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Archaeological remains, studies of ancient texts push back the origin of democracy in India a lot before Greece and Rome

The Prime Minister of India asserted at the United Nations General Assembly that he comes from the land which is known as the Mother of Democracy. His very statement triggered a debate if India actually can be considered as the mother of Democracy.

But whatever the opinion one may own, with a given amount of empirical and textual pieces of evidence, it is impossible to deny that the idea of democracy was first practiced and theorised in India.

I look to inspect every probable shred of evidence around the origin of the idea of democracy.

Athenian Democracy and India in the same period

We are told that Greek, and more precisely, Athenian Democracy was the first form of direct democracy. The latest available records say that it came under Cleisthenes around 2.528 kya (thousand years ago) in Athens.

He is referred to as "the father of Athenian democracy". Aristotle mentions in his book VI, that Athenian Democracy had the feature to randomly select ordinary citizens to fill the few existing government administrative and judicial offices. The legislative assembly consisting of all Athenian citizens too existed. We are also told that all the eligible citizens were allowed to speak and vote in the assembly that had the role to set laws of the city-state.

But there is a catch here. It is important to clarify exactly who were the Athenian citizens? The citizenship didnt include women, slaves, foreigners, and youths below the age of military service.

While all the brackets are perfect but they not considering women and slaves gives an absolute notion of how the democracy of Athens insured non-democratic nature of itself. Athenian men believed that women were less intelligent than men and therefore, similarly to barbarians and slaves of the time. They were seen incapable of effectively participating and contributing to public discourse on political issues and affairs.

Perhaps that was the reason that when Greeks came in contact with Indians they were surprised to see the non-discriminatory form of democracy in and around the period of Alexander. Arrian writes in Indika about India in the period of Alexander that:

The Indians do not even use aliens as slaves, much less a countryman of their own.

Diodorus who is said to have visited India, around two centuries after Alexander talks that a high-level democracy of Indians existed and was peculiar to the Greeks. He too saw the difference of non-existent slavery.

And of course, women had a very respectable position in society in that period and earlier. The literature proves this case quite aptly. The thirty-seventh sarg of Ayodhya Kand (Ramayan), tells us that Sita was asked to sit on the throne by Vashistha in absence of Shri Ram. Even if one wants to reject this as mythology (although it is considered as Itihasa for Bhartiya Civilisation), the case is clear that for all practical purposes women saw a respectable position in society. In the same period when Athenian Democracy saw females as barbarians, Queen Mgvat of the Vatsa Mahajanapada ( oligarchic republics) ruled as proxy while her son Udayana was held captive by a rival king. And she was very well respected in society. While there were sanctions against the participation of women in the Athenian Democracy & deprivation of rights, pastamba Sutra (probably conceived in the same period) in Bharat says the following for females:

A man is not allowed to abandon his wife (A 1.28.19).

He permits daughters to inherit (A 2.14.4).

There can be no division of property between a husband and a wife because they are linked inextricably together and have joint custody of the property (A 2.29.3).

Thus, a wife may make gifts and use the family wealth on her own when her husband is away (A 2.12.1620).

Women are upholders of traditional lore, and pastamba tells his audience that they should learn some customs from women (A 2.15.9; 2.29.11).

It becomes clear from the above argument that not only democracy (Diodorus 2.39) existed in India in the period of the Athenian Democracy, but women had a very respectable position (unlike Athens where they were not considered even Athenian) and slavery remained an alien concept.

Now before dwelling deep into the Indic idea of democracy, let us first see what the latest researches have to say about proto-democracies.

Proto-Democracies

We have pieces of evidence of "governing by assembly" in ancient Phoenicians. One such piece of evidence is the story of an Egyptian trader who travelled north to the Phoenician around 3.1 kya. The trader had got stuck in some problem and the king had got matter settled by hearing in an assembly.

According to Thorkild Jacobsen, a form of "Primitive Democracy" existed in pre-Babylonian Mesopotamia. But many scholars have denied recognising it as democracy. They see the case of Mesopotamia as a struggle where common men appear more like pawns than sovereign authority.

One such scholar is Bailkey who says that the period of Gilgamesh etc, reflects a power struggle between primitive monarchy and noblemen.

