline over the last 2 years, just as they have before he took office.
So thank God all those people voted for him, instead of for someone who was offering them another option. That would have just been crazy.
1
Well, if there is good news in this report, as an educator, it takes the focus off of our international tests results.
2
Ms. Goldberg's concerns are apparently outcome rather than process based, a premise implying a need for an authoritarian approach to liberal democracy.
However, I would suggest that the tidal results of the 2018 election, the political positioning for the 2020 elections taking place, court decisions invalidating Trump's unconstitutional attempts to subvert the Constitution, reflect a vital self correcting democracy, in action since 1789.
5
"...An increase in corruption and a decrease in transparency...". No other Presidency in U.S. history has had as many criminal indictments of individuals in high level positions as seen in the current Administration. No other President before Trump has repeatedly massaged the truth on a daily basis until what is heard is actually an alternative fact, a euphemism for outright falsehood. And Goldberg is right to point out that such an increase and decrease is symptomatic of an autocracy taking shape. Imagine for one painful minute where the U.S. would be had the GOP held the House. A total power consolidation, untethered to any notion of integrity or to any decision making based on facts, would have been green lighted for the next two years, if not longer. We should be deeply grateful as a country perilously close to having its democracy redefined into shades of gray that the Democrats and Pelosi, highly capable and deft, have assumed the reins. Perhaps now truth can be accessed, facts will matter and govern policy. Justice will prevail.
32
And, if anyone really thinks that getting rid of Trump will help this situation, they should think again. This is a systemic problem, not his fault. He is the result of decades of erosion to our democratic foundations. All the lives and treasure we've spent on regime change around the world, creating chaos and destruction, or to some, paving the way for US corporate interests, is coming back to bite us. You can call it blowback, the boomerang effect or whatever you want, but just like it did in the Roman Empire, endless military adventures and expenditures have eroded our democracy, probably forever. It is truly sad on so many levels, and while many Americans have profited, many more are suffering as a result.
19
@Karekin: Trump has moved Republican policies from dog whistles to bull horns. He tore the mask from “compassionate conservatism “ to show its true face: a return to the Gilded Age of a few ultra rich retaining power by fueling hatred and bigotry in the general population.
26
@John M, astute observation. The second Bush uttered that ridiculous concept "compassionate conversatism" I knew we were in trouble.
1
We are losing the planet. We are losing democracy. We have lost our wealth. We are losing our humanity. Is it any wonder why so many are struggling to maintain mental health. Moral clarity, action and results are needed now.
33
A good point, but it isn't just Trump. The US has always had a middling ranking in these surveys because of our low participation in voting, campaign finance irregularities, low number of women in elected office, and so forth. Trump is as symptom of these problems, not the cause. The idea that Democrats winning an election will change this is dubious.
7
@Mike Livingston
How can you say electing Democrats won't change things? Just look at the number of women and people of color who were elected to the House last year (Democrats) and you can see that things do and will change because of that. Yes, there are bigger issues to address too, but we have a much better chance of seeing the change we need with more Democrats in power.
2
@Mike Livingston I also think its a ton of people from non democratic countries that vote for free stuff. Love how Germany wasn't able to vote to bring in a million military aged men, that did not speak German from the Middle East without a vote. Democracy? Not so much.
We have over many years used our economic and military power to undermine the "politIcal freedoms and civil liberties" of many weaker countries, while loudly proclaiming our belief in democracy.
When democracy gets out of hand and the people demand sharing the wealth, the elites circle the wagons and devise a plan (often involving shedding blood) to keep the wealth in their hands. This requires control of the military and police, the different levels of the courts, and the mass media.
If we want to merit a high score from Freedom House, we need to break the iron hold of the military/industrial complex on what's left of our democracy.
28
150 years ago, Canada had British traditions imposed on it. Things worked well. But an approach where much was unwritten led to predictable problems.
40 years ago Canada looked to the American model to modernize our democracy, our courts and our institutions. Canada has benefitted greatly by copying much of what the founding fathers passed on.
Today, Canadians watch with sadness as the American brand rots in the face of open cynicism and corruption. Americans expect the US will reassume moral leadership once there is a change at the top. I doubt it. The decay didn't start with Trump and it won't end with him. There are better role models out there today.
34
@RichardImposed British Law impose? I don't think so. Canada's success lay in the accommodation of two peoples who had been at war for almost 900 yrs that saw British Common law and the Code Napoleon as the genesis and framework for what we have to-day.
1
While I am tempted to agree with you, one must remember that we while we are less democratic today, mainly because of the demagogue Trump, we have had incidents like this in the past and weathered them.
It started with some of the founding fathers who wanted a King, or the treatment of native Americans or slaves pre 1900, right thru present day Trump.
Although a crisis today with Trump, it pales in comparison to our Civil War where America and democracy were most imperiled and saved by the great emancipator Lincoln.
We came back from that and we can come back from Trump too.
7
@Paul But just like CTE, repeated violent blows to the head are cumulative, just as the blows to the "head" brought about the civil war ( the still alive "war of northern aggression"), Jim Crow, the gilded age , Teapot dome, the Great Depression, the KKK, redlining, Nixon, Reagan's "trickle down" fairy tale , tax cuts , tax cuts, tax cuts for the rich, and the dumbing down via FOX, Trump add up to something that will be difficult to recover from.
Limbaugh, et al
1
A list of those who worked for and voted with trump is available. Those among them that aren’t jailed must be banished from the playing field.
10
@Joe B. Trump had nothing to do with the destruction of democracy in America. That happened long ago.
3
One of the things conservatives tend to get right, is how often the left shows zero tolerance for people that don't share their view.
While this is arguably hypocritical, it is nonetheless true, and (I believe) exemplified in Joe B's comment above.
If a child who does not see right from wrong does something wrong, which is better: punish him/her for doing something when s/he didn't see the wrong of it? Or engaging him/her to have a dialogue about what's right and what's wrong with the their actions/situation, and why?
1
I read this article to learn where the rating found us lacking but learned more about the shortcomings of other countries than ours. The recent example from our country was on how people in Trump’s campaign are being held accountable which seems a strength rather than a weakness. And while I agree on the policy of DACA, we need to remember it was not enacted in a democratic way, but by executive order. This column ends up focused on the Trump persona rather than where the ratings changed.
7
@Dave Miller, read the report if you want to learn the details. There is a link to it in the op-ed.
4
@Dave Miller I don't get to vote on most stuff that I care about.
Michelle, from someone born in the middle of the Baby Boom, who has witnessed all you bemoan and assail, your final paragraph sets forth your life purpose:
"The world offers more lessons about how democracies grow weak and brittle than how they can be revived. America may never again be taken seriously as the global champion of liberal democracy. But perhaps it could at least figure out a systematic way to repudiate illiberalism. We’re not the only country that’s going to need it."
You will have your work cut out for you, considering the actual metrics showing that fewer and fewer Americans (and other Westerners) consider it 'essential' to live in a democracy, much less spread democracy:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/world/americas/western-liberal-democracy.html
In 2028, the last of the Boomers will turn 65, so you and your cohorts are taking over the role of torch-bearer(s); Godspeed.
