Freedom House: Impact of "long-term democratic decline has become increasingly global in nature."

[DickKessler]

Opening:

As a lethal pandemic, economic and physical insecurity, and violent conflict ravaged the world in 2020, democracy’s defenders sustained heavy new losses in their struggle against authoritarian foes, shifting the international balance in favor of tyranny. Incumbent leaders increasingly used force to crush opponents and settle scores, sometimes in the name of public health, while beleaguered activists—lacking effective international support—faced heavy jail sentences, torture, or murder in many settings.

These withering blows marked the 15th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. The countries experiencing deterioration outnumbered those with improvements by the largest margin recorded since the negative trend began in 2006. The long democratic recession is deepening.

The impact of the long-term democratic decline has become increasingly global in nature, broad enough to be felt by those living under the cruelest dictatorships, as well as by citizens of long-standing democracies. Nearly 75 percent of the world’s population lived in a country that faced deterioration last year. The ongoing decline has given rise to claims of democracy’s inherent inferiority. Proponents of this idea include official Chinese and Russian commentators seeking to strengthen their international influence while escaping accountability for abuses, as well as antidemocratic actors within democratic states who see an opportunity to consolidate power. They are both cheering the breakdown of democracy and exacerbating it, pitting themselves against the brave groups and individuals who have set out to reverse the damage.

The US specifically:

The parlous state of US democracy was conspicuous in the early days of 2021 as an insurrectionist mob, egged on by the words of outgoing president Donald Trump and his refusal to admit defeat in the November election, stormed the Capitol building and temporarily disrupted Congress’s final certification of the vote. This capped a year in which the administration attempted to undermine accountability for malfeasance, including by dismissing inspectors general responsible for rooting out financial and other misconduct in government; amplified false allegations of electoral fraud that fed mistrust among much of the US population; and condoned disproportionate violence by police in response to massive protests calling for an end to systemic racial injustice. But the outburst of political violence at the symbolic heart of US democracy, incited by the president himself, threw the country into even greater crisis. Notwithstanding the inauguration of a new president in keeping with the law and the constitution, the United States will need to work vigorously to strengthen its institutional safeguards, restore its civic norms, and uphold the promise of its core principles for all segments of society if it is to protect its venerable democracy and regain global credibility.

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2021/democracy-under-siege

All of us, in the US and around the world, have a lot of work to do, and I fear it will get worse before it gets better. But I'll be damned if democracy, human freedom, and all of our self-evident inalienable rights will be taken from us without a fight.

[smirkymonkey]

1. K&R

This scares me. Why are human beings so effed up? Don't they understand that a system that will oppress others will oppress them as well?

[DickKessler]

2. Fear, complacency, cynicism, opportunism, ignorance, hatred, greed, arrogance, hubris.

Take your pick, I guess.

[ck4829]

3. There is no "sit back and enjoy the show"

I think a lot of this could be solved in a relatively short time if we realized politics is not a spectator sport, nor is it a thing we should let someone else do, nor the most politically engaging thing we do is pull a lever every other November.

[abqtommy]

4. Fascism has been on the ascendancy throughout the world and Democracy is one of

the things that Fascists hate. We can't give in to them without a fight.