Then we find the important case of Sparta. It rose around 2.7 kya which showed the trait of the oligarchy but still, slavery existed and slaves were not part of democracy. Unlike Athens, women enjoyed a respectable position in society and one can say that this was the only place in the west around that era that had no discriminatory acts against females. We also have the case of Rome. A form of democracy existed here too around 2.52 kya. But again citizenship and hence legislative rights were only limited to the free Romans. Slaves were considered as a commodity and after being free, the rights did not come to them.

The case of India as the first land to see democracy

THOU, mighty Agni, gatherest up all that is precious for thy friend.Bring us all treasures as thou art enkindled in libation's placeAssemble, speak together: let your minds be all of one accord,As ancient Gods unanimous sit down to their appointed share.The place is common, common the assembly, common the mind, so be their thought united.A common purpose do I lay before you, and worship with your general oblation.One and the same bt your resolve, and be your minds of one accord.United be the thoughts of all that all may happily agree.

Rig Veda (10.191.1-4, was sung at beginning of the Republican Assembly in ancient India).

The arguments in the above section show us that there was no solidified form of democracy anywhere on earth before 3-2.5 kya. So, of all the empirical shreds of evidence, one of the strongest among all is the excavations that happened recently in Rakhigarhi. The team led by Dr Shinde discovered the footprints of panchayat at this site which dates back to 5.0-5.5 kya. Is it not strong enough evidence to start talking of India as being the mother of democracy?

Perhaps, it might not be convincing enough so let us look at more textual evidence. As a starter, it would be good to give an overview of few important definitions.

1. Democracy: It is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation ("direct democracy"), or to choose governing officials to do so ("representative democracy").

2. Republic: It is a form of government in which "power is held by the people and their elected representatives".

3. Gana-Sangha: The word Gana, in general, refers to any association of men formed for the attainment of the same aims. The word sangha in means association, assembly, company, or community. In general Gana-Sangha or Gana-Rajya translates to, (rule by) tribal assembly.

While the first two words dont find origin anytime before 2.5 kya, the third word Gana-Sangh/ Gana-Rajya finds the existence with the same meaning in the oldest extant Indo-European text, Rig Veda (3.26.6).

If I refer to the works of Shrikant Talageri, and try to merge them with the recent genetic discoveries of Rakhigarhi, out of India migration became evident and we find that those who came to be known as Greeks too have ancestral roots in the northern belt of India. It means that if the idea of Gana-Sangha was existing in Rig Veda, the idea must have travelled with the migrating tribes. People must have one thing clear in mind that what we see as the geographic boundary of Bharat today was not the same millennia ago. The existence of a 5.5 kya old panchayat block in Rakhigarhi further reinforces the claim that the idea of democracy was certainly brewing here and we currently do not have any evidence to nullify this claim.

Now let us look at more textual evidence for Gana-Sangha.

Pini talks of the concept as, Sanghoddhau gaa praansayo. We find the Bhishma explaining the policies of the Ganas in Shanti Parva of Mahabharat. The great Sangam literature and Silapathikaram talk about the Ganas. The Buddhist literature Mahabagga mentions an officer tracking the number of ganas and their koram in the Rajasabha. The Buddhist texts like Pali-pitaka, Majjhamnikaya, Mahabagga, Avadana Shataka talk extensively about Ganas and Sanghas. Records state that we had more than a hundred Gana-Sanghas existed in the time when Buddha lived.

As per the Kalchakra traditions, he lived at least 2.9-3.0 kya. It goes way before Mesopotamias proto-democracy too. Back then, early democratic republics were known as Gaa-rjyas, which meant "rule of the assembly". Do we find this term any different from demo-kratia?

If we again go back to Rig Veda, we find mention of words like Sabha (big assembly of people), Samiti (smaller gathering of people) & Rajan (leader). The Rig Veda (10.173) also tells us that the Rajan was elected member and chosen by the representative of the people in Samiti.

According to the Atharva veda, 3.5.6-7, the Rajan was elected by seven representatives of people known as rjakta (the kingmakers). They were representatives of fishermen, chariot-makers, black-smiths, intelligentsia, the kings of other states, charioteers and the village headmen. According to Atharva veda, 6.88.3, Samiti had the right to dethrone the Rajan. Atharva veda, 5.19.15 also observes that the Rajan was to be dethroned should he transgress the rights and privileges of a learned Brahmin. According to Atharvaveda 7.12.2; 10.8.24; 12.3.46, Sabha was a place of debate and discussions.