Sorry we weren't able to manage to hand off to you 'as good as we got', but there were a lot of Idi Amin types in our time, and we did have to cope with the unprecedented corruption of Nixon sabotaging peace talks in Paris so that he could get elected, followed by his Southern Strategy and GOPers' 40 year long Culture War.
It's been a long slog to preserve basic Progress.
16
Ben Franklin was famously asked at the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787,
“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”
“A Republic, if you can keep it.”
It's always worth citing that because Democracy was never a sure bet and even here it permitted slavery which later needed a Civil War to legally end but not its impact, seen to this day.
In fact, throughout recorded history democracies have not been the most popular form of government, monarchies and other forms of authoritarian systems have been more prevalent.
Today, with the authoritarian Trump continuing to have the solid support of 40% of Americans, Franklin's observation becomes ever more presicient.
15
As long as we have the Electoral College and lifetime tenure for Supreme Court justices, we can't really call ourselves a democracy.
46
@GMC Duluth we never were a democracy. We're a Republic first and foremost. The leaders/representatives in our republic are selected via (generally) democratic process, thus we're often described as a 'Democratic Republic'.
As far as this complaint about the electoral college, it was implemented as much to protect states rights as it was for individual rights. I've no problem removing the EC, but doing so requires an Amendment. Do you think such an Amendment will receive 'yea' vote from 2/3 of both house and senate, and ratification from at least 38 states? I don't.
5
Very good civics lesson. Removing the EC imperils the Republic, populism will certainly unify the rural states who will don’t want to be ruled by coastal leftists - and it will only be a matter of time before talks of secession begin.
California already had a murmur of secession after the last election - it’s not easy to hold a republic together. Look at the European Union - starting to splinter and there not even a real republic.
@Tom
I would say after two or maybe three times a Democrat wins the EC and loses the popular vote the Amendment will be ready to pass.
States like Wisconsin and North Carolina, whose Legislatures subvert the outcome of elections, are probably hurting our average.
But the systematic issue is the gross inequality. Billionaire and their super pacs don't care about democratic norms
31
Whatever the short-term political conditions are in the U.S., in the long run we are still going to be the exemplar for the evolution of democracy. The reasons are right there in our basic law. No other nation has dared to guarantee the right to unlimited criticism of the regime (the First Amendment), or as a last resort, its complete dismantlement for a restart (the Declaration). Is this confidence, or what?
3
I think the American people is still in denial about its own secular decline.
That's why I think most created this narrative of Putin manipulating the 2016 election -- it creates an exogenous theory, thus, at the same time, exempting the American people from any guilt and giving it a casus belli to subjugate other nations in order to give the USA an little bit more time as the world hegemon.
6
Get some perspective! This is just one flukey presidency--but no one to be ignored, of course. Our system is resilient and will course-correct. We've had much more dire moments than this! And today, very few get away without scrutiny, that's for sure.
5
@Gary Pippenger I hope you are right, Gary. I'm not so sure at all. I've lived in Germany 3 times. I know how fragile democracy is. Our present situation clearly resembles Germany in the 1930's. I laud your optimism but history shows otherwise.
31
@Gary Pippenger I agree Gary that this country's institutions are stronger than this immature, narcissistic president and his greedy cronies.
However, real damage to those institutions has happened; trust and integrity is being chipped away.
And what of the rest of the world's opinion of the US now? That matters a great deal.
Thousands of books are going to be written about this era for decades to come.
I have DirecTV. It has a feature called What’s Hot. It will show you the top 5 most watched TV channels at that moment, nationally and regionally.
At any given time of day Fox News is either number 1, or it’s in the top three most watched programs, according to the app.
I’m not saying CNN or the other major TV news providers are much better, (I don’t watch any of them myself, except Bloomberg and that is mostly business orientated).
I don’t watch Fox News on principle because it was started by Roger Ailes and is owned by Rupert Murdoch who isn’t even American.
I try to watch CNN and the others but after 15 or so minutes I have to turn them off. Unwatchable.
This is a question that should be studied…What was America’s standing as a free and democratic country when Fox News and CNN came into existence not too many years ago and what is it now?
25
@Thomas - The Fox it is definitely worth looking into. It might also be worth looking into how the American people found themselves so totally shocked by impossible Trump election that we devolved into the whole Putin owns Trump narrative. The vast bulk of the free press in this country, including Fox, sold the narrative Hillary is our next President so completely only weird and wild conspiracy theories could hold the answer when Trump won.
2
@Thomas ...Rupert became an American citizen some years ago, he was fast tracked due to his personal connections...so yeah Ruppie is a US citizen and now married to Texan Jerry Hall.
1
@Sandra Garratt
I didn’t say he wasn’t an American citizen. I said he wasn’t even American.
Am puzzled how we ever scored so high in years past. With our electoral college system, and history of gerrymandering, voter suppression via literacy tests and poll taxes, deceptive ballots, insufficient polling facilities in minority locales, etc, etc. Are there really that many other countries with records worse than ours?
51
A fundamental flaw in our system of governance is that we have never, ever, from the patriarchal, white, gun-slinging Wild West been a representative democracy. beginnings. If only the pilgrims had truly eschewed the oppression of colonialism... I live in a liberal bubble within a largely hideously conservative (repressive) State. My national vote has never counted! Voter reform is essential — one citizen one vote. Campaign finance reform is crucial. Candidates have been buying elections for decades. Citizen United must be repealed. What the US has going for the hope of regaining democracy as a primary tenet is a largely educated, decentralized and somewhat fractious public who will not let democracy fail. Keep resisting! Always believe in the power of your convictions!
28
@Emily Kane My husband, a retired senior diplomat. actually wept over Citizens United...that corporations are people. He said "This is the beginning of the end of democracy." The road has been downhill since that fateful decision. Now we have would-be dictator Trump besmirching our highest office. Wake up, folks--- democracy is always fragile.
33
Please let's not pretend that amoralty is limited to just the Trump administration. Yes, for the moment they are the kings of corruption, but realistically the republican party has been headed down this road for a long time. At any moment the republicans could have stepped in and checked Trump. Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and the FOX News gang have abetted the corrupting of the country the whole way.
169
The dirt that doesn't shower off, no matter how many times you bathe.
Puerto Rico could be a model for this country done right. A perfect testing ground for several means of solar and wind sources, Puerto Rico is dying to govern itself given the wings to take flight. Billions of dollars are being thrown around a wall, at Blackstone from Saudi Arabia for infrastructure and more billions in occupied countries. It is counterintuitive to Gulf states prone to the same kinds of weather to not build back homes in Puerto Rico better suited for hurricanes. Modern schools and educational environment including transportation.
The United States could learn so much from a positive initiative but find itself once again stringing wires everywhere and shipping in oil and lousy building materials where a new green deal could be constructed.
The United States is defaulting to colonialist ritual. This is an upside down world of Mitch McConnell. Chuck Grassley's inheritance tax breaks keeps fat cats in power. Orrin Hatch has solidified rights to bulldoze in America's National Parks. Jeff Sessions has stacked courts to bolster privatize massive financial profits from jails for confederate plantation style interpretation of what is right and wrong allowing Citizens United the right to incarcerate the workforce outside the military when needed. And mercenaries have been secured by Cornyn and Cotton and Graham to continue globalized meddling by those same companies paid for by us.
