The Ins and Outs of America s Shrug at the Threat to Democracy Us Politics HEAD TOPICS

The Ins and Outs of America s Shrug at the Threat to Democracy

10/22/2022 10:01:00 PM

With voters distracted by other issues and election denial flourishing the country has what academics call a legitimacy problem

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On Politics: There is more than one way to read the striking results of the New York Times/Siena College poll released this week. With voters distracted by other issues and election denial flourishing the country has what academics call a legitimacy problem offers a pure test of which issue is likely to be more politically decisive: abortion rights or crime.Most serious experts on democracy — academics who study governments around the world, and why they fall apart — would say that election deniers are the real danger. There’s an academic term for that: a legitimacy problem.At the time, he was trying to understand two main questions: why Europe veered toward extremist ideologies like fascism and communism after World War I, and whether the nascent democracies forged by fire and blood in World War II were sustainable. Read more:
NYT Politics » My colleague was stabbed. Homelessness and peril are much closer to home than you think. Opinion There Is a Way to Make America Safe for Democracy Opinion In America, Democracy Can Simply Be Bought by the Billionaires Debate dodging: The latest threat to our democracy

Parents need to demand better schools this November Tom Basile America Right Now

On Saturday's 'America Right Now,' Tom Basile explains why American parents need to demand better phonics for their kids in schools in the upcoming November ... Read more >> Dem ploy didn’t work and people are focused on feeding their kids? My colleague was stabbed. Homelessness and peril are much closer to home than you think.'A colleague of mine was recently stabbed by a homeless man. Solving this massive human catastrophe is surely not beyond our intellect. Nor should it so severely test our will or compassion,' writes LarryStrauss for usatodayopinion. LarryStrauss usatodayopinion The economy is fine and Joe Biden has ice-cream to prove it! LarryStrauss usatodayopinion I wish someone showedd me this earlierr LarryStrauss usatodayopinion There's too much money to be made in 'addressing the problem', therefore, it won't be solved. Opinion There Is a Way to Make America Safe for Democracy“If majoritarian democracy, even at its most shackled, is a better safeguard against tyranny and abuse than our minoritarian institutions, then imagine how we might fare if we let majoritarian democracy actually take root in this country,” jbouie writes. jbouie No thanks, we already know mob rule is not good! jbouie Pure majoritarian rule devolves into ochlocracy brainiacs Opinion In America, Democracy Can Simply Be Bought by the BillionairesTech billionaire Peter Thiel's 'power shows what Citizens United has done to our democracy.' PLUTOCRACY Government controlled by a wealthy ruling class who shape government policy to benefit their own intrests BILLIONAIRES = POLICY FAILURE Billionaires ability to use their obscene wealth to influence policy is the GREATEST THREAT TO DEMOCRACY PLUTOCRACY Government controlled by a wealthy ruling class who shape government policy to benefit their own intrests BILLIONAIRES = POLICY FAILURE Billionaires ability to use their obscene wealth to influence policy is the GREATEST THREAT TO DEMOCRACY Debate dodging: The latest threat to our democracyIn this age of hyper-partisanship and polarization, there is a dangerous trend in politics this election cycle: candidates refusing to face their opponents in debates. These candidates ex… Melanie Griffith & Daughter Stella Are Giving Lookalike Vibes During Beverly Hills Girls DayMelanie Griffith and her daughter, Stella Banderas, had matching styles during their girls trip out in Beverly Hills. The Conservative Judge Sounding the Alarm about a Case that Could Upend DemocracyOn this week’s Amicus: Judge Michael Luttig on the case he says threatens American democracy as we know it. that many on the left hoped it would be.Retirement dreams become nightmares for many older Americans as inflation soars Even so, it isn’t progressive policies that are to blame.and the laws written to secure the lives of Black Americans, free and freed, from discrimination, violence and exploitation.has done to our democracy. In Minnesota: race for attorney general in the light-blue state offers a pure test of which issue is likely to be more politically decisive: abortion rights or crime. “So there’s not really much to go on there other than to vote for your own party,” Atkeson said, “whereas the economy is a clear signal.        That there are such craven and callous influences is tragic, though not surprising. It’s on your doorstep. Congress to have Black members, who were elected in some of the first truly free elections in the South — would have outlawed discrimination in public accommodations like railroads, steamboats, hotels and theaters and prohibited jury exclusion on the basis of race. You feel it every day. Which, for too many among us, makes it easy to see homelessness as a problem of aesthetics, threats to property values and tourism, and potential crime, rather than as the economic and social failure it represents. Maybe there’s something that can be done about that. As my colleague Chisun Lee told the Guardian ,"Since Citizens United , just 12 mega-donors, eight of them billionaires, have paid one dollar out of every 13 spent in federal elections. ” A legitimacy problem Most serious experts on democracy — academics who study governments around the world, and why they fall apart — would say that election deniers are the real danger. Housing is and always has been a civil rights issue, and there is no racial reckoning for us without adequate