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The values we hold have to be vividly alive in a time when we cannot count on government to protect them for us. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA

We are in a situation that would have been unimaginable a year ago. We have inaugurated a president whose mental life is a thing of television ratings, beauty pageants and egoistical make-believe, who threatens and gloats and holds grudges and wants everyone to know it, whose impulses are alarming and alarmingly incoherent. He lacks the kind of knowledge of history and civic life and decent manners most adults have acquired by paying at least glancing attention.

It is not unreasonable to suppose that he learned his low opinion of the FBI from Law and Orders Detective Tutuola. Everyone was so sure he could not win that he no doubt attracted the kind of protest voter who would otherwise have written in Donald Duck.

The fact must be faced, of course, that a sizable minority of the electorate did vote for him, and a quirk of the system gave him the office. More fundamentally, there is an agenda of privatization of public assets and the weakening of the social safety net at work, only accidentally linked with Trump, that has divided and distorted American politics for years, and which Trump will advance simply by distracting attention from it. We must not allow ourselves to be distracted.

We have a chance to find out how real and deep American democracy is. We have to live out the ethos of free speech, press and assembly, of equal opportunity and equality before the law. The ethos that has been articulated in the best of American history has to be realized in what we say and do.

We have to be far more committed to social reform than we were when the government supported reform. For example, we know that incarceration as it has been practiced for decades is a vast offense against justice. We have to stop being passive in the face of what we know. If this is a living democracy, then there should be a public conscience able to trouble us deeply for injury done to those who might seem least like us, whom it has been convenient to forget.

For those of us who teach or write or study, truth is an issue, or ought to be. I am aware that scholarship is not only vulnerable to interpretive fads but actively receptive to them, and that in using the word truth I might seem naive. I am not naive.

I am aware that the notion that there is only interpretation has spread far and wide, and legitimized appeals to suspicion and resentment that feel no obligation to answer to reality. It is bizarre to confuse the profound difficulties that can arise in the attempt to determine truth for there being no truth. I encounter people who interpret the first amendment as meaning they have the right to believe what they prefer to believe, which therefore has full standing as truth. This is not a basis for rational discussion. We have to resist the great temptation to embrace our own preferences over what we might learn from a disciplined objectivity.

We have to stop accepting certain terms as descriptive rather than tendentious, populism first of all. In recent history this has been an anti-tax movement. Progressive taxation redistributes wealth, not primarily from rich to poor but from private to public.

Those who lament the sad state of their towns and counties elect politicians who run on the promise that they will starve them of resources. Urban areas, being liberal, tax and spend, as their critics say, and also prosper which inspires resentment rather than emulation.

This supposed populism actually accelerates the polarization of wealth, crucially by undermining public education and making public universities unaffordable. We have to have a conversation about all this, not by answering resentment with resentment, and not by accommodation with policies that are simply, demonstrably, bad.

We the living, in Lincolns phrase, we the generations that happen to be sharing this moment with Donald Trump, are suddenly and with no special qualifications called on to take a decisive role in American history, and world history. The values we hold have to be vividly alive in a time when we cannot count on government to protect them for us.

If we are faithful to these values, we will not be anyones enemy. We will not be another source of division. If we are loyal to justice and equality in our own lives and at our own cost, other generations will inherit through us an America to be loved and enjoyed, and, of course, to be criticized and reformed.

Read more from the original source:
With President Trump, American democracy faces its greatest test - The Guardian

No sooner had the words preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States fallen from his lips, then Donald Trump laid into it the very system symbolised in the elegant buildings, time-honoured ceremonial and distinguished figures surrounding.

Ill give him full marks for chutzpah, at any rate. There, surrounded by all the former presidents, former vice-presidents, Supreme Court justices, senators, congressmen and congresswomen, first ladies, spies, military chiefs and Washington bureaucrats,Donald Trump decided to condemn them all as failed. Not only failed, but revelling in their failures celebrating their success in Washington while forgotten American workers and families suffered from sea to shining sea.

Politicians, Trump declared,had done nothing to prevent the ravages of foreign powers stealing Americans'jobs and hopes. They had only defended other nationsborders, and not those of their own homeland. He did not quite accuse President Carter, President Clinton, PresidentGW Bush and President Obama of high treason but he was not far off. They must have been cringingwith embarrassment atTrumps clumping around everything they stand for.

To all Americans, Trump declared, "You will never be forgotten again just as all those scoundrels who went before willfully had, he implied.

Protests mar Trump inauguration ceremony

Whatswrong with all that? It is that this brand of populism, infused with strident nationalism and an unthinking protectionism,undermines faith in democracy itself?

Yes, people have always regarded politicians as in it for themselves, their reputation not far above that of journalists and estate agents.The old joke ran that a politician would beg people not to tell his mother that hes a politician because she thinks he plays the piano in a brothel. Political corruption is nothing new, and the democratic process has also always succeeded in cleansing the system and renewing itself.

But this is different. It is rare to find a figure such as Trump going all out to not only take down individual figures, who may guilty of honest of dishonesty, but thewhole political classand, in fact, the whole political system. What else should people expect fromthe swamp but lies?

History provides ugly examples from the first half of the 20thcentury, when people lostfaith in politicians and then slid into losing faith with the democratic process itself. Trump said nothing to defend the democratic process that put him in power, that led him to the stage on which he delivered his inauguration speech. He spoke just as he did on the campaign trail as a demagogue, a would-be dictator, a man who wishes to replace democracy with populism and they are not the same things.

Starting with a thumbs-up and finishing with a fist in the air, this was an address that failed to reassure those of us who feared the worst but hoped for the best form the Trump administration.A cold day in Washington, yes, but this was chilling stuff in more ways than one.