23
I despise Trump, but (sorry) this article misses an important point: the US was at risk before Trump, and he’s just made it (much, much) worse. Demagogues don’t come to power in a vacuum.
In its 2016 report published just after the 2016 elections, the Economist Intelligence Unit downgraded the US from "full democracy" to "flawed democracy," giving as reasons the low confidence in government, political polarization and growing economic inequality. The EIU saw Trump as the beneficiary and not the cause of these factors. The Freedom House report too says it has tracked a “slow” decline in the US for seven years.
True, both Freedom House and the EIU conclude that it’s gotten much worse under Trump. But it doesn’t really matter whether we see Trump as cause or effect; our troubles aren’t going to magically go away if only we get rid of him. That’s just the start, and there is a lot more to do than reverse the damage he’s caused. Whether we were ever as exceptional as we like to think we are is a different question.
84
@Katie
Your last sentence is the one that any who read your comment should pause and give it some rigorous contemplation. That false belief is at the root of your malaise. the Monroe Doctrine is possibly one the worst lies you have told yourselves.
Perhaps it's hard to believe, but to some extent we've all been complicit by our complacency in allowing this deterioration to begin, continue and flourish by taking the benefits of our democracy for granted, treating it as a right and not a privilege.
Too easily swayed by destructive phrases such as 'America First' and 'American Exceptionalism' (to name just a few), we assumed more than we knew and took what we thought was the easier way out. By turning our backs on the founding principles which made us once great, we allowed our enemies to sow discord throughout our nation. Fortunately, all is still not lost. Yet, most of us still don't or won't get it until it's too late. This is more than a constitutional crisis, whatever that's supposed to mean. Much more. It's an existential crisis that threatens our existence and must be faced as well as dealt with as an opportunity to redefine who we are and who we must be to regain what we have lost.
The solution begins with moral leadership, which we now sorely lack.
18
@Guido Malsh Right on. American's have just sat back while our Democracy deteriorated.
Again, Right On!
1
It would be interesting to see what drove the US down. Was it voter suppression? Corruption? Authoritarianism? Failure to lead with human rights?
Was it economic fallout? The undermining of the free press by the President or the consolidation of media outlets into giant political conglomerates like Sinclair?
Or more fundamental flaws - the increasing politicization of the Court, and the failure of the government to act in accord to find agreement in a set of national and local goals?
Or is it the depressing trend of demonizing educators and undermining advanced education - by cutting funding and pushing a narrative that it is useless?
There's a lot going on that makes us seem less like the US and more like a tinpot republic. Which things downgraded our democracy?
16
@Cathy All of the above, reflecting the image of the republican party.
Worth recalling that the Bush Administration could not locate 22 million emails that were requested for a Congressional investigation. These emails covered the period of the run-up to the Iraq war. They subsequently turned up AS or AFTER the administration left, and they were never reviewed or analyzed because Democrats at the time apparently thought it was better to concentrate on moving forward. They were never publicly released either.
So we have no reckoning. I suspect the same thing is going to happen again... if all of these investigations into Trump aren't finished by the time a new (not Trump) president takes office, is the public ever going to know the truth about any of it?
29
Trump lost the popular vote and yet occupies the White House. Senators representing low population states hold the rest of the nation hostage to their agendas. Frankly I am surprised we even made a list of democratic countries.
182
@Mike B funny, because many conservatives feel that a small number of cities continuously hold the country hostage to their agendas.
@Tom You mean those cities where the people shouldn't have an equal voice?
5
@Mike B I never said that.
I'm merely pointing out the reality. Both "sides" of this political spectrum see issues with fairness of representation. If you choose not to recognize and understand the perspective of "the other side" then how can you really claim to want to find a resolution?
If you ask me, the biggest problem we have as a country right now is in zero tolerance for other people's opinions when they don't align with our own. Mark my words: this is a trend that will only weaken us.
The framers knew what they were doing. They created things like the EC and other checks, balances and safeguards in order to protect the minority perspective as much as anything. What does this do in the long term? Forces us to find middle ground. However, we cannot find middle ground if we don't listen and respect other perspectives.
THIS is our single biggest threat to our democratic values.
Democracy is a fragile experiment. In the best of times, it can tolerate ideas that would topple it in the worst of times. Today, we have the bitter taste of a generation of economic decline for most of our people. It’s no wonder that our freedoms are imperiled.
The rich are doing well, very well, especially those at the summit of the mountain. But that’s a small place with very few people standing on it. The rest of us are slowly suffering in the valley because of the decline in lifetime employment and the rising gig economy. The minimum wage slowly sinks below the floor year by year. By a single vote, the GOP almost toppled the ACA that would have removed healthcare for millions. Even the safest among us, federal workers, have seen their security attacked.
At the same time, through super-PACs, gerrymandering, and vestigial Constitutional structures, the GOP still controls most of the federal and state governments. They govern to the exclusive benefit of those already at the mountaintop. They pump their toxic mist of scapegoating and bigotry through those structures to maintain their grip on power.
The 2018 elections gave the rest of us a glimmer of hope that representative democracy can still live. The next election will be even more important as it’s our opportunity to remove Trump through the ballot box—the best solution because it will be the will of the majority exercising their freedoms.
26
"The world offers more lessons about how democracies grow weak and brittle than how they can be revived."
Then, let's provide the world an example of a democracy which is revived. We can hold public, televised hearings on the mis-adventures of Corrupt Donnie and his minions in the House and let the chips fall as they may.
"America may never again be taken seriously as the global champion of liberal democracy."
If that entails no more foreign, military interventions in the name of saving others (or their oil) then perhaps that isn't too bad a thing. We might be able to reduce the military-industrial-complex.
10
We have a government now which is by the billionaires and for the billionaires. And corporations. As long as we elect politicians who represent oligarchs, that is what we will get. And by doing so, we give away the democracy of the people, and for the people.
29
@Hootin Annie I assume you are talking
also about democrat billionaires . If this is the case then I would have some agreement with you.
"We’re not good at holding elites to account in America; the architects of both the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis have gone largely unpunished."
Evocative, almost folksy.
Easy to swallow, because it can be dismissed with a classic American oleo of arrogance based upon once-unquestioned preeminence among world democracies and deep-seated desire not to hear about it, especially if it means we have to do something.
The alarmist paraphrase is called for here:
"America is not a nation of laws, it is a government and a legal system controlled by economic and political elites for their own benefit.
Corruption in America is rampant today, bribes and favoritism expected elements of the most banal government action.
Racism, theocratic power-hoarding, class conflict, thuggish populist factions control access to government and the law.
America elections are not free or fair; as a result government represents the powerful and well-connected, leaving citizens without ability to access or rely upon government services.
Dissatisfaction with government ebbs and flows with ephemeral changes in party eminence; conditions are ripe for conflict between and among interest groups.
