Politics
How Trump Managed to Dovetail American Nationalism So Maliciously with Fascism
Can American Democracy Be Relied Upon Any Longer to Deliver Justice Considering Years of Continual Regressive Attacks on It by the President Turned Dictator and His Allies?
“ You can no longer expect people to act in their own best interests when they’re so disoriented they don’t know — or no longer care — what those interests are.”, says Halina Bortonowska, a human rights advocate.
A dangerous trend of oscillating back and forth from democracy cannot last forever without having a weakening impact on it. I think it’s well beyond the time we rise to the true meaning of a stable liberal democracy. The ferocity seen in the Capitol reflects the failure of democracy to address divisions in the United States of America. America stands more polarized than ever because it’s easy to bait hyper-nationalists with the pseudo economic success that has nothing to do with them.
What we witnessed in the Capitol resulted from the divide and conquer politics that had long been in the making. It was a demonstration of what President Trump has devised for his countrymen for four long years. This breach of democratic ethics and his sense of exemption from everything — from being above the law to not following basic principles of morality— are the hallmark of his failed administration. Having deviations in a system is one thing, but the whole system taking another shape to the extent that it no longer can be called the same is another. It is what is happening with democracy. It is being repressed by the same institutions that lay the foundation of it. This form of legitimate chaotic democracy can be called “fascism.” [1]
In the words of Ian Bremmer, “The U.S is by far the most politically dysfunctional and divided of all the world’s advanced industrial democracies.”
It is rather shameful and morally unacceptable how people are ready to forgo basic human decency for what they think is national supremacy. National supremacy is next in line after race, color, and religion to be halted and put an end to.[2]
President Trump is responsible for inciting violence and baseless turmoil by his own party members. He fed them with lies that led to grudges, blinding them to facts that could be easily verified. The situation wouldn’t have gotten so bad had the facts mattered more than anything else to those on the right side of the political spectrum. Donald Trump is incapable of functioning for a good cause. He didn’t spare one chance to make things turn nasty and undemocratic. He tried all means to undermine democracy and the rule of law. It leads us to a more pertinent discussion; of a flaw in the design of democracy itself. We need to redesign it in a way where it’s relatively easy to get rid of delinquents before they expose the entire nation to shock politics.[3]
Is democracy still the endgame for Americans? I guess yes, as long as there is no better alternative than that. However, for democracy to work, we require our long-term vision to outstrip our instinct to gain pettily in the short term.
If Americans wish to continue to call themselves democratic, they need to acknowledge that the venomous political weapon of polarization cleverly used the apparatus of democracy to seduce them into conducting impropriety and they fell for it.
Otherwise, the chances are that they may slip into the hands of authoritarians or totalitarians in the future. The future depends on the repercussions faced by offenders of democracy, including the President of America. Democracy from time to time shall not only re-describe the notion of a good leader and an improved idea of a good citizen but also what citizens shall make of nationalism under a given globalized world. We realize that conflicts in democracies have a special place. They are not to be tackled in an authoritarian way. They can be managed by, collectively and carefully, democratizing and humanizing politics again. Painful events have to be empathetically considered and confronted before moving towards new beginnings.
[1]Roy, A. (2010). Listening to grasshoppers: Field notes on democracy : essays. Toronto: Penguin Canada.
[2] OP-ED, For a post-nationalist Biden by Kaushik Basu in Project Syndicate, 6th January 2021.
[3]Klein, N. (2018). No is not enough: Resisting the new shock politics and winning the world we need.
