Coffeehouse for desis
Would you like to react to this message? Create an account in a few clicks or log in to continue.


an autocracy in america

Coffeehouse for desis :: Coffeehouse :: Coffeehouse Main

Go down

an autocracy in america Empty an autocracy in america

Post by pravalika nanda Tue Jan 31, 2017 10:32 pm

article from the atlantic which makes me realize i got to contribute to the aclu and npr now and then:

excerpt here:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-build-an-autocracy/513872/

Perhaps the better question about Trump is not “What is he?” but “What will he do to us?”
By all early indications, the Trump presidency will corrode public integrity and the rule of law—and also do untold damage to American global leadership, the Western alliance, and democratic norms around the world. The damage has already begun, and it will not be soon or easily undone. Yet exactly how much damage is allowed to be done is an open question—the most important near-term question in American politics. It is also an intensely personal one, for its answer will be determined by the answer to another question: What will you do? And you? And you?

Of course we want to believe that everything will turn out all right. In this instance, however, that lovely and customary American assumption itself qualifies as one of the most serious impediments to everything turning out all right.


.....


Trump and his team count on one thing above all others: public indifference. “I think people don’t care,” he said in September when asked whether voters wanted him to release his tax returns. “Nobody cares,” he reiterated to 60 Minutes in November. Conflicts of interest with foreign investments? Trump tweeted on November 21 that he didn’t believe voters cared about that either: “Prior to the election it was well known that I have interests in properties all over the world. Only the crooked media makes this a big deal!”
What happens in the next four years will depend heavily on whether Trump is right or wrong about how little Americans care about their democracy and the habits and conventions that sustain it. If they surprise him, they can restrain him.

pravalika nanda

Posts : 2372
Join date : 2011-07-14

Back to top Go down

Back to top

- Similar topics

Coffeehouse for desis :: Coffeehouse :: Coffeehouse Main

 
Permissions in this forum:
You cannot reply to topics in this forum