Given the presence of a vast, uncontrolled civilian arsenal, the US situation bears close scrutiny by established democracies, readiness for rapid intervention politically or militarily.
American military, large and well-armed, demonstrates lack of potency and vulnerability to political persuasion."
8
I generally discount these types of country comparisons given the population size disparity. Norway, for example, has about as many inhabitants as Minnesota and it's possible Minnesota would fare better in Freedom Houses' rankings.
But the reality is the U.S. is an oligarchy rather than a democracy; a two-party system run by special interest groups whose hold on our country was cemented by the Supreme Courts ruling in favor of Citizens United. Fox News and other propaganda sources are only icing on the U.S. democracy's demise.
68
US democracy has been in decline long before Donald Trump and his cabal of sleazy plutocrats came into power -- the downward spiral began in earnest with the Reagan-led backlash against the social movements of the 1960s. Ever since that tumultuous outbreak of citizen activism and participation, most notable in the Civil Rights movement, the movement against the Vietnam War, the Women's Liberation movement etc, the plutocrat class in this nation has done everything in its power to make sure democracy never happens again.
The lesson? Without a certain measure of economic democracy there can be no political democracy. As US Supreme Court Judge Louis Brandeis put it: “We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
109
Pardon my skepticism, but I'd love to see an analysis of "Freedom House" that included the party affiliation of Mr. Abramowitz and his staff. Sounds like his outfit, if it does indeed receive US government funding, should see that subsidy eliminated as we eliminate the messianic impulse that attempted to impose our various systems on other nations around the world. "Yankees come home!"
4
@JPE: Living there now myself and having lived in a range of other countries, the rating of Norway seems pretty appropriate to me. Sure, Norway and the rest of Scandinavia are far from perfect, they have their own issues. But compared to the rest of the world they are pretty negligible - and that's ultimately the comparison we have to make. At least from my own experience and what I read and see, I have troubles to come up with countries that should be clearly ranked before Norway in terms of political rights and civil liberty (or quality of life, but that's a different story).
21
@JPE- Go ahead - shoot the messenger. It doesn't change the reality that the the land of the brave and home of the free is faltering when it comes to that quintessential, defining attribute - freedom.
I'm not gloating. I do not rejoice when a close neighbour is being taken over by ideologues who chose power and money over basic freedom. I do believe the freedom-loving people of the US will fight back to regain the freedom that has given Americans the image of the shining city on a hill.
Give me your tired, and your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to be free
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
You are slamming that "golden door" shut, America. Is this really what you want?
3
@JPE: Sorry, this was of course meant as reply to the comment below.
One notes that Freedom House lists Norway among the most free countries in the world with a score in the 90s. Having lived and worked there, I know this is not true. I give Freedom House little credibility.
5
@Mark Hermanson: Living there now myself and having lived in a range of other countries, the rating of Norway seems pretty appropriate to me. Sure, Norway and the rest of Scandinavia are far from perfect, they have their own issues. But compared to the rest of the world they are pretty negligible - and that's ultimately the comparison we have to make. At least from my own experience and what I read and see, I have troubles to come up with countries that should be clearly ranked before Norway in terms of political rights and civil liberty (or quality of life, but that's a different story).
17
@Mark Hermanson — I am interested in reading specifcs of why you think Norway does not belong high in the rankings of free countries. You make a broad allegation, then sign off with no substantiation or evidence.
Yes, we are accustomed to such discourse coming from the Carnival Barker in the Oval Office. He makes declarations driven by emotions (mostly fear and/or greed), with no real factual basis — except the "alternate facts" his comfortably uninformed base prefers to hear. But we need not accept a demagogue's rhetoric as a new norm.
What specific aspects of life in Norway did you find lacking in freedom, and in what ways were they lacking? Without facts, your allegation is easily dismissed.
6
@Mark Hermanson
Yeah. That freedom to have universal health care & free public education through graduate school is really oppressive.
6
Goldberg hit the nail on the head with "We’re not good at holding elites to account in America; the architects of both the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis have gone largely unpunished." Actually, I would extend the thought back to the Vietnam era where no elite ever had to answer for a Trumped up war that killed
hundreds of thousands and eventually informed the next great boondoggle in Iraq. The same mistakes keep deliberately
happening, and nobody is ever held responsible.
37
@Donald Iyupo I have come to think that it is very unfortunate that the leaders of the Confederacy were not punished. Under the Constitution, treason is punishable by death. In the U.S., in actuality, the traitors who took up arms against the U.S. ended their lives in freedom and comfort. As you and others have pointed out, it seems that no American elites (see, e.g. Nixon, Reagan (Iran Contra) and big banks post 2008), have been punished for their sins against the country since then. Of course, we punish the "little guy" more severely than anyone else in so-called civilized world.
2
@Donald Iyupo. As I recall Hillary Clinton was quite proud to be friends w/ Vietnam War criminal Henry Kissinger.....we need to purge ourselves of these relics who have brought so much tragic loss w/ their lucrative wars of choice.
Donald Trump is reprehensible but mostly powerless. I have more fear for liberal values in America once Democrats have full control of government. We are likely to see a weakening of constitutional rights and attempts to make dangerous changes to our political system.
6
@John
Talk about a whole lot of nothing post.
Vague "liberal values", which ones offend you.
Which article of the Constitution is in such peril.
Please I don't watch Fox and Breitbart et al are too much like fantasy football. Lots of wishes, but no real football.
What are the "dangerous" changes to our political system? Is the problem the words to rubles ration?
1
@John Give examples.
1
Six problems with American democracy that need to be fixed:
A unrepresentative Senate (structural)
An Electoral College that can override the popular vote (structural)
Widespread gerrymandering (legal/procedural)
Uncontrolled money (legal)
Voter suppression (political)
A politicised Supreme Court (legal/political)
Some of these are easier to fix than others, but eliminating gerrymandering and voter suppression would be a good start.
276
@Frank Bannister How do you eliminate gerrymandering when California is one of the most gerrymandered states and it has a redistricting commission?
@John. That's a fair point, but California has at least been wrestling with this problem for years if not with great success so far. At least they are trying. It cannot be beyond American ingenuity to come up with a solution.
However, the problems in CA should not be used as an excuse for not engaging in reforms elsewhere. The USA is not the only country with this problem, though many other countries use proportional representation which tends to give much fairer results and make gerrymandering a great deal harder to do.
3
Just where Donald Trump wants us and has gotten us there. Lack of respect, embarrassment, fear. Attributes Trump has tagged onto this country, the United States. United States that are more divided than ever before.
13
@MIMA I think a slight correction is needed: just where Trump’s puppet-master Putin wants the United States to be!
Yes, that was one of my few complaints about the Obama administration...they did not hold those to account for the debacle of the Iraq War and the crash of 2008. I can almost see the point of view of President Obama related to the Wars. He wanted to move forward and heal us, not bring Cheney, Bush et al to justice for their loose version of facts and war crimes.
But, the architects of the Crash should have seen at least a few of the majors go to jail. Instead, we now are in what my father calls a repeat of The Roaring 20’s, where anything goes and soon we will be right back to the errors of 2008, without the sound mind of Barack Obama to pull us out. We are in a mess, people, and we need to pressure our side to get with it and straighten things out. I see a start, but there are too many moderates that are willing to look the other way and move on.
