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Anne Applebaums Twilight of Democracy.

The rise of authoritarianism and divisional politics that tear friends and countries apart.

Power and influence of course. Applebaum makes her point by describing the turn of events in Poland in 2015 when voters swung to support a group of men that came to violate their constitution. They packed the Polish Supreme Court, established control of the media, fired thousands of experienced public servants replacing them with sycophants and inexperienced relatives of the party leaders.

Sounds vaguely like the Trump playbook, observed Phineas.

It got worse. They fired experienced military leaders, dismantled the diplomatic corps, and intimidated cultural institutions.

Let me guess. A sociopath used intimidation to challenge the previous administration, falsehoods to whittle away at trust in governmental institutions such as the courts and public establishments such as the free press.

He casted dispersions on civility towards Islamic citizens and immigrants, demeaning truthful and respectful discourse, I added.

All with the pretense of draining the swamp and making government more efficient, said Phineas.

Pretty much sums it up. Four years ago, here, a demagogue respecting only himself claimed to be the expert who could accomplish the necessary changes, I replied.

Trump told 30,573 falsehoods. Why did the competent and altruistic people in positions of influence abdicate their responsibilities and allow egotistical polarization to run rampant, destroying functioning democratic norms and the rule of law?

Applebaum demonstrates that polarization is the norm in many societies and sustained unity an anomaly. Rules of law are increasingly viewed with suspicion as archaic, supported by old, white men with personal agendas. The general populace generally abhors complexity and change. People tend to favor the comfort of placing their trust in a confident, even arrogant authority figure, despite the slow creeping loss of their voices in the political process.

Similar losses of autonomy occur in the corporate worlds of fashion and music, but tend to be short lived and cyclical, added an unusually astute Phineas.

Skepticism about democracy is normal. Democracy moves slowly and is inherently complicated. The cacophony in unpleasant. Sustaining a vibrant democratic system takes commitment and hard work.

We worked hard to elect President Biden, said Phineas. Hopefully we can return to trusting scientific evidence.

Advice from scientists will continue to bother people untrained in critical thinking who fall prey to glitzy, superficial social media repeating blatant lies. The easy appeal of authoritarianism is eternal.

I remember reading The Mouse That Roared, recalled Phineas. The Dutchy of Grand Fenwick was run by a benevolent dictator. The citizens loved it.

Jefferson was concerned the uneducated masses could win control of government by the popular vote. He introduced the Electoral College, giving the Senate final decision to certify the Presidential victory.

Unfortunately, irrational passions can lead to destructive anger as we saw on January 6th.

Perhaps that riot was a poorly attempted coup against our seat of Democracy.

Applebaum sounds like a good read.

Read it now or live it later.

Greg Kujala is a resident of Winchester.

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Open forum: Phineas on the 'Twilight of Democracy' - The Winchester Star

The primary reason for the massive fall was the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that came into being in January 2020.

India versus rest of South AsiaWhile being categorized as a flawed democracy, at first glance, India fares better than its neighboring countries. However, while India has been falling in the ranks, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Pakistan have improved marginally in 2020. Even those countries which saw a fall in scores, none were as massive as Indias drop.

The judiciarys sensitivity was seen yet again when lawyer and activist Prashant Bhushan was brought under the scanner for tweets criticizing the government.

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Creators of shows like Tandav, Sacred Games, and others have been dragged to court after being accused of hurting religious sentiments.

Most recently, the Uttarakhand Director General of Police Ashok Kumar stated that the state police will track people posting anti-national and anti-social posts on social media to be taken into consideration when verifying passport and arms.

When critics questioned why persecuted Muslims were left out of the Act, the government said that in the three countries specified, Muslims are the majority and not persecuted. However, many debaters have pointed out that Muslims are a minority in Nepal and Sri Lanka, and the amendment excludes them.

Whats worse, the government had planned to execute the National Registrar of Citizens, which would identify the undocumented and illegal migrants. However, if any non-Muslim gets caught without papers, he could be reinstated under the CAA. But a Muslim does not have the safety net that other communities have.

