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TUNIS, Tunisia For roughly three months after Tunisians toppled their dictator in January 2011 in an eruption of protest that electrified the Arab world, Ali Bousselmi felt nothing but pure happiness.

The decade that followed, during which Tunisians adopted a new Constitution, gained freedom of speech and voted in free and fair elections, brought Mr. Bousselmi its own rewards. He co-founded a gay rights group an impossibility before 2011, when the gay scene was forced to hide deep underground.

But as the revolutions high hopes curdled into political chaos and economic failure, Mr. Bousselmi, like many Tunisians, said he began to wonder whether his country would be better off with a single ruler, one powerful enough to just get things done.

I ask myself, what have we done with democracy? said Mr. Bousselmi, 32, the executive director of Mawjoudin, meaning We Exist in Arabic. We have corrupt members of Parliament, and if you go into the street, you can see that people cant even afford a sandwich. And then suddenly, there was a magic wand saying things were going to change.

That wand was held by Kais Saied, Tunisias democratically elected president, who, on July 25, froze Parliament and fired the prime minister, vowing to attack corruption and return power to the people. It was a power grab that an overwhelming majority of Tunisians greeted with joy and relief.

July 25 has made it harder than ever to tell a hopeful story about the Arab Spring.

Held up by Western supporters and Arab sympathizers alike as proof that democracy could bloom in the Middle East, Tunisia now looks to many like a final confirmation of the uprisings failed promise. The birthplace of the Arab revolts, it is now ruled by one-man decree.

Elsewhere, wars that followed the uprisings have devastated Syria, Libya and Yemen. Autocrats smothered protest in the Gulf. Egyptians elected a president before embracing a military dictatorship.

Still, the revolutions proved that power, traditionally wielded from the top down, could also be driven by a fired-up street.

It was a lesson the Tunisians, who recently flooded the streets again to demonstrate against Parliament and for Mr. Saied, have reaffirmed. This time, however, the people lashed out at democracy, not at an autocrat.

The Arab Spring will continue, predicted Tarek Megerisi, a North Africa specialist at the European Council on Foreign Relations. No matter how much you try to repress it or how much the environment around it changes, desperate people will still try to secure their rights.

Mr. Saieds popularity stems from the same grievances that propelled Tunisians, Bahrainis, Egyptians, Yemenis, Syrians and Libyans to protest a decade ago corruption, unemployment, repression and an inability to make ends meet. Ten years on, Tunisians felt themselves backsliding on virtually everything except freedom of expression.

We got nothing out of the revolution, said Houyem Boukchina, 48, a resident of Jabal Ahmar, a working-class neighborhood in the capital, Tunis. We still dont know what the plan is, but we live on the basis of hope, she said of Mr. Saied.

But popular backlashes can still threaten autocracy.

Mindful of their peoples simmering grievances, Arab rulers have doubled down on repression instead of addressing the issues, their ruthlessness only inviting more upheaval in the future, analysts warned.

In Mr. Saieds case, his gambit depends on economic progress. Tunisia faces a looming fiscal crisis, with billions in debt coming due this fall. If the government fires public workers and cuts wages and subsidies, if prices and employment do not improve, public sentiment is likely to U-turn.

An economic collapse would pose problems not only for Mr. Saied, but also for Europe, whose shores draw desperate Tunisian migrants in boats by the thousands each year.

Yet Mr. Saieds office has not made any contact with the International Monetary Fund officials who are waiting to negotiate a bailout, according to a senior Western diplomat. Nor has he taken any measures other than requesting chicken sellers and iron merchants to lower prices, telling them it was their national duty.

People dont necessarily support Saied, they just hated what Saied broke, Mr. Megerisi said. Thats going to be gone pretty quickly when they find hes not delivering for them, either.

For Western governments, which initially backed the uprisings then returned in the name of stability to partnering with the autocrats who survived them, Tunisia may serve as a reminder of what motivated Arab protesters a decade ago and what could bring them into the streets again.

While many demonstrators demanded democracy, others chanted for more tangible outcomes: an end to corruption, lower food prices, jobs.

From outside, it was easy to cheer the hundreds of thousands of protesters who surged into Cairos Tahrir Square, easy to forget the tens of millions of Egyptians who stayed home.