23
"...it’s the sacred duty of the United States to promote democracy around the world. One of the pretexts for America’s war in Iraq, after all, was that it would spread democracy in the Middle East."
The noble pretext was cover for far more nefarious motives in Iraq. The same for Vietnam. We have undermined real democracy and promoted some brutal dictators in our own hemisphere and elsewhere. The Shah of Iran is a glaring example. Pinochet in Chile is another.
Maybe our national Trump experience will help us be honest about our real history as opposed to the fairy tale.
47
@Ralph Averill
correct. I misspelt Batista, elsewhere. I had in mind the great Argentine forward when I used the wrong name earlier.
@Ralph Averill Without the Shah and Pinochet, Iran and Chile would have become communist dicatorships. I would have greatly preferred to live under either of them than the Soviet wannabees they replaced.
1
The ROW (rest of world) is treating the United States as a failed state; certainly countries like Canada don't see it any more as an ally, or a peer. The United States is slipping daily into that unenviable position because the people are so passive, and that's a prerequisite for autocracy: they await someone to do it for them. They could learn something from the Gilets Jaunes, whose country is in not so dire straits, and Venezuelans, whose country is.
28
@Terence
And, talk about DEPRESSING. From New York magazine this morning: An early 2020 map suggests just five true toss-ups: Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
That means that the US is well on its way to more of the same after 2020.
6
The press needs to better cover the decline of democracy in America and how the electoral college drives this. It's great that we learn about this in an op ed, but where are the headlines?
We need front page articles on the perils of the archaic electoral college system so citizens are informed and demand change.
63
@Happily Expat
We need to stay focused on the electoral college after elections are over.
This is the first time, in my recollection, the issue hasn’t faded away and dropped from the news after the election was over. Of course we have never ended up with a disaster like trump before either.
Unfortunately, there are so many other “high crimes and misdemeanors” to deal with it’s impossible to stay focused on just one.
Let’s stick to two - Citizens United and the Electoral College.
2
I checked the report via the link here.
The changes are mostly of one kind. Everywhere one could say, "The Russians helped Trump," they subtracted a point, from 4 down to 3.
3
I read the Freedom House Report that is hyperlinked in Ms. Goldberg's piece, and then explored the underlying statiistics and methodology (such as it is). https://freedomhouse.org/content/freedom-world-data-and-resources
What I found was a dearth of objective data, and very subjective tongue-lashings of Trump in the report. The decline in the U.S. ratings during the Trump era seems attributable to the raters' dim views of Trump's version of national sovereignty, his bashing of the press, and the general skepticism about the Trump administration by those who view his form of populism as a threat to democratic ideals. In short, the report seems like a rather subjective critique of the Trump administration. Ironic, in that Trump was elected president according to our longstanding system (like it or not) by a comfortable margin in the electoral college.
I have no problem critiquing Trump's administration in direct and transparent ways, but reports like this one seem more like cover for another partisan critique cloaked as poilitical "science." Uh, not really. The left needs to wake up to the fact that partisan slants in the press and think tanks are not helpful to, and instead undermine, the left's basic goals.
17
@Dave Oedel
David you are dead on re the quality of the cartoonishly simplistic methodology of the Freedom House Reports. They were designed with the preferred answers in mind. Note there are no - heaven forbid - socio-economic standards applied say availability of healthcare etc...This is not subtle analysis. Freedom House was and is a non-too sophisticated propaganda tool to trot out to attack geopolitical competitors and put one one over on the rubes who believe its findings signify anything of significance.
3
As Canada, Western Europe and the Nordic countries grew wealthier they never lost sight of the “common good,” i.e. universal healthcare, affordable higher education, an equitable tax system, workplace protections and benefits, and a concern for the environment - things that should go hand in hand with a healthy democracy.
America has not only stalled in providing millions of its citizens with these “rights,” but is actually moving rapidly backward under the Trump/GOP administration. Increasing concentration of political power in the hands of a small moneyed elite, student debt, deteriorating environmental regulations, lack of basic healthcare and a loss of faith in our most cherished institutions are the hallmarks of authoritarian regimes, not democracies.
America’s “fabled” Democracy is hanging by a thread.
348
@Susan
Why do you think there is so much resistance in America to having all citizens treated equally? It seems so threatening to consider the common good for so many.
28
@Susan You can add Australia and New Zealand to that list of the "common good". It's not just the Northern Hempishere. Most of the wealthier world except the centric US of A understands a bit of socialism isn't evil and is part of being a society.
27
@Susan
The American Dream began it's journey to the American Nightmare with the implementation of the Southern Strategy by Nixon, destruction of unions and voodoo economics by Reagan, stealing an election and stupid wars by Bush and now the edging towards dictatorship under Individual 1. The 1% aided and abetted by the GOP has orchestrated all of this mayhem and is the underlying threat to your democracy and country.
3
The glaring defect in the US constitution that states like Wyoming with 1/2 million citizens have the same 2 Senators and the same 2 electoral college votes as say Texas with 50 times as many citizens has to be addressed or more unqualified leaders like Trump will be elected again.
216
Simple: abolish the Electoral College. Also, change the Senate to better reflect relative size of states.
12
@lester ostroy
I get your point but I disagree that the Senate should be population driven. The purpose is to prevent small states' legitimate concerns from being buried under an avalanche of votes from (___ pick the big state you disagree with most). An alternative would be to weaken the Senate in favor of the House, similar to Britain's Houses of Lords vs. Commons. The Senate's ability to pack the entire court system with lifetime appointments with NO remedy is a huge problem, apparently because the framers could never imagine the depth to which 'people' in power would stoop to destroy our democracy, including the demagogic Senate majority leader currently in place. As for the electoral college, pffft. It has to go. Gerrymandering too.
15
Correction: the electoral college vote each state gets is equal to the number of its senators added to the number of its representatives. Wyoming has 3 electors; Texas has 38.
5
It was a poor sign that Donald Trump got elected in the first place. His presidency is symptomatic of a low time in our nation's history. Over the past few decades education has fallen off with the lack of good wages for teachers. Very few curriculums teach civics anymore. Our materialistic society has valued style over substance for far too long. But we are a hardy people with the potential for great creativity. When Trump is finally gone and the Republicans who begged at his feet been replaced, I hope that Justice will be served and all those responsible for the harm that's been done put away in prison. We must do whatever we can, create new laws if need be, but remain ever vigilant into the future.
96
@MKathryn I agree with your conclusions. Further, I believe Goldberg was too pessimistic in her assertion that "America may never again be taken seriously as the global champion of liberal democracy." Our experience with Trump is a real outlier in modern American history, whereas other countries have had experiences with governments which were much much worse in their autocratic and fascistic elements, anti liberal democracy elements, and yet today, they are pro liberal democracy. I see no reason why the horrible effects of the Trump presidency cannot be wiped out and replaced by the philosophy and practice of advocating for liberal democracies all over the world. His presidency will only have been for four years at most, a drop of time in history.
