Four years on, US democracy is plumbing new depths and divisions are more entrenched. How will it end?
- Media bias has gone from bad to worse, as both sides fight to attract a bigger audience. Meanwhile, the US president can’t stop his trash talk and unite the country against a virus that has killed 200,000 Americans
We did a lot more than keep it up. What politicians and the media on both sides have done to American institutions for the past four years has been much worse for the country – and for democracy everywhere – than the candidates they foisted on voters in 2016.
Most of the US media fight the Democrats’ corner, and have done so with the zeal of suicide bombers. That’s not an inapt analogy, given the damage they’ve done to the fourth estate by frequently abandoning facts and fairness on all things Trump. For four years, Americans have been fed a steady diet of “news” and “analysis” about how Trump is an illegitimate president and other unpleasant things. It’s ongoing.
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The Republicans and the media in their corner aren’t much better, though as more of what transpired in 2016 and 2017 comes to light, a significant claim they’ve been making seems to be gaining merit.
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The lawyer’s instant messages seemed to indicate a lack of impartiality among the FBI team investigating Trump, including one he wrote that read: “Viva le resistance.” A criminal investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation is ongoing.
If this is news to you, it could be because the Democratic-leaning media doesn’t care much for the story. The bias on both sides went from bad to worse over the past four years, as the media discovered that selling bias and divisiveness attracts more readers and revenue than selling boring old news.
Who knows, maybe he is. But the entirety of the Republican Party would have to be in on it for not a single one to stand up and do his or her patriotic duty.
What happens if Donald Trump refuses to concede defeat?
The Democrats are already preparing to contest this year’s election results. They have gone so far as to war-game a scenario in which Trump bars the doors of the White House after he loses.
This may be a better strategy than traditional campaigning, because the sight of Joe Biden trying to get through a speech makes you want to avert your eyes. If he were running for president of your local Pinochle club, you might consider giving him a sympathy vote.
But he’s running for president of the United States – leader of the free world, and all that – and it’s horrifying for half the country to think that enough people might pull the lever or mail in their votes to send him to the White House. The other half feel the same about Trump.
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I’d like to say it’s astonishing that the Democrats, with four years to prepare, ended up with a candidate who is more flawed than the one they had in 2016. But nothing really astonishes me any more. Depressing is more like it.
So, here we go again. Pretty much every American friend I have agrees that what’s happening is a bad thing for the country, but they’re split right down the ugly middle about whose fault it is. It’s hard to see how that will end.
Robert Boxwell is director of the consultancy Opera Advisors