The people pushing for Parliament, democracy, freedoms, we werent the biggest part of the revolution, said Yassine Ayari, an independent Tunisian lawmaker recently imprisoned after he denounced Mr. Saieds power grab. Maybe a lot of Tunisians didnt want the revolution. Maybe people just want beer and security. Thats a hard question, a question I dont want to ask myself, he added.

But I dont blame the people. We had a chance to show them how democracy could change their lives, and we failed.

The revolution equipped Tunisians with some tools to solve problems, but not the solutions they had expected, Mr. Ayari said. With more needs than governing experience, he said, they had little patience for the time-consuming mess of democracy.

A Constitution, the ballot box and a Parliament did not automatically give rise to opportunity or accountability, a state of affairs that Westerners may find all too familiar. Parliament descended into name-calling and fistfights. Political parties formed and re-formed without offering better ideas. Corruption spread.

I dont think that a Western-style liberal democracy can or should be something that can just be parachuted in, said Elisabeth Kendall, an Oxford University scholar of Arabic and Islamic studies. You cant just read Liberal Democracy 101, absorb it, write a constitution and hope that everything works out. Elections are just the start.

Arab intellectuals often point out that it took decades for France to transition to democracy after its revolution. Parts of Eastern Europe and Africa saw similar ups and downs in leaving dictatorships behind.

Opinion polls show that emphatic majorities across the Arab world still support democracy. But nearly half of respondents say their own countries are not ready for it. Tunisians, in particular, have grown to associate it with economic deterioration and dysfunction.

Their experience may have left Tunisians still believing in democracy in the abstract, but wanting for now what one Tunisian constitutional law professor, Adnan Limam, approvingly called a short-term dictatorship.

Still, Ms. Kendall cautioned that it is too soon to declare the revolutions dead.

In Tunisia, rejection of the system that evolved over the last decade does not necessarily imply embrace of one-man rule. As Mr. Saied has arrested more opponents and taken more control, last month suspending much of the Constitution and seizing sole authority to make laws, more Tunisians especially secular, affluent ones have grown uneasy.

Someone had to do something, but now its getting off-track, said Azza Bel Jaafar, 67, a pharmacist in the upscale Tunis suburb of La Marsa. She said she had initially supported Mr. Saieds actions, partly out of fear of Ennahda, the Islamist party that dominates Parliament and that many Tunisians blame for the countrys ills.

I hope therell be no more Islamism, she said, but Im not for a dictatorship either.

Some pro-democracy Tunisians are counting on the idea that the younger generation will not easily surrender the freedoms they have grown up with.

We havent invested in a democratic culture for 10 years for nothing, said Jahouar Ben Mbarek, a former friend and colleague of Mr. Saieds who is now helping organize anti-Saied protests. One day, theyll see its actually their freedom at risk, and theyll change their minds.

Others say there is still time to save Tunisias democracy.

Despite Mr. Saieds increasingly authoritarian actions, he has not moved systematically to crack down on opposition protests, and recently told the French president, Emmanuel Macron, that he would engage in dialogue to resolve the crisis.

Lets see if democracy is able to correct itself by itself, said Youssef Cherif, a Tunis-based political analyst, and not by the gun.

Mr. Bousselmi, the gay rights activist, is torn, wondering whether gay rights can progress under one-man rule.

I dont know. Will I accept forgetting about my activism for the sake of the economy? Mr. Bousselmi said. I really want things to start changing in the country, but well have to pay a very heavy price.

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What Have We Done With Democracy? A Decade On, Arab Spring Gains Wither - The New York Times

Fan-favorite guest James Carville returns to ask, What is Merrick Garland doing by the way? I dont think this man knows whether to wind his ass or scratch his watch while arguing that its time to lock up Steve Bannon on the way to locking up Donald TrumpYou cant have the most famous person in the United States blatantly committing crimes.

And Carville talks with Molly Jong-Fast about the critically important... high stakes Virginia raceThis shit is hard but if you dont do it Im not exaggerating to say that they come back in power in 2024, you can kiss this democracys ass goodbye, its goneand explains what Democrats are getting wrong about their most frustrating senator:

Subscribe to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Overcast. To listen to our weekly members-only bonus episodes, join Beast Inside here. Already a member? You can listen here and sign up for new episode email alerts here.

Manchin is an Italian, Roman Catholic Democrat from Virginia. A Democrat has not carried a county in West Virginia since 2008. Your choice is not Manchin or Bernie Sanders. Your choice is Manchin or Marsha Blackburn. So what do you want?