So all these arguments make a case very clear that an absolute and sophisticated form of democracy existed in Bharat long before Athens or Sparta etc. And at the same time, there was no notion of second-class citizenship for women as it was in Greece and slavery was a completely alien concept here.

Based on these ideas of democracy, multiple Janapads and later Mahajanpads came into existence. They were no different than what we know as the Republic today. Of all, Vajji Mahajanapada of Licchavis came to be known as one of the greatest. Right now we have very few texts available to talk about how exactly they operated. According to Cullakalinga Jtaka and the Ekapaa Jtaka, the Licchavi had 7,707 Rajas. They met annually to elect one of their members as ruler and a council of nine to assist him. They are mentioned in Arthastra (ch. XI) as a republic (gaa sangha), whose leader uses the title of rjaabdopajvinah. Mahparinibbna Suttanta, Dgha Nikya, Manusmriti (X.22), Paramatthajotik, too talk about their democracy.

The Kalpastra of Bhadravhu refers to the nine Licchavi gaarjas who along with the nine Malla gaarjas and the eighteen K-Koala gaarjas formed a league against Magadha.

There is abundant literature that can be put across in support of the existence of sophisticated democracy in ancient India lot before the Roman and Greek. And not an article but a complete book can be written for the subject.

Conclusion

With the existing bulk of shreds of evidence in the current time, it becomes clear that India, that is Bharat seems to be the mother of democracy. The archaeological remains of Rakhigarhi, genetic studies of Rakhigarhi, texts of Rig Veda, Atharva Veda, Buddhist texts, Jain text, etc, when overlapped together push back the origin of democracy in India a lot before Greece and Rome. And interestingly, even though some form of democracy existed in the West, it was not without slavery; a practice which was alien to India in words of Greek historians themselves.

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PM Modi's 'India is the Mother of Democracy' comment isn't far from the truth - Firstpost

Pachappa Camp in Riverside was a far cry from the buzzy, bustling Koreatowns we know today.

Founded in 1905 as the first Korean settlement in the United States, it was a small community of about a few hundred laborers next to a heavily used set of railroad tracks, just down the street from Chinese and Japanese settlements. There was no alcohol, fighting, gambling or drugs allowed, and everyone was encouraged to wear white.

The camp was named Dosans Republic, after the Korean independence activist Dosan Ahn Chang Ho, who was drawn to Riverside by the highly lucrative citrus trade.

Ahn founded an employment agency for Korean laborers that eventually became a highly complex and self-governed settlement. Dosans Republic had no running water or electricity, but the principles of governance honed there became the building blocks for modern South Korean democracy, according to a forthcoming paper from UC Riverside professor Edward Taehan Chang.

Dosan Ahn Chang Ho had a vision of establishing a model community. He was experimenting with it at Pachappa Camp, Chang said.

Chang encountered the previously undiscovered settlement on a 1908 insurance company map, a tiny dot labeled Korean Settlement. He found an archive of a Korean newspaper, Sinhan Minbo, which revealed aspects of life and suggested that Korean Americans at Pachappa Camp and elsewhere helped found South Korean democracy. The settlement is the subject of an exhibit at UC Riverside opening Oct. 16 called Pachappa Camp: The First Koreatown in the United States.

Dosans Republic had elected officials; taxation; a separation of powers among judiciary, executive and legislative bodies; as well as two police officers with the power to search and enter private residences.

Life in the settlement was strict. Anti-Asian sentiment was a real danger, and the camps restrictions on alcohol, gambling and drugs were an attempt to emphasize that Korean Americans could contribute to a civilized society. Many laws focused on propriety. No Korean was allowed to leave their house unless properly dressed, and Korean women were not allowed to smoke in public. Those who partook in drugs and alcohol were subject to a series of increasing fines.

At the time, Korea was under Japanese control, and Korean independence activists around the world were raising funds, organizing and lobbying for political support. South Koreas eventual democratic republic was organized in a series of meetings around the world. One of the most foundational meetings took place in Riverside, Chang said.

In 1911, the third national convention of the Korean National Assn. met in Pachappa Camp and passed 21 articles of governance that later appeared in documents central to South Korean democracy. The convention elected a central council that would oversee the various chapters of the KNA around the world and advocate for Korean independence.

