Has the USA become a frightening, undemocratic country?

Oct 06, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Of the plethora of intellectual adumbrations in books, journals, magazines, newspapers and blogs around the world on the deadly turn towards authoritarian government in the US, I would rate American historian, Christopher R. Browning’s article, “The Suffocation of Democracy,” the best.
It is the lead article in the current issue of the New York Review of Books (NYRB). This is superb scholarship.
Browning is a historian who specializes in the era of Nazi Germany. What Browning did in his NYRB piece is to juxtapose Germany from the end of the First World War to the rise of Hitler and show the uncanny resemblance to the United States in that same period.
Then he looks at the conditions that gave rise to European fascist governments, notably Nazi Germany and see a strong resemblance with Trump and the Republican Party.
He examines the nature of illiberal democracy in the US today and draws strong parallels with fascist Europe. Of course it began before Trump came to power. I will quote Browning at length because his juxtaposition should interest all of us in the world as to the dangerous place that the US has become.
It started with the relentless assault on American democracy by the Republican lawmakers. Here is Browning; “If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Republican Senate majority leader) Mitch McConnell. He stoked the hyperpolarization of American politics to make the Obama presidency as dysfunctional and paralyzed as he possibly could.
“As with parliamentary gridlock in Weimar, congressional gridlock in the US has diminished respect for democratic norms, allowing McConnell to trample them even more. Nowhere is this vicious circle clearer than in the obliteration of traditional precedents concerning judicial appointments.”
I have long believed that the US could not be a place of admirable democracy if the president selected life term Supreme Court Justices based on their ideological orientations. From time to time, citizens of the world read that the US Supreme court will lean more towards liberalism because the president has made a nomination of a liberal judge.
Then we would read that the court will now have a more conservative bent because the president’s nominee is a conservative.
For a long time, as a young student of comparative politics, I asked myself, how the US can be a democratic country when the separation of power is undermined by political appointments. Here is a formidable description by Browning of how the rule of law is losing its way or has lost its way in the US; “Systematic obstruction of nominations in Obama’s first term provoked Democrats to scrap the filibuster for all but Supreme Court nominations. Then McConnell’s unprecedented blocking of the Merrick Garland nomination required him in turn to scrap the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations in order to complete the “steal” of Antonin Scalia’s seat and confirm Neil Gorsuch. The extreme politicization of the judicial nomination process is once again on display in the current Kavanaugh hearings.”
Perhaps the most frightening section of Browning’ article is this, “The fifty senators from the twenty-five least populous states—twenty-nine of them Republicans—represent just over 16 percent of the American population, and thirty-four Republican senators—enough to block conviction on impeachment charges—represent states with a total of 21 percent of the American population.”
Given these facts, and the nature of the Republican Party, then American democracy was always in a perilous state and now it looks like the Republicans will drive the final nail in the coffin. And don’t forget the existence of three other institutions call into question the survival of American democracy – the power of money in politics, the Electoral College, the life tenure of Supreme Court judges.
It is unthinkable that a country can be seen as a democracy yet its lawmakers are hurrying to install a Supreme Court nominee who is facing criminal accusation of sexual violence. Aren’t these the kinds of things you read about in ‘banana republics’? Browning also hints at the consolidation of fascism in the US through voter suppression. Read Browning and you will be gripped with fear on what the US is becoming.
Systematic obstruction of nominations in Obama’s first term provoked Democrats to scrap the filibuster for all but Supreme Court nominations. Then McConnell’s unprecedented blocking of the Merrick Garland nomination required him in turn to scrap the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations in order to complete the “steal” of Antonin Scalia’s seat and confirm Neil Gorsuch. The extreme politicization of the judicial nomination process is once again on display in the current Kavanaugh hearings.

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