Many responsible commentators and public officials are sounding the alarm that democracy is under severe assault and that the final blow is on the way.
Most frequently cited: legislation in Republican state legislatures dismissing appointed election regulators to enable legislatures to override voters and to select the winners whom the state legislature electeds want.
In the case of a presidential election the various laws being and already enacted would permit the respective legislatures to select their own slates of electors to replace electors selected by the voters.
The predicate of all this is legislative findings of irregularities or fraud in the election that is sought to be supplanted. Of course these laws are the progeny of the 2020 election fraud lie. The general idea is that if you don’t win at the ballot box, steal it.
As sixty percent of voters believe the lie that Biden stole the 2020 election and that Trump won, in states where Republicans are in control this sort of legislation is sailing through. I wouldn’t be surprised if the birthers of the Obama era morph into an “earth is flat” gang also espousing the idea that climate change is not happening.
Lies today get big megaphones. They test FDR’s statement that the repetition of a lie does not make it true.
In addition to undoing election results by legislative fiat, Republican states are also restricting voting.
So it’s an anti-democratic double whammy against Democrats: restrict voting first and if they win anyway, steal it.
And the Democrats in the Senate are taking this lying down. Two senators (Manchinema) refuse a carve- out of the filibuster for election legislation even though they approved one to pass an increase in the debt ceiling with just Democratic support.
With no federal election legislation and Republican states on a mission to steal elections, we go to the valid argument that the elections of 2022 and 2024 will mark an end to democracy.
The proposition behind this argument is that the American people want their representatives (and their president) to be elected democratically and that the fear that they won’t will get the American people to rise up to support democracy.
Except that they don’t and they won’t.
In fact, I suggest that many Americans object to the pluralism that characterizes democracy. Those Americans believe that democracy has eroded their ability to achieve their personal wants and needs in favor of a perceived public good that does not appeal to them.
Those Americans do not want to do anything for people of a color, creed or sexuality other than their own. They do not want education of their children to include any reference to the evils inflicted on the poor, new Americans legally in their neighborhoods, or people of color.
Those Americans live in a land of “me” and not of “us.”
So viewed, the mission to continue government through fair elections does not appeal to them because it enables “us” through democracy and denigrates “me.”
In such an atmosphere, the outcry to maintain and enhance democracy will fail among the millions of Americans who just don’t care.