The Korean National Assn., a political organization with chapters in major Korean settlements around the world, was functioning as a de facto government of Korea while it was under Japanese rule.

The KNA represented Korean Americans in international affairs and incidents. When an angry white mob chased Korean American workers from Hemet, U.S. officials reached out to Japanese consular officials to negotiate, prompting an outcry from Korean Americans. The KNA successfully lobbied Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan for Koreans in the United States to be recognized as Korean subjects, not Japanese.

After a cold spell decimated Riversides navel orange crop in 1913, the residents of Pachappa Camp left to look for work in Los Angeles and San Francisco. In 1918, the Riverside chapter of the KNA closed. In the late 1920s, Ahn was falsely accused of being a Bolshevist and deported from the United States.

Two commemorative plaques are all that remain at the site that was once called Pachappa Camp. The site is now an oil pumping station.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Pachappa Camp was later settled by Japanese and Mexican immigrants, and in the 1950s the land was redeveloped by an oil company. Today the land is primarily occupied by a Southern California Gas Co. facility. The nearby railroad tracts have gone quiet, replaced by the muffled roar of the 91 Freeway.

Pachappa Camp existed for just over a decade. So why does it matter? Why do the histories of any immigrant enclaves matter?

To me, places like Historic Filipinotown, Pachappa Camp and Chinatown are the most powerful and tangible reminders we have of the fact that the freedoms that Asian Americans have in this country were not gifts of political benevolence. They were the hard-won spoils of a long struggle for civil rights by people of color in America. These histories of Asian American civic engagement may be buried in the archives of foreign-language newspapers, hiding in old maps or redeveloped into a gas facility, but they are there nonetheless.

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Column: The first Koreatown in America, and Riverside's role in South Korean democracy - Los Angeles Times

In todays deeply polarized political and social environment, having a conversation with someone with different opinions can seem like an impossible task.

The University of Virginias Democracy Initiative has partnered with StoryCorps One Small Step program to facilitate such fraught conversations and help individuals with opposing views find common ground.

Melody Barnes, executive director of UVAs Karsh Institute of Democracy and co-director of the Democracy Initiative, talked about the overarching goal of the new partnership.

We know one conversation cant change the longstanding challenges our country and our communities must confront, but One Small Step is one, small step forward. Its an opportunity to create dialogue, perhaps find that you have something in common with someone surprising, or to disagree productively and with respect. One Small Step complements our research, teaching, policy and public engagement efforts, she said.

The Democracy Initiative and One Small Step will host a launch event Wednesday at 11 a.m., featuring a discussion between StoryCorps founder Dave Isay and UVA President Jim Ryan. Barnes will moderate. Students who have participated in One Small Step also will talk about their experiences with the program. Laurent Dubois, Bicentennial Professor and director of academic affairs at the Democracy Initiative, will moderate the student discussion. The event will be offered in person at Carrs Hill, as well as online. Registration is now open.

At the event, the Democracy Initiative and One Small Step will recruit community members to participate in recorded conversations. They plan to conduct more than 250 conversations with a wide range of participants at the University and in the Charlottesville community. Participants will be recruited directly, as well as through partnerships with local organizations. The Democracy Initiative also intends to use the conversations in an upcoming podcast.

Since its founding in 2018, One Small Step has worked to facilitate conversations with the goal of reminding individuals of their common humanity. One Small Step initially launched in four cities: Richmond, Virginia; Wichita, Kansas; Birmingham, Alabama; and Shreveport, Louisiana. Charlottesville will be the fifth and UVA is its first academic partner.

Samyuktha Mahadevan, the One Small Step program manager, talked about the inspiration for the program.

Cultural and political tension is nothing new, but the 2016 election heightened concerns, and thats when StoryCorps decided to act. StoryCorps has always been about storytelling and helping people feel connected to one another. After noticing increasing feelings of us vs. them and hoping to help individuals see the inherent worth in every person, the StoryCorps team created One Small Step, she said.

A number of recent events, both in Charlottesville and at the national level, have highlighted the need for greater dialogue in American society and politics. Mahadevan emphasized the significance of the partnership in the local community and at UVA.

Charlottesville has been at the center of the national reckoning on racial and social justice, and UVA is uniquely positioned to help study and respond to the moment. One Small Step is an investment in the health of the community and our democracy, and we hope that people benefit from participating in meaningful engagements with one another, she said.