4
Democracy isn’t the answer any more. Trump would probably still be elected today. We need some sort of death and transfiguration process. Climate change deniers are linked with American exceptionalism, which really has to end. Should they vote? If so,should I?
We need a second coming of the Continental Congress. We cannot be serious. Pitting Sen. Harris, Warren, Sanders, Booker, Gillibrand et al against each other in the usual fundraising melee? No, wrong. We need them all together working on getting corporate greed out of American life. Go back to Philadelphia! Start over, together — really take the page from Secy Clinton. Offer an alternative to the Orwellian triad. I felt betrayed seeing Warren’s stock “wonder of me” ad Sunday. She needs help electing herself. They all do. WE all do.
9
@Jonathan Ames -- That is tempting, until you check the polling data on the Bill of Rights. It would not pass today. Each of our critical rights polls well under half. It seems plenty of us can think of someone else who should not have those rights.
14
Add a third early indicator of lost freedom and confidence in our government: voter suppression.
116
While the Trump Crime Family reflects America's fading interest in fairness, decency and democracy, I believe that the Republican-controlled Supreme Court will play a critical role in depriving us of our rights going forward.
183
I can only trust the voice of women will never be suppressed again. A good column and comments as well. Thanks
3
I take it Denmark is at the top of the list. That's where The Business is currently on display in all its glory. It's the only place the American Left really feels free, harried at home by hurricanes (climate change) on one side, and menaced by the Trumpian Midwest (climate denial) on the other. The American liberal is a European trapped in an American body, forever apologizing to the European brethren for being citizens of the country that voted for Trump--and the continuing guilt of Columbus. Their suffering is great and 2020 does not seem promising, But I doubt not that given the horror of all things Trump among Europeans, Trump Anxiety Syndrome should be enough to gain refugee status on those blissful shores .
11
@shreir
There's nothing wrong with Denmark.
2
The American Constitution is a document that is inherently undemocratic. The electoral college, the senate, Supreme court justices for life...these are not democratic institutions. Add on all the voter suppression, gerrymandering, and "Citizens United" and you have country way down the list of free democracies. The Trump GOP does not really care about democracy or even a free press. We reap what we have sown.
280
@spinoza: You write "The American Constitution is a document that is inherently undemocratic."
Not too surprising when you consider that it was written and ratified by the upper crust of a society that thought people of one race could own people of another, that people of yet another could be exterminated when convenient, and that people of one sex were the de facto chattel of people of the other.
What *is* surprising is that it's as democratic as it is.
16
@spinoza
The Constitution was written at a time when only a small percentage of the population was educated and the elites feared the power of the mob.
We have come a long, long way since then. It's about time that our foundational legal document reflected that fact. Otherwise we can only expect things to continue to deteriorate.
19
And yet how many of us who would love to flee this vale of tears feel compelled to remain chained to our oar. And the fools who risk live and limb trying to get in. I hear it cost $88000 plus to do birth tourism these days--imagine doing that to your child. But we cannot all go to Denmark, that new City on a Hill, that New Jerusalem.
3
The Freedom House index looks at extent of corruption and degree of political transparency. Unfortunately, another indicator of declining democracy is a lack of informed voters participating in electoral processes. The most frightening measure of the decline of free America is that 35% of the public approve of autocratic rule. Our educational institutions have failed us on this one.
23
@ralph
A majority of the states require at least a semester of US government and/or civics as a requirement for graduation. Don’t lay this albatross around the neck of public education. The blame here lies squarely with an unholy alliance between the religious right and Republicans. As soon as Republicans were allowed to wear the mantle of
Moral majority we were doomed.
2
The plot shows a decline in US freedom starting 2010. The US had already dropped five points, between 2010 and 2016, before Trump was elected, but the text only discusses Trump's contempt for democratic institutions and norms. What was going on between 2010 and 2016? Suppose I need to look up some older Freedom in the World reports.
5
@James Cunningham
In 2010, the Republican Party won majorities in the House and Senate.
That's what happened.
28
@James Cunningham
Mitch McConnell decided party over country.
3
@Dennis Callegari
And in states houses. GOP termites were everywhere, reducing voting rights, etc.
3
When Trump is out in 2020 I hope that he meets justice. It would show the world that the US actually has ethics.
102
@Anthony
Bush and Cheney walk free among us. 10.5 trillion in wealth disappeared in 2008 and nobody went to jail. . Average US household lost a third of its wealth. Nobody went to jail over the Iraq War. The tea bags, the NRA, the Koch brother, the racists will protect Trump after he is defeated in 2020. His cult will live on as long as he is alive and will obstruct just like they did with Obama.
9
@Anthony
Our elites very rarely are held to account for their misdeeds, another indicator of the lack of true democracy.
Get caught with some marijuana and you go to prison for years. Lead the country into an unnecessary and costly war (Vietnam, Iraq) or crash the economy out of pure greed as was done in 2008, and nothing happens to you.
Trump will never pay for his misdeeds.
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Freedom is not just about journalism, the freedom of speech or a free press. It is also the social safety of people, the coherence of the society. Poverty and hatemongering can be more crippling than censorship. When you live from paycheck to paycheck, and the wolf is always on your doorstep, you have not the mood to investigate your political and social environment.
But all this started long before Trump, and Obama may have slowed down the erosion of civil interference in public affairs, but he didn't revert it. Trump is not just a cause, but also a result of decades of civil discouragement.
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It's always heartwarming to read a piece about how bad Trump is, but I wouldn't put too much credence into the Freedom House ranking. It may have been founded to fight Nazism, but by the time I was born (1949) what it was all about was fighting Socialism.
"Both the Freedom House survey and the State Department reports seem to have a clear bias reflecting American foreign policy interests and/or reflecting an undifferentiated, visceral anticommunism. Thus, the Freedom House reports during the 1980s consistently rated El Salvador and Guatemala, two countries allied with the United States that have been notorious for government-allied 'death squads,' which murdered thousands of their citizens, as having a comparable or (usually) more favorable human rights climate than Hungary or Yugoslavia, two one-party Communist regimes which were not engaged in the slaughter of their citizens."[Robert Justin Goldstein, "The Limitations of Using Quantitative Data in Studying Human Rights Abuses," in /Human Rights and Statistics: Getting the Record Straight/, edited by Thomas B. Jabine and Richard P. Claude, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.]
There's a reason the US government funds them, and it's not to promote freedom.
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@Brian Harvey
Saudi Arabia has long been ranked near the bottom, below Chile, Venezuela and so forth, so I don't think Goldstein's complaints hold water now (if they ever did).
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From "to mobilize American public opinion against Nazism" to "an increase in corruption and a decrease in transparency". One of the salient features of Nazism is the removal of separation between the State and the Corporation.
That we put our faith in the democratic process for our political life and also legitimize the tyranny of extreme wealth and property over our lives, is a contradiction that every thinking person needs to confront and then make a choice, now that wealth has overwhelmingly distorted the electoral process so that the nation's wealth gets diverted form public resources to private wealth.
