Democracy in the United States is strong, but showing some cracks — that is the conclusion of a new survey of 1,571 political scientists. Yes, our "flawed" democracy just got downgraded — here's why. Democracy can unravel around us, without any grand announcements of its death; recognising the epistemological obstacles to acknowledging this unraveling can help us appreciate the urgency of the situation we are beginning to face. Thread: "1. Democratic norms die slow deaths when citizens accept them as the new normal; it's important to catalog their erosion in the past month". Aziz Huq and Tom Ginsburg on how to lose a constitutional democracy.
Where we are now: George W. Bush defends the Constitution to rebuke Trump (and more). Trump embraces "enemy of the people", a phrase with a fraught history. Carlos Lozada reviews On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder.