The Democracy Initiative views the partnership with One Small Step as a cornerstone of both its programming and its mission. Barnes noted how feedback from students shaped the decision to partner with One Small Step.

Two years ago, we asked UVA students about their views on democracys biggest challenges and the kind of work they hoped the Democracy Initiative would do, she said. During those sessions, a wide range of students consistently told us that theyre concerned about our democratic culture and are looking for more opportunities to engage a variety of viewpoints.

The partnership also represents an achievement for the UVA strategic plan. One of the key initiatives of the 2030 Plan is the Good Neighbor Program, which emphasizes increased collaboration and engagement between UVA and Charlottesville. The program, as well as the partnership, both look to highlight local challenges and the need for improved communication.

Barnes emphasized how the Democracy Initiative and One Small Step will look to engage the broader community on a range of topics.

We respect those who live, work and study in Charlottesville their experiences, perspectives and history and One Small Step is intended to capture the dialogue that follows when individuals have the opportunity to engage with one another, she said.

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UVA Democracy Initiative and StoryCorps to Focus on Tough Local Conversations - UVA Today

Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang is leaving the Democratic Party for a new way "Forward."

Yang hopped on the phone with Fox News on Thursday to discuss his new book, "Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy," his departure from the Democratic Party, and his push for the nation to adopt rank-choice voting.

"Our country is facing a lot of challenges, and I think that more and more Americans are waking up to the fact that were not being set up for success, starting with the fact that were being pitted against each other and see other Americans as our mortal enemies when theyre not," Yang told Fox News.

ANDREW YANG QUITS DEMOCRATIC PARTY, CALLS IT THE RIGHT THING TO DO

Yang said his book reflects on his "experiences running for president," wanting to share what he "learned about both why it feels like we cant come together and then what we can do to change it."

The Democrat-turned-independent said he wanted people "to understand what its like to run for president" and for them "to understand why it feels like were stuck."

"Were stuck because the system is designed not to work, really," Yang said. "And if you have a system thats dysfunctional and designed not to work, then expecting it to work will actually make you more and more angry and frustrated over time."

"Whats needed is to actually change the system so that our legislators incentives are tied to us and our lives and how were doing and what we think as opposed to who its tied to right now," Yang continued.

Yangs new book coincides with his launch of a new political party, the Forward Party. He told Fox News he believes America needs "a third party" and compared a third party to an alternative to two companies.

"Im an entrepreneur and I want everyone to reflect on: If you showed up to a marketplace and there were two companies, and then 62% of people wanted an alternative to those companies," Yang said. "Wouldnt you want there to be at least a third choice? And I think a lot of Americans are on the same page."

"We can see that the current system is not working, that were losing a lot of common sense, that there should be a common-sense, middle-ground party," Yang continued. "And thats what the Forward Party is."

Yang also said his new party is an "inclusive popular movement" open to registered members of both parties.

In his blog post announcing his departure from the Democratic Party, Yang encouraged his supporters to stick with their respective parties, claiming they would become "disenfranchised" if they left due to the heavy presence of a single party in an area.

ANDREW YANG PROMOTES INCLUSIVE NEW THIRD PARTY, SLAMS CURRENT POLITICAL DUOPOLY: IT'S NOT WORKING

Yang stuck by his call for supporters to stick with their parties, saying the "practical truth" is that "many people, if they were to change their party registration, would have no ability to vote in any of their local elections."

"Again, that is the way the system is set up. Its unfortunate, but were not impractical at the Forward Party," he said. "Were not going to tell you, Hey, give up your ability to influence whats going on in your community. You can help the Forward Party achieve its goals and maintain current party registration."

"The goal is to make it so that you have a vibrant system that allows for more independents, but asking someone to reduce their ability to participate before we make that change is one of the reasons we have to work as quickly as we can," Yang added.

Yang also advocated for the national adoption of ranked-choice voting, saying the system enables people "to be able to vote for whoever you want and no one can accuse you of being a spoiler or wasting your vote."

The former Democrat claimed that "83%" of congressional elections are decided "before the general election in the primary" due to the seat being a safe seat for one party and that "most people don't even have two choices" in an election anymore.

"So if you have somewhere between one choice, which is not a real choice, which is where most people are, then you have a stuck system," Yang argued. "If you have ranked-choice voting, you can vote for whoever you want and, even if they only get like a handful of votes, then you're not hurting anyone because you can just rank the Republican or whomever second."