India scores well for its electoral process but takes a hit in political culture

Indias health budget sees a 137% jump in 2021

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New citizenship law pulls India down in the democracy rankings and 2021 is not looking better - Business Insider India

Asia represents a critical frontier for democratic governance that will shape the geopolitical landscape of the 21st century. Democratic states in the region face increasing strain from an interconnected set of challenges across political, economic, and cultural dynamics. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, uncertainty about American strategy, the implications of emerging technologies, and support for illiberal populism and authoritarianism by policymakers and foreign actors have tested democratic norms in the region.

On Friday, January 29, as part of the initiative on Democracy in Asia, the Foreign Policy program at Brookings hosted an event examining the health of democracy in Asia. Following opening remarks by Brookings President John R. Allen, Taiwan Digital Minister Audrey Tang delivered a pre-recorded keynote address and respond to questions. A moderated panel with regional experts and scholars then explored the ongoing intraregional challenges and trends affecting democratic governments and institutions across the Indo-Pacific. Following the conversation, panelists took questions from the audience.

Viewers submitted questions by emailing events@brookings.edu or via Twitter at #DemocracyInAsia.

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The future of democracy in Asia - Brookings Institution

For many people, the lesson from the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and more broadly from the experience of the last four years is that American democracy has become newly and dangerously fragile.

That conclusion is overstated. In fact, American democracy has always been fragile. And it might be more precise to diagnose the United States as a fragile union rather than a fragile democracy. As President Joe Biden said in his inaugural address, national unity is that most elusive of things.

Certainly, faith in American democracy has been battered over the last year. Polls show that 1 in 4 Americans do not recognize Joe Biden as the legitimate winner of the 2020 election. The turn to violence on Capitol Hill was a disturbing attack on an important symbol of U.S. democracy.

But there are four other factors that should be considered to evaluate the true state of the nation. Taking these into account, what emerges is a picture of a country that, despite its long tradition of presenting itself as exceptional, looks a lot like the other struggling democracies of the world.

First, fragility is not really new. Its misleading to describe the United States as the worlds oldest democracy, as many observers have recently done. By modern definitions of the concept, the United States has only been a democracy for about 60 years. Despite constitutional guarantees, most Black Americans could not vote in important elections before the 1960s, nor did they have basic civil rights. Like many other countries, the United States is still working to consolidate democratic ideals.

Similarly, the struggle to contain political violence is not new. Washington has certainly seen its share of such violence. Since 1950, there have been multiple bombings and shootings at the U.S. Capitol and the White House. Troops have been deployed to keep order in Washington four times since World War I during riots and unrest in 1919 and 1968, economic protests in 1932, and again in 2021. The route from the Capitol to the White House passes near the spots where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, James Garfield was fatally shot in 1881, and Harry Truman was attacked in 1950.

Political instability is also a familiar feature of economic downturns. There were similar fears about the end of democracy during the 1970s, when the United States wrestled with inflation and unemployment, and during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Of course, those fears had some justification. Many people wondered whether democratic governments could rise to new challenges. But there is evidence from historical episodes like this that democracies do eventually adapt indeed, that they are better at adapting than non-democratic systems like the Soviet Union, which collapsed in 1991.

Finally, the debate about American democracy is fixated excessively on politics at the national level. This fixation has been aggravated by the way that the media and internet have developed over the last 30 years. Political debate focuses more and more heavily on Washington. But the American political system also includes 50 state governments and 90,000 local governments. More than half a million people in the United States occupy a popularly elected office. Democratic practices may be imperfect, but they are extensive and not easily undone.

On balance, claims about the fragility of American democracy should be taken seriously, but with a sense of proportion. Events since the November 2020 election have been troubling, but they do not signal an impending collapse of Americas democratic experiment.

It might be more useful to think of the present crisis in other terms. The real difficulty confronting the country might be a fragile national union, rather than a fragile democracy.

Since the 1990s, the country has seen the emergence of deep fissures between what came to be called red and blue America two camps with very different views about national priorities and the role of federal government in particular. The result has been increasing rancor and gridlock in Washington.

Again, this sort of division is not new to American politics. The United States did not become established in American speech as a singular rather than a plural noun until after the Civil War. Until the 1950s, it was commonplace to describe the United States as a composite of sections North, South and West with distinctive interests and cultures.

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In 1932, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Frederick Jackson Turner compared the United States to Europe, describing it as a federation of nations held together through careful diplomacy.

It was only in the 1960s that this view of the United States faded away. Advances in transportation and communications seemed to forge the country into a single economic and cultural unit.

