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A week is a long time in politics. Last Wednesday, armed supporters of President Trump stormed the sanctity of the Capitol, the temple of American democracy. This Wednesday, President Trump became the first president in American history to be impeached twice. Next Wednesday, Joseph Biden will be anointed president, guarded by 20,000 National Guard in battle gear against not foreign enemies, but domestic threats. This was supposed to happen only in Hollywood movie scripts.

Consider these bizarre facts: the pandemic is claiming more than 4,000 deaths daily in the US; digital media like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have banned tweets and comments by their own president; all US stock market indices are still rising, and Bitcoin has surged by 27.9 percent in 13 days.

The article of impeachment stated in more stark terms than any foreign commentator would dare to express: "President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government. He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperilled a coequal branch of Government. He thereby betrayed his trust as president, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, Donald John Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law. Donald John Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honour, trust, or profit under the United States."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi summed it up as "he is a clear and present danger to the nation."

Arguably, Trump has committed the sin of poisoning the well of democracy, not just in America, but for the rest of the world.

Although Western democrats extol its virtues back to the Greek Age, modern liberal democracy is very recent. As late as 1978, only one third of the world lived in democracies; by 2015, more than half do. But since then, populism, Brexit and Trumpism have caused many to lament that democracy is receding. Today, the gold standard of liberal democracy in America is being tested, if not questioned.

The problem is that liberal democracy based on social equality, rule of law, tolerance of diversity, is a work in progress. Given very different cultures, history, religion and institutional set-ups, democracy is practiced differently, requiring huge efforts by all citizens. Democracy has no performance accountability when what is promised is not delivered. That became evident when the 2008 global financial crisis accentuated rising social inequality and insecurity to large segments of the population. Democratic politics fragmented and did not seem to be able to deliver on its promises.

Austrian economist and political philosopher Joseph Schumpeter became famous for his observation that the driver of capitalism was entrepreneurship, which led to creative destruction. He was equally original and sharp in his realist analysis of democracy. In his classic Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, four conditions must be satisfied for democracy to work: the quality of politicians in terms of ability and moral character; social consensus that democracy does not solve everything; a well-trained and effective bureaucracy; and finally, "effective competition for leadership requires a large measure of tolerance for difference of opinion."

Schumpeter understood that democracy has difficulty in making decisions when society is deeply divided. Vote-seeking behaviour means that policies are always for the short-term, so politicians under serve the long-term interests of the nation. For example, democratic and rich countries like Australia cannot even agree on dealing with climate change, because vested interests in the mining industry consistently block change through lobbying. If democracies cannot deliver long-term structural reforms that are painful and unpopular, then in the long-run, citizens will seek alternatives, such as autocracies or anocracies (democracy with autocratic characteristics).

Trump put American democracy in clear and present danger by violating all four Schumpeter conditions. First, nearly half the voting population ignored his moral issues, because they believed him calling the mainstream news as "fake". Second, he violated many of the unspoken rules, codes and conventions that buttressed democratic checks and balances, aided by lawyers and attorney generals whom he also threw under the bus. Third, he questioned the loyalty and efficacy of the vaunted American bureaucracy, which then failed to protect the Capitol from violent protests. Lastly, he openly sought division, rather than work bi-partisanly to heal social divisions.

Asians have much to learn from Schumpeter, who foresaw that democracy is about majority rule, but works in practice through an elite that deals in votes rather than in money. Since capitalism by definition values money more than labour, money under financial capitalism has a nasty habit of corrupting politics. How to control money politics from corroding diverse rights and public goods is a perennial issue in all systems of governance.

If there is one lesson that should resonate in Asia, it is that violence cannot be an answer to the democratic process. Trump realised too late that inciting violence in his supporters to protect his version of electoral victory ended up with him denouncing violence in the name of law and order. Retribution occurs to those who incite violence abroad, because violence can bounce back at home.

Next week, the Trump Reality Show will thankfully end, and life will return to some form of normality, so we can address the threats of pandemic and job losses without being diverted by another tweet. For Trump, impeachment will only withdraw his right to hold further public office. He was made by media, and he will be haunted by media for the rest of his life. But he will go on to earn millions from book sales and paid appearances.

The clear and present danger to democracy is a distorted system where heads I win, tails you lose. We need to change this system, but we don't know how to do this democratically. Perhaps Joe Biden has the answer.

Andrew Sheng is an honorary adviser with the CIMB Asean Research Institute and a distinguished fellow with the Asia Global Institute at the University of Hong Kong. He writes on global issues for the Asia News Network (ANN), an alliance of 24 news media titles across the region, which includes The Daily Star.

