Followers of Ousted President Storm National Legislature
Bowing to Former Strongman, Opposition Blocks Coup Investigation, Expels Dissenters
Provincial Lawmakers Alter Election Rules to Favor Deposed Premier
Experts Sound Alarm Over Democratic Backsliding in Nuclear-Armed Superpower
Some of the headlines we should have been seeing this past year, as imagined by Times columnist Farhad Manjoo and inspired by foreign policy journalist Joshua Keating's "If it happened there" efforts to present domestic stories in the terms our press uses for developments in other lands presumed less politically stable and enlightened than we. It's becoming clearer and clearer that January 6th was part of a failed coup, but the "provincial lawmakers" - and many national ones, too - were in on it, and are still pushing for it. Accidents of our creaky electoral system give the most unscrupulous of these people frighteningly good odds of taking over the country. But what headline could capture that these purveyors of what they know to be a big lie think their bad faith actions are the will of their god?
Gun-Toting Religious Fanatics Wage Multi-Front 'Holy War' Against Once Stable Democracy