Yang also said that Americans are "being manipulated and being told that the problem is the other side" when the political system "is set up both to make us more and more upset over time and also not to make any meaningful progress on any of the issues that most Americans care about," which he revealed was a factor in his exit from the Democrats.

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Yang told Fox News that his new party is already seeing support after its launch and that the party plans to "elevate" both Republican and Democratic candidates "who are for these principles of having a more vibrant democracy that reflects different points of view and gives every American regardless of party affiliation a say in their representation."

"Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy" hit the shelves Tuesday and can be found on Amazon.

Houston Keene is a reporter for Fox News Digital. You can find him on Twitter at @HoustonKeene.

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Andrew Yang explains why he's leaving the Democratic Party - Fox News

In a recent interview withMSNBC, former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt issueda stern warning to Americans who have not yet grasped the nature of our present crisis of democracy. "We have an autocratic movement teeming with violence and the intimations of violence in this country," he said, inviting viewers of the liberal news channel to imagine "that domestic terrorist, that criminal who desecrated the American flag by wrapping it around his head, who committed violence in the name of right-wing extremism."

What is it that he has heard? He has heard that he lives in an occupied country with an illegitimate president who lost the election, who was put into power by millions of fraudulent votes, mostly Black and brown votes out of the inner cities.

Discussing the threat still posed by former President Donald Trump, Schmidt observed that Republicans seem obsessed with "the language of violence, the image of the gun, the idea that their countrymen are their enemies":

So, historically, we knowwhen you put all of that fuel on the groundand you start throwing sparks at it, you can ignite a conflagration, and when you dehumanize people the way that this man and this movement has, in the end, it kills people. Historically, this type of politics has wound up, in its worst excesses, killing tens of millions of people. That's why it's such a frightening moment, and that's why it's time to wake up and understand that we don't have a shortage-of-panic-buttons problem. We have a political extremism problem that is very quickly metastasizing into violent extremism that we'll be dealing with for a generation because of what happened over the last five years.

New polling and other research show that tens of millions of Americans have been radicalized into potentially supporting political violence in order to remove Joe Biden who they perceive as ausurper from office. This is part of alarger pattern where the Republican-fascist movement will support any strategy or tactics they believe will help preservetheir "way of life."

To that point, a new poll from the University ofVirginia's Center for Politics shows that more than 50% of Trump voters would supportsecedingfrom the Union. Given theracial grievance andwhite supremacy politics of Trump's followers, such a course of action could leadto a second American civil war. It is no coincidence that a fair number of Trump's terrorists waved Confederate flags as they attackedthe U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Ultimately, the coup attempt of Januaryisonlya prelude tosimilar events in the future, whenRepublicans and their allies fully intend to overthrow any election they lose, and therefore deemillegitimate. In a much-discussed recent essay at the Washington Post, Robert Kagan summarizes this moment of existential crisis:

The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves. The warning signs may be obscured by the distractions of politics, the pandemic, the economy and global crises, and by wishful thinking and denial.

We are already in a constitutional crisis. The destruction of democracy might not come until November 2024, but critical steps in that direction are happening now. In a little more than a year, it may become impossible to pass legislation to protect the electoral process in 2024. Now it is impossible only because anti-Trump Republicans, and even some Democrats, refuse to tinker with the filibuster. It is impossible because, despite all that has happened, some people still wish to be good Republicans even as they oppose Trump. These decisions will not wear well as the nation tumbles into full-blown crisis.

What comes next? Can a full-on collapse of America's democratic institutions and political culture be stopped? Whyhas the mainstream news media consistently normalized the anti-democraticand other politicallydeviant behavior of the Trump regime and the Republican Party? Can the media confront its own culpability in terms of failing to warnthe American people about the rising threat of fascism?

In an effort to answer these questions, I recently spoke with Norm Ornstein,emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and co-author of the bestselling books "One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported" and "It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism."

Ornstein has been a guest on numerous cable and broadcastnews outlets, includingCBS News, CNN, MSNBC, NPR and "PBS NewsHour."His essays and other writing have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Foreign Affairs, The Atlanticand other leading publications.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

American democracyand our system of government feels like it's all on the verge of collapse. Thesedeep crises that made Trumpism possiblefeellike a type of national breakdown or crackup. My concern is that once things are this broken, they cannot be put back together again. Help me make sense of these feelings and intuitions.