Link:
Democracy in clear and present danger - The Daily Star

Coronavirus has caused the deaths of thousands in the United States, but we still cannot come together as a country to tackle this virus before more peoples lives are taken. At the beginning of the pandemic, the CDC announced that wearing a mask would prevent the spread of Covid-19, and therefore would save lives. Dr. Robert R. Redfield, director of the CDC, announces, Cloth face coverings are one of the most powerful weapons we have to slow and stop the spread of the virus (CDC Calls on Americans). Even when experts say that wearing a face mask would save lives, many still refuse to wear them consistently, which results in more deaths among United States citizens. Americas founding fathers would have wanted us to unite as a country to save the lives of fellow Americans, especially our most vulnerable.

On May 25th, 2020, George Floyd, a black man, was killed in Minneapolis when a police officer pressed his knee on Floyds neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds. This event was recorded, resulting in outrage and started many protests around the United States and other parts of the world. Several protests became headlines in the news, and showed the attendees shouting, Black Lives Matter. Author of a National Geographic article, Thomas Sugrue says, Floyd was one of approximately 1,100 people killed annually by police (Surgue1). Hoping for an end to police brutality, particularly against African Americans, protesters call for equality in the justice system; but the fight is not over yet. Nobody would have thought people of color would still have to fight for equality in a country known for its freedoms.

Continued here:
Voice of Democracy: Is this the country our Founding Fathers envisioned? by Meredith DeGarmo - The Westby Times

This web extra is part of our hour "Voter Roundtable: Americans Talk Across Divides."

Listener voices drive On Point. We get many voicemails, emails and social media messages with your thoughts, concerns and questions. Today, as a web exclusive we share some messages about insurrection and impeachment that we couldn't get on the show.

Here's just one story:

Mindy lives in Alleghany County in North Carolina. And couple of days ago, Mindy reached out to On Point to say she's frustrated by the way her community largely Republican and supportive of Trump is portrayed by the media.

We called her up to hear more about what her community's thinking right now, and what she wants listeners to know.

"I remember one word used was the word fringe. And I don't feel like the fringe," Mindy says. "Where we live, within a 100 mile radius, in any direction ... Joe Biden only got 18-26% of the vote. And President Trump got 72-80% of the vote."

"There are still signs about the 2020 election up," she says. "I'm not saying that they don't except the election results. But they're showing their support for the man."

Hear Mindy's story and more in today's web extra on insurrection, impeachment and democracy.

Got a comment, question or thought? Call our voicemail line at 617-353-0683. We look forward to hearing from you!

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Mailbag: Your Voicemails On Insurrection, Impeachment And Democracy - WBUR

Turkey invites all parties in US to use moderation, common sense to overcome this domestic political crisis, tweeted Turkeys Anadolu news agency as the Capitol siege played out on television screens across the world. It wasnt the only one savoring the schadenfreude.

Wisecracks like Protesters storm parliament in this former British colony flew thick and fast worldwide, highlighting the irony of a putsch in a country that sees itself as the global gatekeeper of democratic propriety. It didnt help that the legislative stronghold of what is still the worlds only superpower fell to a crowd of rioters, many animated by kooky conspiracy theories of satanic deep states run by blood-drinking pedophiles.

In India, which makes common cause with the U.S. for supposedly shared democratic values, a much-circulated tweet read, Wow! Waking up to the news that United States of America has become Uttar Pradesh, referring to the lawless north Indian state ruled by a Hindu supremacist with a record of rioting and rabble rousing against Muslims. Sarcasm ruled the airwaves. Talking heads on television waxed eloquent on the stability of the Indian democratic system and what the U.S. could learn from Indias unbroken record of peaceful transfers of power for seven decades (longer than the 55 years America has had as a multiracial democracy since the passing of the Voting Rights Act). Newspaper headlines cut to the heart of the tumult in sharp banner headlines. The Times of India ran with Coup Klux Klan.

Read more: Theyre Jumping Ship. Inside the Lonely End of the Trump Presidency

Never one to waste a good crisis, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted to his 64.7 million followers: Distressed to see news about rioting and violence in Washington DC. Orderly and peaceful transfer of power must continue. The democratic process cannot be allowed to be subverted through unlawful protests.

Modis statesman-like message was multi-purpose. It put some distance between himself and Donald Trump, whose re-election Modi had openly endorsed. The tweet, washing his hands of a lost cause, also worked to de-legitimize a peaceful, months-long farmers protest in India by obliquely equating it with the violence in Washington. Most importantly, it was Modis way of breaking out of the Trump-Erdogan-Putin-Orban league that he finds himself in these days as Indias democratic credentials continue to wither.