Originally posted here:
Donald Trump undermined democracy as soon as he was sworn in as US President - The Independent

Opinion | Column

cut the bull

When I was in grade school, I learned the difference between democracy and authoritative government. In a democracy, that shining city upon a hill, the people had a voice in politics. They chose their leaders in free and fair elections, and their concerns were addressed by caring politicians. In an authoritative regime, those in power were manipulative and tyrannical, stopping at nothing to preserve their seats.

I was taught that authoritative regimes existed exclusively in the developing world and in the past. Places like Iran and Venezuela lacked the true democracy that was unconditionally protected here in the United States. I learned nothing to suggest that my rights, let alone democracy itself, could be threatened right here in my home state.

Yet, it did not take long before I discovered otherwise. By 2010, a vast republican majority was elected just in time for the redrawing of the North Carolinian districts. Instead of chartering a nonpartisan map, the General Assembly chose to charter themselves into unconditional power. By populous, North Carolina is the most evenly split state in the nation; Republicans and Democrats are nearly perfectly matched. Yet, if we judged only by the heavy tide of reactionism stemming from the legislature, we might assume that the entire North Carolinian electorate was a strict Tea Party-er. The shapes of our precincts defy reason. They stretch to include a single house or a single street, snaking around the state to mathematically ensure a constant Republican majority within the General Assembly. No election is fair nor free if the people cannot change its outcome.

Today, the Republican Party has an absolute, veto-proof, overwhelming supermajority in both houses of the General Assembly. Whats more, the N.C. GOP has waged a war against perceived voter fraud. They have cracked down on everything from pre-registration to early voting hours to restrictive ID laws. Any barrier to the polls will fall unevenly on minorities, the poor, and young people; all groups who traditionally vote Democrat. On the day I got my full license in 2015, I pre-registered to vote at the local DMV. In the past, this had been the legal tactic of increasing registration among young people. I walked out, beaming with pride, thrilled at the idea that I would be voting in the next presidential election. Two days after I filled out my form, the legislature decided to do away with pre-registration. An envelope arrived in the mail for me, with a photocopy of my documents, stamped DENIED in red.

If voter manipulation werent enough, the N.C. legislature slashed education budgets across the state. Over the course of my high school career, I watched no less than 18 faculty members leave, all of them searching for higher pay. I knew teachers who worked three jobs and teachers whose children received free-and-reduced-lunch. In 2015, I protested funding cuts at the state legislature, holding a sign about teacher pay. A representative from the Republican Party asked me, Why does a teacher need a living wage when her husband is probably the breadwinner?

By 2014, our per-pupil spending was over $3,000 below the national average. Kids sitting in classrooms right now are being stiffed of the education they deserve. Kids like me have watched their classrooms deteriorate and morale from mentors dissipate. There is no feeling of discouragement stronger than watching hope leave a place of learning.

And yet, beyond dangerous social and fiscal policy, even beyond House Bill 2, North Carolina is faced with pressing illegality of the General Assemblys recent special sessions. The first of these special sessions occurred just days before Governor Roy Cooper officially took office. The bills in question had been in the work for weeks on the Republican side, but Democrats were called to session and given a mere few hours to review House Bill 17 and dozens of other power-stripping bills. Some have called the fourth special session of the McCrory government the North Carolinian Coup, because the ratified bills effectively stole and diverted the power of the incoming Democratic Governor. Under these laws, Coopers cabinet will be subject to approval by the legislature, Cooper will be allotted 425 agency positions to appoint in contrast with McCrorys 1,000 and Cooper will have no say in the appointees to the State Board of Elections. An additional session was called to repeal House Bill 2, the infamous Bathroom Bill. Democrats were promised a clean repeal of the embarrassing discriminatory bill, but instead Senate Pro Tempore Phil Berger proposed a conditional bill that included legislation such as a moratorium on any future locally proposed nondiscrimination ordinances. This partisan move ended in the ultimate failure to repeal House Bill 2, meaning that North Carolina continues to codify discrimination.

The next few years will be a whirlwind. It is difficult for me to optimistic, when even now, Republicans are blocking Governor Coopers attempts to expand Medicaid. This matters not just for those of us raised in this state, but it matters for every single Duke student. We are lucky to share Durham over the next four years as our home. We owe it and its people our steadfast dedication and support, not only because our institution has its roots in this state, but because our degrees are worth more when they come from a true democracy.

With unbounded tyranny and disregard for popular voice, the North Carolina General Assembly is tainting the reputation of its state and all of its institutions; including Duke. We learn about foreign policy and international comparative studies, always considering the best path to democracy abroad. Perhaps its time to consider the path to ensuring democracy right here in Durham.

Leah Abrams is a Trinity freshman. Her column, cut the bull runs on alternate Fridays.

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More here:
Living in illiberal democracy - Duke Chronicle

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What the Trump administration will actually look like; Gambia's neighbors invade in the name of democracy; Chapo Guzman is on US soil.

The best inaugural addresses have all been short. (Hint, hint, Donald.) [YouTube / Mac Schneider and Hosu Lee]

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Vox Sentences: A victory for democracy! In Gambia. With tanks. - Vox

Hillary Clinton tweeted Friday that she is attending the inauguration of her former rival President-elect Trump in order to "honor our democracy [and] its enduring values."

It wasn't initially clear if Clinton would attend the inauguration after the bitter 2016 election, but eventually she and husband former President Bill Clinton agreed to attend.

Clinton added that she will "never stop believing in our country [and] its future."

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Clinton appeared on the inauguration stage alongside Bill Clinton to a smattering of boos from Trump supporters.

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D.C. police said they have arrested more than 90 people at the protest.

01/20/17 2:04 PM

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Clinton at Trump's inauguration to 'honor our democracy' - Washington Examiner (blog)