Bad enough that some of the world’s largest countries are authoritarian regimes: China, Russia, Iran, Algeria, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo.

Bad enough that, according to The 2013 Economist Democracy Index, there are twice as many authoritarian regimes as full democracies: 52 of the former vs 25 of the latter (31% vs. 15% of the world’s countries). Or that 37% of the world’s population lives under an authoritarian regime while a mere 11% lives under a full democracy.

All that is more than bad enough. But even worse is what is happening to the countries that are seen to be the leading examples of democracy: the United States and Canada.

In the US, 30 years of market deregulation, evisceration of social programs, offshoring of jobs, and policymaking that facilitates individual wealth creation over social responsibility have rewarded the reckless speculation of delinquent bankers with money from the pockets of the very taxpayers that they have victimized.

All this has resulted in extreme income inequality, which in turn is associated with the decline of social mobility, the highest number of health and social problems per capita, the highest number of homicides and mental illnesses per capita, the highest health care expenditures per capita, and almost the lowest life expectancy among developed nations. All this in the country that considers itself the world’s greatest democracy.

In Canada, democracy is threatened by something different: the unchecked and unapologetic authoritarianism of a prime minister who has been compared to dictators like Mussolini and Napoleon.

An autocrat who, because of the absence of proportional representation, has been able to win a majority with only 40% of the votes. A control freak who has muzzled both his cabinet and bureaucracy by continually blocking access to the press. A Machiavellian schemer who games the parliamentary system within a hair’s breadth of the law in order to remain in power.

He’s a big-C Conservative who has pushed through so-called ‘budget’ bills which contain dozens of controversial changes to laws entirely unrelated to finance — laws downgrading environmental protections, eliminating funding for science and data collection, changing unemployment insurance eligibility, shortchanging military veterans, needlessly building more prisons when crime is at historic lows, and financially rewarding single-earner (but not single parent) families.

He has openly undermined the integrity of the judiciary system, signed trade deals tilted far in favour of counterparts such as China without the oversight required by law, and has taken sides in geopolitical conflicts which we are in no position to support with meaningful military force.

This is how democracy dissolves. To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, it ends not with a bang, but a whimper. Prime Minister Harper is nothing if not a master of creeping fascism, while America’s Republicans are hellbent on destroying the very institutions that brought them to power.

When two of the greatest democracies of the 20th century are becoming less democratic with every passing day of the 21st, where are we to turn?

We have only ourselves to blame. Only ourselves to bring back democracy before it slips through our fingers. wn