There are many ways to repair US democracy through institutional reforms (the GOP is blocking them). But the biggest issue is the right-wing information ecosystem is just beyond broken. Democracy malfunctions when voters consume a diet of lies & conspiracy theories as truth.
How do you govern a country in which there aren't splintering views on policy but rather splintering realities? When voters self-select into right-wing fever swamps of false information, it creates a "choose your own reality" system that makes compromise and consensus impossible.
That's why the end of the Trump era isn't the end of the authoritarian threat posed by GOP extremists -- who inhabit a political sphere in which lying and peddling increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories leads not to pariah status but rather to national political stardom.
Meanwhile, pro-democracy reforms are dead on arrival unless the filibuster goes. But even if Democrats passed them, they don't solve the underlying problem: a huge chunk of the country is voting based on false information. Break the information ecosystem, and you break democracy.
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