The health of American democracy, as measured by those who study it most closely, has settled into a diminished state – stabilizing after a sharp decline last year, but still well below the levels recorded at any point before the start of Donald Trump’s second term, according to a new survey released on Tuesday.
The findings, by the nonpartisan democracy-tracking project Bright Line Watch, which surveys hundreds of US scholars at American colleges and universities, suggest that the erosion of norms detected after Trump’s return to the White House last year has hardened into a new baseline. The public also holds a dim view of American democracy, the most recent survey found, but are sharply divided along partisan lines over how well the system is functioning.
I have no faith that it’s stabilized.
I think it’s the calm before the storm - if Trump successfully manipulates the midterms the US might be doomed.
If he botches that and becomes a ‘lame duck’ president, there might still be hope.
I don’t think there will be hope worth having if we don’t elect progressive candidates who intend to overthrow the shillionaire broligarchy.
I mean, do you really need an expert opinion to come to this conclusion?
On the one hand, death (or murder) of expertise is one of the things that got us here. On the other, you don’t need an expert to tell you that a car is on fire.
Is that summary right? They’re measuring how “democratic” the USA is by surveying professors at universities?
Isn’t that like surveying CEOs about employee wages and then saying you’re “measuring” employee compensation?
I mean where else do you get wage data from? The company payrolls are how they find it and the CEO would be the highest authority in the company that could release that data.
You’re presuming that the CEOs would give honest answers, instead of whatever answer helps them get a bigger bonus.
(Not to mention all of the businesses that don’t actually have a CEO, or the subcontractor shell games they play so cleaning and support staff dont actually work for the company…)
Where else would you get the info?
Bright Line Watch fielded two recent surveys of political science faculty at American colleges and universities (whom we refer to as “experts”) and representative samples of Americans (whom we refer to as “the public”).
Faculty’s relationship to a university is not the same as a CEOs relationship to a business.
This would be akin to a CEO surveying his engineering team about the state of the company’s engineering
we never had direct democracy anyway which is the only democracy that should be considered “democracy” when average people think of the term.
more than half of us don’t know what a constitutional republic is.
Is it… A form of democracy wherein the populous uses a selection of elected representatives and a framework of a near immutable law set to guide the representatives in governing for the best interest of all citizens?
yes, but i’m arguing that democracy being applied in other methods is not understood by the average American. they assume it means how i defined it which is why i think it’s the only version most people are discussing that aren’t politically minded.
Funny enough, this is basic civics that should have been taught in middle school
Indeed. So clearly you’re in the group that knows. Now the real question is… How big is each group?
Considering the intention of the public education system to improve the understanding of the populous has been degraded to the point where basic civics is not taught and we’re lucky if graduates are even functionally literate, I’d say that people who understand what our government is supposed to be and what it’s supposed to do is fairly small.
And unfortunately, that’s the whole fucking point. A uninformed population is an easily manipulated population.