I believe that it is more broken than anything else. There are several layers of problems here.

One layer is that the Republican Party has really descended into the abyss. It's not a party anymore. It's a cult,a full-blown cult. We could call it a cult of personality, but it was really a cult before Donald Trump came along. He's just the leader right now. We see this, for example, with the fact that literally only two Republican members of Congress were willing to stand up to a violent insurrection and a complete collapse of norms and that is in the House and Senate combined.

Mitch McConnell is saying that if the Republicans recapture the majority in the Senate, he won't vote to seat any Supreme Court nominee from Joe Biden. There is also the COVID response by Republican governors and other elected officials.

This problem is going to get worse before it gets better at the level of elected officials. Every serious candidate that Republicans have for president is going to be saying, "I'm just like Donald Trump, except I'm tougher, meanerand stronger." Anybody who is even to the slightest side towardsanity is going nowhere in today's Republican Party. That is a big problem at the level of elites and across the federal, stateand local levels.

There is also the problem that begins with the leadership of Trumpand extendsdown through Tucker Carlson, Mark Levin, Laura Ingrahamand many others,including social media more generally. That's the problem of disinformation, misinformationand conspiracy theories.

There is a majorcultural gap that is not going away anytime soon. For example, 30% of the Republicans basically say that violence is appropriate if people are supposedly trying to "destroy your way of life."In this case, "destroying your way of life" meansbasically doing anything that does not protect white people first.

Then you've got the fact that there'snot just voter suppression, but that direct attempts to overturn the results of lawful and fair elections are running rampant.

We are also seeing a Supreme Court that willbasicallyprovide no boundaries. There is the farce of having the most extreme partisan justices saying, "Well, it's ridiculous to think that decisions are made on the basis of personal views or partisanship." These Supreme Court justices are not only partisans, they are liars.

We can mitigatesome of these problems with election and voting reform. We can also reform the laws that enabled Donald Trump to use executive power in misguided ways. But ultimately, I would say the system is broken.

Why do America's political elites,especially thepundit class,keep treating these "revelations" about Trump and his regime's criminality and attacks on democracyas something surprising? The coup attempt and attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 were all obvious and threatened in public by Trump and his followers.

The sheer volume of scandals dilutes the impact of each of them singularly and together. Most people don't pay close attention, day to day,to what's going on. When you see a scandal become something of political consequenceis when it gets hammered away at, day after day and week after week. That can be a real scandal or a faux scandal.

An example would be the Afghanistan withdrawal. The American news media were all over that story for 10 days. Almost all of the coverage was harshly critical. For a large number of Americans who had not really spent three minutes thinking about Afghanistan previously, the story is processed as being something terrible that happened all of a sudden.

The signal that goes out to the general public is that if something is discussed on the front page on a regular basis, or on the cable news programs and the Sunday programs, overand overand over again,it must therefore be something serious and important. If a news story comes up and thendisappears the next day, that must mean it is not important.

There is an obsession with being "neutral" and doing the "both sides" type of coverage. They do not know how to treat abnormal behavior, therefore the American news media largely normalizes it. And there's a certain amount of bandwidth that news organizations are going to give to stories about a presidentor a president's familyor an administration. If there are 20 stories, 19 of them are not going to get covered and the 20thstory will soon be superseded by another one that comes along.

We are also in a situation where the mainstream news media wants to show equal treatment, which means they take a president likeJoe Biden, who doesn't have scandals of any significance, and then blow them up by using the same amount of bandwidth as was used to cover Donald Trump. That story on Biden has more resonance because there is only one such story to focus on.

So many members of the media kept denying even the possibility that Trump and his regime would attempt a coup. They were openly contemptuous of voices who kept trying to warn the public about what was obvious and imminent. Will those individuals and organizations in themediaever publicly explain or apologize for their failings in terms of Jan. 6 and the Trump eramore generally?

The New York Times, just days before the 2016 election, hada front-page, above-the-fold story saying that the FBI says there is no evidence of Russian connections to Trump's campaign. That story had a big impact. Whoever in the FBI gave the Times that story lied. Now, does the Times out the person who lied?

