"We're on the verge of losing our democracy". What does this mean?
America survived a civil war, during which habeas corpus was suspended and roughly 600,000 men a good percentage of the fighting-aged male population, were killed. Followed by a pretty harsh military occupation of the south.
(Yes, it wasn't harsh enough. But "martial law" generally aren't the first two words you think of, when you think about "democracy")
We survived WWI militant progressivism, with its prosecutions of anti-war speech. We survived the Palmer raids and the over-the-top prosecutions of suspected anarchists.
We survived WWII, during which many citizens of Japanese descent were interned in camps.
We survived the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the Hollywood Ten.
Followed by mass rioting, Kent State, and several *thousand* violent actions by left-wing terrorists. (Most of which didn't hurt anyone. But if you place a bomb in a corporate building, that's just luck)
Am I saying these things are good? No! They're terrible! They are stains on our honor, blots on our escutcheon, terrible deviations from our ideals.
But the fact that you are saying "we're on the verge of losing our democracy" implies that you must think it somehow survived those things. And what, right now, is happening that compares to those thrats to democracy? Or the ur-threat, the fact of slavery for our first 70 years?
You think Trump is Hitler? What's your mental model for how Trump prevents the 2020 election from happening, thus depriving us of our democracy?
Let's say Trump cancels the election. What happens? 50 states just say "Yup, well, the president has spoken, guess we can't have an election this year".
Courts are like "Welp, I guess he's just king now!" The FBI rolls over and turns into his secret police. The army arrests dissenters. You think Trump has that kind of base of support in American institutions?
I mean, one cannot prove a negative. But I submit that in any reasonable reading of the news does not suggest this is the most likely outcome.
Weimar Germany had an incredibly stupid article in its constitution that allowed the president to essentially rule by decree, unhindered. Also, its democracy was less than a generation old. We're just not in that situation.
Which in turn makes all the FORGET NORMAL RULES WE'RE ABOUT TO TURN FASCIST hot takes a little hard to justify.