Plus, Alec Ross, former senior adviser for innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, talks about his new book, The Raging 2020s, and why We need to fundamentally rewrite the social contract, and author and activist Ryan Hampton, talks about the Sacklers great deal in the Purdue settlement, and how this whole thing was a set up from day one in which victims were sidelined every step of the way.

Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.

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Either Merrick Garland Gets to Work or We Can Kiss Democracy Goodbye - The Daily Beast

By fleeing to the political extremes, a co-equal House of Congress is abdicating its lawmaking power.

About the author: Daniel Lipinski is a former U.S. representative from Illinois.

In the fight over if and when a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill would take place and whether it would be tied to a vote on President Joe Bidens broader economic agenda, one fact was overlooked: House Democrats passed their own infrastructure bill in July. The reason you havent heard much about that measure is that the House acquiesced to the Senates demand that it vote on the Senates bill without amendment. In doing this, the House accepted a bill that not only omitted many progressive priorities but also had no input from its members.

If the irrelevance of the House in this negotiation were an unusual case, it may not be cause for concern. But this is the way most major laws have been made for the past decade: They are products of the Senate with little or no House involvement. This is because the Housewhether controlled by Democrats or Republicansnow acts as if it were a unicameral legislature in a parliamentary system, rather than acknowledging that it is only one of two legislative chambers in a presidential system. It routinely passes partisan legislation that cannot pass in the Senate, because it is too far out of the American ideological center. The result is a House of Representatives that now serves only to either block orin the case of must pass legislationrubber-stamp Senate bills on major issues. Members of the House have largely given up their power, and thus their constituents power, to create legislation that addresses our nations biggest problems.

From the November 2018 issue: How Newt Gingrich destroyed American politics

This state of affairs is not what the Founders intended. Two of the main reasons the Framers of the Constitution created two chambers of Congress were to provide Americans with multiple access points to the lawmaking process, and to force representatives and senators to deliberate and compromise. They believed that this would not only produce the best laws but also promote the legitimacy of these laws, because the manifold voices in our nation would have the potential to be heard through their representatives as well as their senators.

As I wrote in a chapter of Under the Iron Dome, a recently published anthology, members of the House now mainly represent their party and its platform rather than their constituents diverse views. Through changes in the rules, members have relinquished much of their individual power and disempowered committees in order to give their party leaders the ability to shape legislation for the purpose of pursuing the partys goals. In formulating legislation, party leaders cater to interest groups, activists, and donors aligned with the party to build electoral support. These supporters tend to be further toward the ideological extremes. Little to no effort is expended to pick up votes from the other party in the legislative process. This may be a reasonable way to legislate in a single-chamber parliamentary system, but the House is only one half of one branch in the American lawmaking process.

The problem with the House legislating in this manner is compounded by the prevalence of divided government, where control of the White House, the House, and the Senate is split between the parties. Divided government has occurred more than 30 out of the past 41 years, or 40 out of 41 when considering the need for 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster. During these periods, only bipartisan bills can become law, and partisan House legislating only contributes to gridlock. Sometimes, however, a consensus emerges that legislation must be passed to address a particular issue. When this has occurred in the past decade, the necessary bipartisan compromise bill has been written in the Senate and passed without changes by the House. This happened in October 2013 and January 2018, when Republicans controlled the House and a compromise was needed to end a government shutdown. But it also happens when the House is in Democratic hands. In 2019, when there was a humanitarian crisis at the southern border, a bipartisan bill produced in the Republican Senate became law, because the bill passed by House Democrats could not pass in the Senate.

Read: Political polarization killed the filibuster

When one of the two chambers of Congress is not contributing to lawmaking on the most important issues facing our country, our democracy is not healthy. It is especially troublesome when the weak link is the House, because that chamber was intended to play a preeminent role in ensuring the peoples democratic control of the republic. The House has always been considered the bulwark of American democracy.

Could we solve this problem by eliminating the Senate filibuster? Perhaps. But divided government is now prevalent. And even when Republicans had unified control in 2017 and 2018, and used the budget-reconciliation process to skirt the filibuster in their attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and enact big tax cuts, the Senate still largely determined the outcome on both bills. The Build Back Better reconciliation bill will again test whether the House can generate leverage vis--vis the Senate even without the filibuster.