If you have a source and the bargain is that they will remain anonymous if they give you significant information,and they lie to you, that bargain is broken.Has the New York Times ever apologized for publishing an utterly inaccurate and distorted and deceptive story that could have turned the election? No, of course not. Are there news organizations that are willing to apologize for their failures or their misleading stories? No. If you get a story on the front page that's wrong and you show factually that it's wrong, you'll get a correction somewhere inside.

This notion that a news organization never explains and never apologizes unless they are under threat of a lawsuit that could cost them large sums of money is deeply ingrainedin the DNA of journalism. This is especially true of large and highly influential news organizations. If they are wrong about a major story because they just didn't get what was going on, not because they published something that was flat out wrong the likelihood that you'll get an apology or that they'll learn a lesson from it or do anything about it is zero.

It is one thing to make mistakes and or do false equivalents on the small stuff. When a country is at a point where it iscrystal clear that the fundamentals of your political system are on the cusp of being destroyed, the first thing that will happen, ifand when those democratic norms and institutions are gone, is that the free press will no longer exist. We have seen that with every authoritarian society. So the failure to change, to understandand to be blunt about the reality of what's happening in this country is not just reckless for the American people. It is suicidal for the news media. In the end, that just shows how ingrained these practices I outlined above are.

For Black and brown folks, poor and working-class folks, women as a group, gays and lesbians, undocumented peopleand other marginalized folks, none of this isan abstraction. America's democracy crisis and the rising fascist tide areliterallya matter of life and death for those communities. But so many in the media elite are members of a social milieuwhere they are deeply invested in the system and have convinced themselves that they are immune from these threats. Is it that simple?

In general, it is just denial. It's denial and it is also just an unwillingness or inability to change decades-long patterns of behavior. In terms of the reporters who cover the White House and Congress, their own careers are tied to access. They pal around with the people they cover. I see not just Manchin and Sinemabut many others talking about their "Republican friends" and how they can all get along. I know a lot of these Republicans. I've had meals with many of them.

There are some who are really kind of fun to be around not the completely crazy ones but othershave gone along with all of the bad behavior. You can get lulled into thinking that is all just temporary, orthat the Republicans really don't believe these extreme things. You can convince yourself that it's only asmall fringe group doing such things. It distracts a person who operates in this political insider world that the Republicans vote for these policies repeatedly. They protect each other and they're all in on the cult.

There is another disconnect as well. So many members of this political class I am describing have never faced discrimination. It is just not on their radar screens in the same way aspeople who have. They're not sensitive to it. How can you not look at what we have seen, with a violent coup and everything else that's followed, and not recognize that you are at risk of racism and nativism?

People who have had in their family histories a history of discrimination and worseare going to be more sensitive to the path that's being taken here in this country and sensitive to the reality that this is the same roadmap that we saw in Germany.

But even for a whole lot of journalists who are or should be in that category, it gets superseded by the way in which they do their own business. To me, that is as sad as anything else.

Is American democracy and its political culture and governmental systemfacinga legitimacy crisis?

Yes, the United States is experiencing a legitimacy crisis. One recentprominent example: the Arizona fraudulent "audit" says that Biden "won."

How do I analyze that? What it says to me is this is the setup for the next election. What is going to happen is that the Republicans and their agents will say, "We, we did it fair and square so we can do the same thing all over again." And thenthey'll bring in the Cyber Ninjas or whoever and overturn the results of the next election.

The Trumpists and other Republicans have completely undermined the legitimacy of elections by targeting election workers as well.

The events of Jan.6were also at attack on the legitimacy of Congress. Gerrymandering, and the waythe Senate does not properly represent the will of the American people arealso a part of the country's legitimacy crisis.

For example, 30% of Americans will elect 70 senators. Those 30% of the population are in no wayrepresentative of the diversity of the country or its economic dynamism.

Those senators will not be representative of the country, and they are not going to be sensitive to the concerns of a large number of Americans. Over time, this notion that you voteand you're supposed to end up with representatives who will reflect the larger public's needs and views is going to disappear.

There is also the Electoral College, which is growing more and more distorted. Even if the elections are fair, it means there's a greater likelihood that we will elect, several more times, presidents who lose the popular vote, perhaps bymillions of votes.

At some point the majority of Americans are going to see those presidential elections as illegitimate.We've got crises all over the place in this country and society.

Excerpt from:
Norm Ornstein on the crisis of democracy: "This is the same roadmap we saw in Germany" - Salon