We live in an era when democracy stands in grave peril. Donald Trump and his sycophants are dismantling core institutions in the nation long considered the world’s leading democracy. Although this phenomenon may seem new and shocking, democracy’s broader condition has been frail for some time — and not just in the United States. Indeed, it is precisely the fragility of our institutions that renders Trump’s anti-democratic actions possible.
In today’s representative democracies, most citizens vote for and against proposals they scarcely understand. Ballots routinely present options that have not been adequately debated, weighed against alternatives or accurately contextualized. Some measures are phrased in such misleading fashion that voters end up endorsing outcomes they did not truly intend to support. Other proposals seem to come out of nowhere, forcing voters — who may have come prepared only to choose a president, governor, mayor or whatever — to also make judgments about county commissioners, school board members and so on, whose campaigns may never have attracted media attention or made an impression on ordinary voters.