Jane Chong: This is not the Senate the Framers imagined

Another option to make the House more effective at legislating, and to open up the possibility of more voices being heard in the lawmaking process, would be to change the chambers rules to re-empower individual members and committees, thus providing more opportunities for bipartisan legislating to occur in the House. The bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus, of which I was a member, attempted to do this in 2018, when it endorsed a package of rule changes. Leveraging our votes in the January 2019 speaker-of-the-House election enabled us to win a few changes. A new speaker will be elected in the next Congress (assuming that Nancy Pelosi keeps her pledge to step down or Republicans become the majority), presenting another opportunity to secure rule reforms. But if nothing changes, the peoples House will continue to produce more theatrics than solutions, failing the people and our democracy.

The rest is here:
The House of Representatives Is Failing America - The Atlantic

Great crises in American political life often produce a new hero, someone whose courage and charisma capture the imagination of the decent half of the country.

In the 1950s, when Joe McCarthy terrorized America with wild claims of communists lurking in every army barracks and state department corridor, it was an attorney, Joseph Welch, who demanded of the Wisconsin senator: At long last, sir, have you no sense of decency?

Twenty years later, when the country was transfixed by the Watergate hearings, it was a folksy senator from North Carolina, a first world war veteran named Sam Ervin, who won hearts with sayings like: There is nothing in the constitution that authorizes or makes it the official duty of a president to have anything to do with criminal activities.

Forty years on, after Donald Trump entered the White House mining what Adam Schiff calls a dangerous vein of autocratic thought in the Republican party, the then little-known California Democrat did more than anyone else to unravel and excoriate the high crimes of a charlatan destined to be the only president twice impeached.

During the pandemic, Schiff used his confinement to write a memoir which offers a beguiling mix of the personal and political. The book, Midnight in Washington, is full of new details about investigations of the presidents treason and how the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the Democratic caucus decided impeachment was necessary.

But the human side of the story is the most compelling part: the history of Schiffs Jewish-immigrant ancestors, the sustenance he received from a brilliant wife and a devoted son and daughter, a career path that made him the perfect person to meet his moment in history.

I enjoyed writing the first part of the book the most, Schiff told the Guardian. In so many ways I feel like the life I had before Trump prepared me for the national trial that was to come.

The prosecution of an FBI agent for spying for the Russians. Living in eastern Europe and watching the rise of an autocrat in Czechoslovakia literally tear the country apart. And my own familys history in eastern Europe. All of these things seemed to prepare me without knowing it for the rise of a xenophobic autocrat in our own country.

In choppy political waters, a brilliant spouse is a great advantage especially one who sometimes knows you better than you know yourself. When the Democratic establishment recruited him to run for Congress, after he was elected to the California senate, Schiff thought he was undecided. His wife, Eve, knew otherwise.

Youre going to do it, she said, after he came back from meetings in Washington.

I dont know, he replied.

Yes, you do, said Eve. Youre going to do it.

She was right.

Schiffs love of bipartisanship, which ended with the Trump presidency, was inherited from his father, a yellow dog Democrat (a person who would vote for a yellow dog before he would vote Republican) and his Republican mother.

His father offered him advice that has served him all his life: As long as you are good at what you do, there will always be a demand for you.

This was a very liberating idea, Schiff writes, that all I needed to do was focus on being good at my chosen profession and the rest would take care of itself.

His work as a federal prosecutor who got the conviction of the first FBI agent accused of spying for Russia was crucial to his understanding of how thoroughly Trump was manipulated by the Russians. He understood that Michael Cohens efforts during the campaign to close a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow would make Trump vulnerable to blackmail if his lawyers calls had been recorded. And he was astonished when he realized that that kind of kompromat wouldnt even be necessary.

When Trump did become president, there would be no need for the Kremlin to blackmail him into betraying Americas interests, Schiff writes. To a remarkable degree, he would prove more than willing to do that on his own.

Theres lots more in the book, from Schiffs unsuccessful effort to convince New York Times editors to remind readers the emails they were publishing to undermine Hillary Clinton had been stolen by the Russians for that very purpose, to Schiffs revelation that if he had known how poorly Robert Mueller would perform as a witness after he completed his stint as special counsel, he would not have demanded his testimony.

I havent said this before this book, he told the Guardian. That was one of the difficult sections of the book to write because I have such reverence for Mueller. I wanted to be respectful but accurate.

