There have been many writers that are telling us that we are witnessing the collapse of American democracy since the election of Donny for his lovely second term as president….that is wrong…..we have been living through it well before Donny started his assault on our rights.
Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, American political life has taken on a familiar rhythm. Each week brings another court ruling framed as a breaking point, another election cast as the last real one, another executive order described as the moment it all finally tips over the edge, another person murdered by a government that’s finally gone too far. Democratic party fundraising emails promise to “save the Republic”. Commentators warn that the guardrails are giving way. Anxious citizens refresh their screens, waiting for the collapse of American democracy.
This state of permanent panic rests on what Sigmund Freud called an illusion: a belief embraced not because it reflects reality, but because it satisfies a psychological need. The illusion in this case is that the United States still has a democracy to lose. The more unsettling truth is that Americans are not living under threat of future democratic breakdown; we are living inside the aftermath of one that has already occurred.
For tens of millions of people, democratic life has been absent for decades as they endure precarious housing, inaccessible healthcare, unchecked policing powers, debt servitude, vanishing public goods, and near-total exclusion from meaningful formal political power. For others – the wealthy, the politically connected, the donors and oligarchs – the same system produces not insecurity, but insulation, along with a constant need to rationalize the deprivation of others upon which their power is predicated and to disavow any responsibility for it.
These are not signs of a democracy under threat. They are symptoms of one that eroded – if it ever existed – long ago. Why, then, does American political discourse remain fixated on a catastrophe that always seems imminent but never quite arrives?
https://www.theguardian.com/global/commentisfree/2026/mar/08/trump-democracy-oligarchy-policy
This is a situation that some of us have been saying for decades but people were too busy to notice the slide….and that is where our problem lies….people think that living only for their individual interests will keep everything on a an even keel…..I believe people can see now that that was a moronic reason….well some people.
Disagree? Knock your socks off.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”