As a once great political party makes clear its soul is signed, sealed and delivered to an authoritarian demagogue, a once great kingdom welcomes a shameless liar to complete its demotion to sad has-been, it's easy to recognize what Michelle Goldberg dubs "democracy grief."
The despair felt by climate scientists
and environmentalists watching helplessly as something precious and
irreplaceable is destroyed is sometimes described as “climate grief.”
Those who pay close attention to the ecological calamity that
civilization is inflicting upon itself frequently describe feelings of rage, anxiety and bottomless loss,
all of which are amplified by the right’s willful denial. The young
activist Greta Thunberg, Time magazine’s 2019 Person of the Year, has
described falling into a deep depression
after grasping the ramifications of climate change and the utter
refusal of people in power to rise to the occasion: “If burning fossil
fuels was so bad that it threatened our very existence, how could we
just continue like before?”
Lately, I
think I’m experiencing democracy grief. For anyone who was, like me,
born after the civil rights movement finally made democracy in America
real, liberal democracy has always been part of the climate, as easy to
take for granted as clean air or the changing of the seasons. When I
contemplate the sort of illiberal oligarchy that would await my children
should Donald Trump win another term, the scale of the loss feels so
vast that I can barely process it.
I'm struck particularly by the collapse of a shared commitment to what we used to call rule of law. Political lies are nothing new, but the lies of our blond beasts are brazen in a new way: they don't even pretend to care about the truth, and invite their followers to share the thrill of lying with impunity. The collusion of an entire political party in these lies shocks me still. But what's most depressing is popular support for such nihilism. This brings back echoes of Karl Popper's paradox of democracy: democracy consumes itself when it loses confidence in itself. Someone running on a platform of abolishing democratic governance can win an election entirely legitimately - several did in Europe not quite a century ago, and other are doing it in Eastern Europe, India and elsewhere as we speak.
The Republican argument against impeachment is taking on this flavor, too: the president promised to break rules, the people elected him to do that, end of story. This is the way the story of democracy ends but we mustn't let it happen. When they go low we have to go high.
The Republican argument against impeachment is taking on this flavor, too: the president promised to break rules, the people elected him to do that, end of story. This is the way the story of democracy ends but we mustn't let it happen. When they go low we have to go high.
Democracy grief isn’t like regular grief. Acceptance isn’t how you move on from it. Acceptance is itself a kind of death.
