One of the most sobering statements in the president’s speech Joe Biden last week on the protection of democracy may have gone unnoticed by many who have heard or read about it.
In the speech, Biden noted:
“The remarkable thing about American democracy is this: only enough of us, on a sufficient number of occasions, have chosen does not disassembler democracy but preserve it “.
The sentence is condemnation.
The dismantling of our democracy is only one apathetic electoratea list of voting suppression laws or a barrage of disinformation.
Modern presidential elections don’t usually end overwhelmingly.
In fact, no president has since won by a popular vote margin of more than 10 percentage points ronald reagan in 1984.
Biden’s margin of victory is over Donald Trump it was only 4 percentage points.
These narrow margins are overshadowed by the flaws and quirks of our electoral process, the way small states are overrepresented and most states assign voters on a winner-takes-all basis.
Biden won Georgia by just over 12,000 votes, which was only 0.2% of the votes cast in the state, but Biden got all 16 electoral votes in the state.
This is how we elect presidents in this country.
But this very possibility means that the country’s last two Republican presidents have been able to do so winning the Electoral College and losing the popular vote: George Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016.
All this to say that we always are one step away from calamity.
And not just for the presidential election.
The same dilemma has plagued this year’s midterm elections, as Congressional control hangs in the balance, with undemocratic barbarians at the gates.
It is widely believed that Republicans will regain control of the House of Representatives, the only question is by what margin.
But control of the Senate is a lot up for grabs, with some of the hardest-fought contests in states often rocking presidential elections, such as Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Wisconsin.
In each of these states, Republican Senate candidates at one point openly denied the 2020 election results or presented false claims for fraudOpen those elections.
Those candidates have a chance to win, but even if they don’t, the damage caused by their electoral refusal will persist.
We are witnessing the launch of a generational curse.
Faith and doubt are opposites, but they operate using the the same energy excitesHe likes love and hate.
And they are sticky.
Republicans have turned doubts about the 2020 election and the legitimacy of any lost election into a test of faith.
It is the crucible one must cross to be a respectable modern Republican.
You’re only true if you swallow the lie.
Many elected and operative officials are simply opportunists, using the lie to excite voters or to profit from the fanaticism that the lie has engendered.
But for many Trump supporters, the lie is the gospel.
It is welded not only to the psyche but also to the soul.
This huge hoax it won’t be easy to dislodge.
When we have deep faith in something, we find comfort in it.
Faith is precious, an unlikely thing, a gift the mind has created to calm and protect.
We do not enjoy lightly.
Faith and doubt linger like the ghosts of a lost soul.
Even when we accept evidence that falsifies the idea in which we place our faith, the mind very often he clings a little of what he had heard and believed.
This is natural, this is human.
But this is a problem for our democracy.
People who fight to save democracy do so with facts, but people who are willing and working to destroy it are acting out of feeling.
The first is based on data and the second on dogmas.
These are different languages that speak to different facets of the human experience.
The undemocratic faithful cannot and will not be dissuaded by the facts.
Faith, which does not need proof, can be nurtured and affirmed by things that are not true.
And that is precisely what is happening.
That faith does not even allow for the idea that destroying democracy would be bad or considerably worse than current conditions.
So people may even believe they will benefit from the demise of democracy.
This is Trump’s twisted legacy, something that will last no matter what happens during this mid-term election and whether he runs for president again.
The damage it has done and continues to do will ultimately be much greater than it has ever been.
He created a distortion that will survive him for a long time.
As Biden pointed out, the country is dangerously close to settling officials who want to undo it and do it again, who want partial or no democracy.
America is a bad choice from being a memory.
c.2022 The New York Times Company
Source: Clarin