In its Democracy Report 2020, Swedens V-Dem Institute lists India among the top 10 fastest autocratizing countries, on the verge of losing its status as a democracy. Modis ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) now scores as high on its illiberalism index as the ruling parties of Turkey, Hungary and Poland.

Hungary lost its status as democracy in 2018 and Turkey in 2014. As the global rise of populist demagogues in these countries show, unlawful protests are not how democratic processes are subverted, as Modi would have us believe. That comes about by weakening and destroying democratic institutions from within. By silent institutional capture, rather than rowdy marches on legislatures. By surgical strikes, rather than cavalry charges. If anything, the attack on Americas symbol of democracy was an act of frustration at the failure to subvert its substance.

Roses are left at the fence which now surrounds the US Capitol building three days after it was stormed, invaded and vandalized by Trump rioters in Washington, D.C., January 9, 2021.

Astrid Riecken for the Washington Post via Getty Images

The storming of the Capitol occasions introspection on many thingssuch as the seemingly irreversible distrust of the liberal democratic projectbut institutional capture is not one of them. From the slow but meticulous counting of votes to the judiciarys thwarting of the legal maneuvers challenging the election result, the built-in checks and balances of Americas governing institutions have proven to be resilient enough to withstand an aberration like Trump.

The same cannot be said of the countries ruled by his fellow demagogues who now feign democratic virtue on Twitter. The fact is, the likes of Modi wouldnt need to unleash their supporters to take control of the legislature. Thanks to the malleable institutions they preside over, they already have their legislatures on a tight leash.

The marauding mobs at the Capitol were reportedly looking to hang Mike Pence. The vice-president had earned their wrath for refusing to overturn the election as their master had commanded. Many other prominent Republican leaders similarly refused to play ball. For anybody with a passing familiarity with Indian politics, the prospect of Modis powerful home minister and de facto deputy, Amit Shah, or any other party leader, refusing to carry out the big mans wishes would be laughable.

If Modi asked his Brad Raffensperger to find 11,780 votes, he damn well would. In fact, Modi wouldnt even have to ask. Shah would see to it that Raffenspergers counterpart delivered. Besides, votes are nothing. Shah is a master at making opposition legislators switch sides through inducements and intimidation, and thereby flipping elected state governments. In several states once ruled by opposition parties, thats how power has been transferred, without violence, or even elections. Indian commentators are righttheres much to learn here.

Indias ever-expanding ruling party, legislature and government have become an extension of the personality of one man, who also has expanded control over notionally autonomous bodies such as the central bank, the election commission, the bureaucracy and investigative and regulatory agencies. Even the judiciary is not immune to his overarching influence. Trump can only wish he had that kind of power, but the soundness of Americas institutions wouldnt let him.

The U.S. judiciary remained non-partisan throughout the post-election saga. Of the 60-odd legal challenges to overturn the election result, Trump lost all except one. Neither the 53 judges he appointed to the federal appeals courts in four years, nor the three he sent to the Supreme Court (where the conservatives enjoy a 6-3 majority), helped. Judicial propriety triumphed politics.

Read more: How Trumps Effort to Steal the Election Tore Apart the GOPand the Country

Not so for countries whose demagogues are clubbed together with Trump. In Turkey, thousands of judges and prosecutors have been sacked or thrown into jail and replaced by regime-friendly novices. In India, it hasnt come to that, yet, but the top judiciary has become visibly accommodating of Modis preferences even though he doesntunlike in the US systemget to appoint judges. Once a champion of judicial activism, Indias Supreme Court now studiously toes the governments line and looks away from the grossest violations of civil liberties as the jails fill up with prisoners of conscience locked up on dubious charges of terror and sedition.

The U.S. military also continues to be similarly apolitical. We do not take an oath to a king or a queen, a tyrant or a dictatorWe take an oath to the Constitution, warned Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as fears grew that Trump might order the troops out to quell protests if he chose not to give up power.

But more than the party-legislative system, the judiciary and the military, the one democratic institution in the US that has stood out in its defiant autonomy from coercive executive power throughout Trumps four years is the media. The sharpest attacks on Trumps conduct and policies have not come from China or Russia, but from Americas own mastheads and television channels.

Even Trump could not change the established conventions of government-press relations. His horrible mismanagement of the pandemic notwithstanding, the most powerful man on earth was obliged to take hard questions at routine press conferences as the crisis unfolded. In India, which Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz calls the poster child of what not to do in a pandemic, journalists never had the chanceModi hasnt held a press conference in his six years in power. Not that they would ask terribly tough questions if he did, given the self-censorship and obsequity that rule much of Indias mainstream media today.

