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the entirely preventable collapse of american democracy (undergraduate overview)
among academics — and that small sliver of the public that is aware, or cares — the consensus about the collapse of democracy in the united states of america in the 21st century CE is sufficiently uniform that no new insights or revelations are likely to be forthcoming, not even from the most revisionist thinkers.
for an event that happened more than 400 yrs ago, the reasons remain remarkably self-evident, to the point where one marvels that americans of that era themselves did not see it coming — or worse, did but still failed to stop it. even so, we can take valuable lessons from the folly of these ancients, in hopes of avoiding the same sorry fate.
this summary, prepared for Political Science 107: The Collapse of American Democracy, will provide a brief survey.
A Tragedy Foretold
lets start at the end, shall we?
the united states, the first country on earth to establish a representative democracy, tragically committed a kind of political suicide, carelessly allowing the rise of a demagogue at the head of a ruthless right wing autocratic movement that used the very mechanisms of democracy to undermine and destroy it.