But politicians overestimated this transformation.

Since the 1990s, old divisions have re-emerged.

Americas current political class has not fully absorbed this reality. Too often, it has taken unity for granted, forgetting the countrys long history of sectional conflict. Because they took unity for granted, many new presidents in the modern era were tempted to launch their administrations with ambitious programs that galvanized followers while antagonizing opponents. However, this winner-take-all style may not be well suited to the needs of the present moment. It may aggravate divisions rather than rebuilding unity.

Only 20 years ago, many Americans buoyed by an economic boom and the collapse of the Soviet Union were convinced that their model of governance was on the brink of conquering the world. President George W. Bush declared American-style democracy to be the single sustainable model for national success. By contrast, many people today worry that this model is on the brink of collapse.

The hubris of the early 2000s was misguided, and so is the despair of 2021. Like many other countries, the United States is engaged in a never-ending effort to maintain unity, contain political violence and live up to democratic principles.

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What those mourning the fragility of American democracy get wrong - The Conversation US

PHOTO: GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

Will the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harrisa transition made orderly with barbed wire, National Guard soldiers, and the closure of downtown Washington, D.C.be remembered as an inflection point? After 4 years of boorish incivility, incendiary nativist extremism, a crippling pandemic, resurgent racism, and riotous mobs incited to attack the Capitol, can the United States rebuild its civic and moral infrastructure? To repair the damage and prepare the next generation of citizens and leaders requires a new spirit of cooperation between the science and civics education communities.

About 30 years ago, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, the publisher of Science) recommended major overhauls of science education. The drive for reform confronted partisan conflicts along the way, but the good news is that more students today benefit from stimulating instruction in many subjects. Now the country must sustain this momentum for progress in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) while heeding the call for more attention to civics, the humanities, and the foundations of democratic pluralism.

This is not a zero-sum competition. STEM priorities can be aligned withand reinforceideals of social responsibility and the public good. The inspired choices of Eric Lander for director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and Alondra Nelson as OSTP deputy director for science and society can put American science policy back on track. With their leadership and a joint effort of the Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Education, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and philanthropies, the country can build on the 2013 Next Generation Science Standards to promote the needed coordination.

What ingredients should be included in this recipe for reform? Policy-makers and legislators must acknowledge the effects of economic inequality on educational outcomes and invest resources to protect disadvantaged youth. Research on disruptions caused by the pandemic shows that, on average, American students in K12 experienced less learning loss than anticipated, but for disadvantaged and minority children, the setbacks were substantially worse. This is no surprise to researchers who study the effects of poverty and racism on achievement. A strategy to raise average performance in STEM while shrinking the variance would help instill an ethos of the common gooda core aspiration of civics.

Good science education means equitable science education. This principle will require sustained efforts to expunge biases associated with race, gender, and class from curricula and school culture. As the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson noted, we must work toward a world where students will succeed in science because ofnot despitewhat happened in school. Research on the origins of bias and its effects is bringing new ideas into the development of methods to combat discrimination in K12 schools, colleges, and universities. Again, good science and good citizenship are mutually reinforcing.

Americans know that educational opportunity is the ticket to economic and social advancement. In recent polling by PDK International, 70% of parents said that education issues influenced their vote for president in the 2020 election. Let's seize on this evidence and hold government accountable for ensuring that all students learn in safe classrooms with skilled and dedicated teachers, modern lab equipment and digital technologies, experienced school leaders, and a curriculum that logically connects science with social studies, humanities, and language arts.

Certainly, not every young person will become a practicing scientist, but every student should appreciate the processes of scientific inquiry and its uses. In the United States and other countries, relations between the scientific community and government can be tense. But today, the United States is suffering from years of distrust for evidenceabout the pandemic, climate change, racism, immigration, and the economy. Let's integrate into hands-on STEM education some hands-on learning about objective inquiry as a cornerstone of American democracy and the preparation of a well-informed citizenry.

President Biden says he is determined to restore dignity to government and trust in science. Miguel Cardona, the nominee for Education Secretary, is a seasoned educator whose path from poverty to leadership exemplifies the possibilities even in the nation's fractured system. The country must work with them toward the inseparable goals of scientific excellence and fulfillment of our noblest egalitarian dreams.

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Science, civics, and democracy - Science Magazine