Though Turkey tries to tweet-shame America on the Capitol attack, its independent journalists have faced detentions and criminal investigations for reporting on the governments management of the pandemic. For countries like India and Turkey, where a once vibrant free press has been tamed into submission and the mainstream media is forced to megaphone the government, the institutional capacity of the U.S. media to critique executive lawlessness and hold it to account remains an object of wonder.

Comparisons between Trump and other populist demagogues were not misplaced, but imputing these similarities to the health of American democracy was always wide of the mark. From the perspective of failing democracies the world over, the U.S. is still the shining city on the hill, even if the glow may have dimmed in the Trump years. Jokes apart, it is the stuff of envy, not derision.

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Contact us at letters@time.com.

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Save the Sarcasm for Other Democracies. America Is Fine - TIME

Our Constitution says that after a presidential election, Congress shall meet on Jan. 6 to count the electoral votes cast for the president and vice president. It is a solemn ritual of democracy.

But it is only that a ritual. This ceremonial custom is not how our president and vice president are chosen. They are chosen by us, the people.

Of course, President Donald Trump and senators like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz know this. But it did not stop them from inciting an insurrection. Acting out of nothing but unprincipled ambition, they put democracy in danger.

They used the outdated and undemocratic Electoral College process to try to stop the counting of the ballots. Arcane political systems like this one can be used to subvert the will of the people and put the integrity of a free and fair election in jeopardy. Its past time to replace what clearly diminishes democracy.

Yet even with the Electoral College, our democratic republic is safe so long as people are ready to defend it. Working people always have and always will.

Our democracy, like our labor movement, is not a building. Its not a piece of paper like our Constitution. Our democratic republic lives in us.

In the days before and after the election, I made it clear that the survival of our democracy depends on the determination of working people to defend it. Thats because democracy and the labor movement are one and the same. Without the labor movement, there would be no democracy. And democracy defines what the labor movement is. Our unions run, like our country, by voting. All members get to vote, and each vote counts the same.

When a mob attacked our Capitol, they were attacking working people. Whether they knew it or not, Trump was using them to try to create an America where only the rich and powerful have any say in what happens. That is what happens without democracy. Working people go from being citizens to subjects.

But if our democracy is to be safe, we must understand the role racism played in last weeks attack on the Capitol. Every aspect of the attack on our Capitol on Wednesday was shot through with racism. The mob brought Confederate flags. They wore Nazi symbols and sweatshirts celebrating death camps. Its clear their real problem was never voter fraud. Rather, it was that people of color, in cities like Detroit and Philadelphia, had been allowed to vote and their votes had been counted.

These domestic terrorists were treated with kid gloves. Had the protesters been Black Lives Matter activists or workers on strike, the Capitol would have been filled with officers in tactical gear. And had people of color tried to break into the Capitol, the response would have been a massacre.

In the wake of this attack, America must ask itself some tough questions. Are we a democratic republic or are we a racial dictatorship? Are we a country where the rule of law governs, or are those rules different for white people and people of color?

The labor movements answers to those questions are simple. White supremacy and democracy cannot coexist. White supremacy and the solidarity of workers cannot coexist. And we choose democracy and solidarity. The better angels of our movement always have.

Last weeks events show us that white supremacy as an idea and as a way of running our country is a deadly threat. It must be rooted out of our society everywhere we find it.

The people who tried to illegally overturn the election results both in the mob and in the halls of Congress must be held fully accountable. Accountability starts with Trump, who should be removed from office immediately, but it cannot end there. There must be consequences for Hawley, who egged on the mob, and for his seven fellow senators and the more than 100 House members who voted to disenfranchise millions of voters.

Simply put, both the domestic terrorists themselves and the powerful people who manipulated them for their own personal gain must be held accountable and face the legal consequences of their actions.

In the days to come, as we repair the damage done to our republic, we must build an America that serves and empowers working people through fair and just economic and political systems. Its time to increase union density and unleash the transformational solidarity of a strong and mobilized working class.

On Jan. 20, that work begins. The incoming Biden-Harris administration is already working on an ambitious agenda. That includes the unfinished work of the HEROES Act and the PRO Act, real labor law reform and a real jobs and investment program.

The labor movement has never been more important than we are today. And we have never been more ready for what we must do.

In the coming years, when we look back on these days, we must be able to say we were there when our democracy was attacked, we were there when fascism raised its ugly head at the heart of our republic, and we helped bring America out of the darkness and into the light of a new and better day.

Richard Trumka is president of the AFL-CIO.

Send letters to letters@suntimes.com.

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Democracy and the labor movement are one and the same - Chicago Sun-Times