All the great controversies of our time, from how to pay for medical services to remedying climate changes would be far simpler if it wasn't for the issue of protecting the wealth that is threatened by the rational solutions. We, as a culture, grant legitimacy to obscene wealth at our peril. We're enjoined to sanction the gross asymmetry of lavishly funded political operatives and consultants, lobbyists, mercenary lawyers, media propagandists, etc., on the side of wealth protection, while on the opposing side, we have the relentlessly assailed by political advertising the meager voter turnouts within expertly rigged gerrymandering, and that within election seasons where winners are routinely forecast by the media based upon who has raised the most from wealthy donors, self-servingly promoting those who have the most to spend on advertising.
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"The sacred duty of the United States to promote democracy around the world" was a sad joke betrayed by the reality of US foreign policy long before Trump arrived on the scene.
Over the past 30 years, the US by most serious analyses has not even been operating as a democracy but has rather been functioning as a plutocracy.
Over the past 30 years the vast majority of the American people have cried out for reasonable health care coverage, education and pharmaceutical costs, progressive taxation, an end to America's all war all meddling all intervention always escalate tensions all the time foreign policy. Didn't matter whether the Democrats or Republican's were in power, the US government's response to these expressions of the general will? A resounding deafening "No!"
Here's the devastating conclusion of the hugely important and much underreported 2014 Princeton Gilens Page study on just this issue that examined public opinion data versus over 1,800 government enacted policies from 1981-2002. In the US "mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence" on US government policy.
Any chance Freedom House's simplistic "on a scale of zero to four" "indicators" captured that.
I don't think so.
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It is time that we took a long hard look at our society and not look just to our own selfish needs but to the greater world around us here in our country.
Universal voting rights need to be made at the national level. We need to reform how congress members and legislators are chosen. There needs to be both representation of minority opinions while insuring the true majority opinion is expressed. We have a system now due to gerrymandering, voter suppression and an outdated constitution (the electoral college and extreme over representation of small states in the Senate for starters) , that suppressed the majority.
We need to expand the rights of citizens to include health care, advanced education, and living wages.
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@carl
In other words; money out of politics!
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"America may never again be taken seriously as the global champion of liberal democracy."
Never say never. It is doubtful that America will regain its moral standing anytime soon, perhaps not in my lifetime (I'm 63). Too much damage has been done by Bush Jr., Mitch McConnell and, especially, Donald Trump. It was heartbreaking to see Trump and Putin, two moral degenerates, in Helsinki, knowing that our two countries control 93% of the world's nuclear arsenal. For me, this was the point when my little faith in humanity turned into no faith at all.
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@Jonit’s all about money. Too many politicians in both parties are 1%ers, or want to be. Too few people have immense wealth largely inherited or resulting from criminal activities. I’m nearing 71, andthe reality that most humans choose to be bigots, cruel,hard-hearted and unjust was one of the things that culminated in my personal “Damascus moment, leading me to Greek Orthodoxy after five decades as essentially an atheist.
I have never been happier or more joyful or more at peace with the world. Because I truly believe it is the realm of evil, where in the end the few good men and women who live righteous lives will find justice, freedom, and abiding love in a far better place. So I will keep striving to make our country and the world better, within my own limitations, trusting in God to sort it all out on Judgment Day. That has been immensely liberating and rewarding to me, leaving little or no room for hatred or bitterness knowing that the material world is a small droplet in the ocean of eternity.
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@Jon W was definitely worse. He murdered millions. Trump is bad, but not even close.
@Alex Yuly
Yet!
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I find the whole it's all Trump's in the comments and the editorial........disturbing? Institutionalized corruption long predates Trump's arrival on the scene. He might be more blatant? maybe! But anymore corrupt hardly The institutional corruption was there along time before Trump. Or did the author miss: 1) regulators drawn from lobbyist for interests they are supposed to regulate. 2) Treasury Secretary and Financial regulators whose biography reads "Last job Investment Banker Goldman Sachs, Current job Treasury Secretary or Finance Regulator, Next Job Investment Banker Goldman Sachs." Whose interests does anyone paying attention believe they are acting in? What's best for Wall Street is not what's best for the US. 3) How many congressmen and Senators have gone from voting on legislation involving various industries to well paying jobs has lobbyists in those same industries a few months later? Does author or anyone else believe "Our Representatives" voted what's best for the US or what's best for the people he wants a lobbyist job from? 4) Does anyone who pays enough to read this article honestly believe that millionaires and billionaires are contributing to candidates and parties out of the goodness of their (Nonexistent) hearts? Or because they expect a quid pro quo? I didn't vote for Trump, I don't think much of him. But pretending he is solely responsible for the corruption in Government? That's willful blindness. It predates him by a long long time in BOTH parties.
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Remember how Marco Rubio accused President Obama of trying to change the United States into a different country? Well, when Obama was in the White House, America was higher ranked among democracies than it is under Trump. And, predictably, Rubio, like most of his Congressional Republican associates, has little to say as Trump really does try to undo the fabric of our nation.
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@NM. ....Rubio who accepted dirty money from the Russian/NRA? That Marco Rubio? He is very ambitious and has over reached like so many of his cohorts in the GOP...anything to win and greedy to their rotten cores....his real masters are not the people who pay him, he belongs to big money donors who provide his script. What a waste of our tax $.
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trump’s probably only brought the symptoms of a longer running desease to right, but it’s not just because of him.
A place shouldn’t really claim to be a “democracy” when it’s essentially a banana republic. Wages are low, the majority of workers are nearly slaves, mothers run back to work with month old infants, a few oligarchs own most of the wealth and are barely taxed, the government is all but sold to the oligarchs, so is the legal system where everybody is ostensibly equally under the law, in practice of course money buys you better legal help etc etc. how’s such a place democratic? It’s a banana republic mascaradimg as a democracy.
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Trump and his administration are not alone in purposefully undermining the institutions of American Democracy.
Republicans in the Senate and House who choose cynical sycophancy over constitutional oversight in an investigation of an attack by a hostile foreign country on our elections.
A conservative media ecosystem that sides with an authoritarian president when he attacks law enforcement, the intelligence community, and a free press. And now encourages him to declare a transparently fake national emergency to circumvent Congress.
Lobbyists and law firms exposed as more than willing to work against American interests (and in some cases American laws) for a buck.
The list is long. If we are honest, millions long. A bit less than 40% of Americans still support a President who actively attacks a democracy that most of them would profess to love but seem blind to the damage their support enables.
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l"Abramowitz told me that an increase in corruption and a decrease in transparency — both hallmarks of this administration — are “often early warning indicators of problems in a democracy,” undermining public faith in the legitimacy of the system."
This report dovetails with another metric, the London-based Democracy Index put out by The Economist. in 2017, the US slipped a bunch to just below Greece and above Italy--not exactly countries which are paragons of stability.
I think the gravest damage Trump has done to win the Freedom Report's latest fall is his proactive silence on promoting American values, not to mention not speaking out on authoritarians' murdering journalists.
Because he envies their unfettered power, one gets the sense he'd love to at least jail his journalist critics.
Which I find chilling. Donald Trump has represented the first real internal threat this country has ever known. I take cold comfort indeed that just because this president hasn't acted on all his impulses doesn't necessarily mean we're out of the woods.