housing. The men who pioneered Jim Crow in Mississippi, for example, were by no means a majority, nor did they represent one in a state where a large part of the public was Black. And the new Times/Siena poll shows that millions of them are out there, despite zero evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. , “Twenty-eight percent of all voters, including 41 percent of Republicans, said they had little to no faith in the accuracy of this year’s midterm elections. The son of a friend died in the street.” There’s an academic term for that: a legitimacy problem.” There was, however, a majority vote to protect the rights of voters in the South. Seymour Martin Lipset, a sociologist and political scientist who did seminal work on what makes democracies successful, published an influential paper in 1959 called “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy. Two of them stayed with my wife and me while they saved money and found housing.  Copper magnate William A. ” At the time, he was trying to understand two main questions: why Europe veered toward extremist ideologies like fascism and communism after World War I, and whether the nascent democracies forged by fire and blood in World War II were sustainable. Lipset defined democracy this way: “a political system which supplies regular constitutional opportunities for changing the governing officials. That's why I'm now a voice for those in need. But the example of Reconstruction and its aftermath suggests that if majorities had been able to act, unimpeded, to protect the rights of Black Americans, it might have been a little less tragic than what we experienced instead.” The United States still meets that pretty basic requirement. Despite Trump’s bellowing about a stolen election, and his efforts to whip up the mob that assaulted the Capitol, Biden duly assumed office in 2021 after a near-disastrous handover of power. There are probably millions of Americans who have helped keep family and others off the streets – which only underscores the severity of the problem. The system held, albeit tenuously. If it were up to majorities of Americans — and if, more important, the American political system more easily allowed majorities to express their will — then Congress would have already strengthened the Voting Rights Act, codified abortion rights into law and protected the civil rights of L. Clark came back in 1901, defeating—you guessed it—another wealthy mine owner to win a Senate seat. But Lipset’s framework should alarm us today because, as the Times poll suggests, nearly half the country still doesn’t consider Biden the legitimate president. Don't have the app? . Image Many of Donald Trump’s supporters deny the legitimacy of the last presidential election. Credit. Market forces have driven up home prices and rents, and an underfunded and underregulated government housing department (under both Democratic and Republican leadership) has allowed ineptitude and corruption to rob millions of impoverished Americans of the help they so desperately need and to which they should be entitled.T... I do not believe you need to be an economist or an urban planner to recognize failure and the lack of sufficient effort that inflicted it. Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times Pretend the U. Even the legislative victories most Americans rightfully admire — like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — were only possible with a supermajority of lawmakers assembled in the wake of a presidential assassination.S. We’ve figured out how to mass produce more food than we need (even if it doesn’t manage to feed all the people who need it ) and we have created almost unfathomable wealth for some individuals and families. is a foreign country; how would we explain what is happening? Two years on, the fever that powered an attempt to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power has not broken, and it’s still being stoked every day by the loser of the previous election. As Lipset wrote, “If a political system is not characterized by a value system allowing the peaceful ‘play’ of power — the adherence by the ‘outs’ to decisions made by ‘ins’ and the recognition by ‘ins’ of the rights of the ‘outs’ — there can be no stable democracy. How to tackle food insecurity: Food insecurity is a solvable problem, but no one-size-fits-all solution exists Many of the unhoused suffer from mental illness – made worse and, in some cases, brought on by living on the street. Majority rule is not perfect but rule by a narrow, reactionary minority — what we face in the absence of serious political reform — is far worse.” Lipset also defined a stable democracy as the absence “of a major political movement opposed to the democratic ‘rules of the game’” — which required, he thought, that “no totalitarian movement, either Fascist or Communist, received 20 percent of the vote. ” The one silver lining in the poll ? Only 17 percent of the voters who saw democracy as threatened said there was a need to go “outside the law” to fix the problem. Housing the unhoused must address mental illness and substance addiction, afflictions that have baffled us and which have inspired long and ugly histories of mishandling, misanthropy and misery. And of those voters, just 11 percent said the answer would be to “take up arms/violence/civil war. If majoritarian democracy, even at its most shackled, is a better safeguard against tyranny and abuse than our minoritarian institutions, then imagine how we might fare if we let majoritarian democracy actually take root in this country.” Then again, maybe that’s no silver lining at all: By my math, that would still be over a million people. The students I teach now seem to have no contempt for the mentally ill – a huge difference from five or 10 years ago. Buckle up. Image What to read on democracy By . The. The Times is committed to publishing.