Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

-- Thomas Homer-Dixon,

"By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.

"We mustn't dismiss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine. In 2014, the suggestion that Donald Trump would become president would also have struck nearly everyone as absurd. But today we live in a world where the absurd regularly becomes real and the horrible commonplace.

"Leading American academics are now actively addressing the prospect of a fatal weakening of U.S. democracy.

[...]

"Democracy is an institution, but underpinning that institution is a vital set of beliefs and values. If a substantial enough fraction of a population no longer holds those beliefs and values, then democracy can't survive. Probably the most important is recognition of the equality of the polity's citizens in deciding its future; a close runner up is willingness to concede power to one's political opponents, should those equal citizens decide that's what they want. At the heart of the ideological narrative of U.S. right-wing demagogues, from Mr. Trump on down, is the implication that large segments of the country's population - mainly the non-white, non-Christian, and educated urban ones - aren't really equal citizens. They aren't quite full Americans, or even real Americans."