He still has time--the Trump administration is only at the mid-point of its projected tenure.
Be grateful for small favors
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@ChristineMcM I'm convinced Trump is a symptom, not the real 'disease' (or in your wording 'threat')
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@ChristineMcM
The threat that helped create the space for Trump to be elected comes from our billionaire class. The Kochs and their network have been laboring endlessly to remake our government into what they want, a libertarian paradise where there are courts to enforce contract law, police to keep people intimated and quite, and the military to protect their interests abroad. They couldn't care less about the rest. They are a far, far bigger threat to our country than puny little Isis could ever dream of being.
4
In pseudo surveys like this, a few liberal professors decide what democracy is. The countries that win the lottery are lilly white and everybody is Norwegian or Swede or Finn. none have any poor people to speak of. And the professors probably count how many people vote, which is always a big black mark for the US. Obviously, Trump's policies don't help. But our midterm elections showed that we are a mixed race country of widely diverse income and a political spectrum as wide as can be and when we went to the polls we stuck it to Trump and we started taking the government back. Now that's a democracy.
6
@carl They also have a homogenous, mostly Christian based population. Even Denmark has recognized that it can't stay Denmark, if it takes in thousands of refugees and changes that. This year they refused to take more refugees until the ones they have are fully intergrated, they also banned the burqa. Sweden is straining under the weight of refugees it took in in 2015 and is also changing its policies.
9
@thewriterstuff Nonsense. Just because American media just "discovered" the current Swedish immigration situation does not mean it is new. Sweden has consistently taken in more immigrants percentage-wise than the United States since the late 60's. Today, the country is over 17% foreign-born. The American Right loves to gloss over this fact whenever it makes a case against social welfare policy.
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@thewriterstuff Nonsense. Just because American media just "discovered" the current Swedish immigration situation does not mean it is new. Sweden has consistently taken in more immigrants percentage-wise than the United States since the late 60's. Today, the country is over 17% foreign-born. The American Right loves to gloss over this fact whenever it makes a case against social welfare policy.
https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subject-area/population/population-composition/population-statistics/pong/tables-and-graphs/yearly-statistics--the-whole-country/summary-of-population-statistics/
6
Excellent. This is an especially good column, one that perceptively points to the heart of a problem. Around the middle of it I find an observation that is surely central to the subject itself:
"Trump’s presidency is a consequence of this trend, but it’s also become an accelerant of it."
That's a reminder not only of the global challenge that will remain even when Trump has left the stage, but also of the need for both unflagging energy and well-calibrated judgement in dealing with the domestic challenge.
Trump didn't create anti-democratic sentiment in American life. Removing him will not in itself remove that sentiment. Ironically, Trump's accelerating influence on the global trend may have a washback effect on the domestic trend, strengthened by the bitterness of defeat for Trump's supporters.
It's essential that Democrats go well beyond defeating Trumpism by replacing it with governance that reduces the clientele for demagogues to the smallest possible rump. That means re-commitment to a need that has always been a liberal article of faith: the need to address root causes.
20
I got a chuckle out of the "Several of the criminals who helped Trump get elected" line in the story. How were these people different from the people who have helped get any of our politicians elected? Who got elected without spending huge amounts of money? What Inaugural Committee hasn't been heavily donated to? What wealth person actually pays meaningful taxes?
And "Freedom House" - let's take a careful look at how they are funded. Does anyone have a list of all the C.I.A fronts - other than the NSA, of course.
6
@Peter Zenger The Trump criminals were different because the broke laws. Please name the corresponding people who worked for Obama.
4
@Peter Zenger, What if Trump had spent more money and still got beaten? Shortly before Election Day, Maureen Dowd write a long piece reporting Manhattan elites would seek revenge against him and his family after election. It seems democracies can function in ways that cannot be quantified.
Transparency International creates an annual ranking of corruption by country, generally based on the country's own laws. The US ranks higher than it should because of an unusually high level of legalized corruption of the type sanctified by the Roberts Court Citizens United decision. Any doubt about this should be erased by the recent appointments to the EPA and Interior of former energy lobbyists, as well as other acting Cabinet Secretaries like the former Boeing executive as Defense Secretary.
But even with that generous standard, the US ranks only 22nd, dropping 4 points in 2018. Trump's best friend Russia ranks 138th and other BFF Saudi Arabia 58th. The countries of the European Union, who Trump appears to despise, dominate the top 20 rankings.
The Transparency International ranking, taken together with that of Freedom House and the election of Trump as captive of the GOP donor class and hostile foreign powers, should cause us to reflect on where we are heading.
If the 2018 mid terms marked a real change of course, we might still slowly claw back our country. But in the 21st century we face threats as great as any in the 20th, especially climate change.
And we appear more divided every day.
35
Apparently America is not so exceptional after all, if in the course of one term of a presidency, so much of what makes America great, can be taken away. With every day of Trump's presidency, we are seeing the cracks in the founding father's foundation, for they never imagined that Americans would vote in a man who has so brashly put aside all notions of decency and democracy. We have a two party system, but neither party will work with the other one. We are in a reality show for ratings and common sense has fled the building. Our government has been bought and paid for by big business. We never thought it could happen her, but here it is happening. Identity politics, tribalism and the insistence on both sides that everyone must embrace everything in their platform has led us to where we are now. We can't have everything or we'll end up with nothing. I never believed Trump could be elected and neither did anyone else in the world. Far from making America great again, the rest of the world is shaking their collective head and wondering how we could fall so far, so fast.
81
@thewriterstuff Plenty of people on the left thought Trump could be elected, Michael Moore for one. And me. It helps to know a bit of history and the blatant flaws in our system of government and economy, most have been there for 150 years or more.
17
@thewriterstuff
I don't think we ever were that "exceptional".
We certainly talk a good game; our exalted rhetoric can fool many people much of the time. But a real critical analysis would seem to indicate we are just as cynically self-interested as any other regime.
19
@thewriterstuff
Only in the course of one term? I think you're some decades late.
3
Trump is not finished yet in his attempt to replace our democracy with his brand of Trump cult politics with his face on our tv screens 24/7 like a Big Brother fantasy. Our democracy may have moved right due to GOP efforts but Trump;s kleptocracy will not last too long as the democrats, Mueller Report and investigative reporters will expose the shady details of the Trump regime;s financial dealings. Trump is obviously compromised by Putin and insulting our own intel agencies has earned Trump much silent praise. Pulling us out of NATO will get Putin personally putting the Russian Medal of Kompromat on his lapel.
16
"Resilience of democracy" these three words are worth to think about their meaning.
9
Past administrations worked to promote democracy in other countries. We may not have always agreed with the reasoning, methods, or locations. But there was often a bigger picture at least somewhat in mind. And democracy was generally safe within the US. (Sure, there were domestic exceptions, but let's talk bigger picture for this moment.)
Trump is trying to kill democracy right here, at home. He does so in the name of greed and insecurity. Trump is just one person and the damage could be limited, but it's not. The real danger is that so many people around him seem to be AOK with this loss of a truly American value. Let's hope that we can find a path back to the core beliefs of this country.
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