Schiff is still at the center of political events. He sits on the House select committee investigating the deadly Capitol attack and dealing with Trumps obstruction.

On the page, he also recalls a hearing in 2017 when he asked representatives of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube if their algorithms were having the effect of balkanizing the public and deepening the divisions in our society.

Facebooks general counsel pretended: The data on this is actually quite mixed.

Maybe that was so, Schiff writes, but it didnt seem very mixed to me.

Asked if he thought this weeks testimony from the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen would create enough pressure to pass new laws regulating social media platforms, Schiff said: The answer is yes.

I think we need regulation to protect peoples private data. I think we need to narrow the scope of the safe harbor these companies enjoy if they dont moderate their contents and continue to amplify anger and hate. I think we need to insist on a vehicle for more transparency so we understand the data better.

But then he cautioned: If you bet against Congress, you win 90% of the time.

On the page, Schiff records an airport exchange with a Republican stranger, who said: You can tell me theres nothing to this collusion stuff, is there?

It is a conversation which should put that question permanently to rest.

Schiff said: What if I was to tell you that we had evidence in black and white that the Russians approached the Clinton campaign and offered dirt on Donald Trump, then met secretly with Chelsea Clinton, John Podesta and Robby Mook in the Brooklyn headquarters of the campaign then Hillary lied about it to cover it up. Would you call that collusion?

Now what If I also told you that after the election, former national security adviser Susan Rice secretly talked with the Russian ambassador in an effort to undermine US sanctions on Russia after they interfered to help Hillary win. Would you call that collusion?

The Republican was convinced: You know, I probably would.

For Schiff, it was a eureka moment.

Now, he thought, if I can only speak to a couple hundred million people.

Schiffs book should convince a few million more that everything he said about Trump was true and that the country was exceptionally lucky to have him ready and willing to defend the tattered concept of truth.

This article was amended on 11 October 2021. An earlier version misnamed Joseph Welch as Joseph Walsh.

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A xenophobic autocrat: Adam Schiff on Trumps threat to democracy - The Guardian

The rise of autocrats around the world is the focus of the Distinguished Professor Lecture.

Illinois State Universitys Distinguished ProfessorAli Riaz will present The Rise of AutocratsDemocratic Backsliding and the Middle Class at 5 p.m. November 9, in the Old Main Room of the Bone Student Center at Illinois State University.

Dr.Riaz notes that less than half of the global population now lives under some sort of democracy. We are witnessing the erosion, decay, and in some instances, outright collapse of democracy like never before, said Riaz, who exploresthe new middle class as a supporter of rising authoritarianism across the globe.

The event is free and open to the public.

We are witnessing the erosion, decay, and in some instances, outright collapse of democracy like never before.

Riaz is an internationally recognized expert on democratization, political Islam, violent extremism, South Asian politics, and Bangladeshi politics with a specific interest in the interaction of politics and religion. He is a nonresident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council, and thepresident of The American Institute of Bangladesh Studies (AIBS).

Testifying twice before the U.S. Congress, Riaz has served as an expert and consultant to national and international organizations and governments, including theNationalEndowmentforDemocracyin Washington, D.C.; theInternational Expert Network on Islamism of the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs;the Bertelsmann Foundation of Germany;Woodrow Wilson InternationalCenter;and the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum of the Social Science Research Council of the U.S.A.

Among his many scholarly works, Riazhas penned and/or editedReligion and Politics in South Asia(2021),Voting in a Hybrid Regime: Explaining the 2018 Bangladeshi Elections(2019),Political Violence in South Asia,Lived Islam and Islamism in Bangladesh(2017), andBangladesh: A Political History Since Independence(2016).His other notable works include:God Willing: The Politics of Islamism in Bangladesh(2004),Faithful Education: Madrassahs in South Asia(2008),Islamist Militancy in Bangladesh: A Complex Web(2008), andIslam and Identity Politics Among British-Bangladeshis: A Leap of Faith(2013).

Riazscommentary is oftensoughtby national media, with hisexpertiseappearing in Deutsche Welle(DW), CNN,The Economist,The Daily Star(Bangladesh),TRT (Turkey), andThe New York Timesamong others.

Those with questionson the lecture can emailjadarga@ilstu.edu.

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Eroding democracy and the rise of autocrats: Distinguished Professor Lecture, November 9 - Illinois State University News