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Marchers took hopes, fears to Washington

The Womens March that occurred in Washington last Saturday quickly became one of the most talked-about activist movements of recent years.

Though an official number still hasnt been released, the most accepted estimate seems to be around 500,000.

Metro officials announced Sunday that Saturday had been the second-busiest day in the history of Washingtons subway system, just behind the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama. A total of 1,001,613 Metro entries were recorded on the day of the march.

LESS THAN 24 HOURS after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, Washington was overrun with half a million protesters sporting pink hats and chanting, We will not go away! Welcome to your first day!

For many, the march provided a sense of solidarity and relief, and a release of the tension that has plagued many Americans since Election Day.

Ive been grappling with what I can personally do to express my dissent ever since the election, said Ta Coates, a young photographer from D.C. I think this was an eye opener. Im going to take more photos, be more active, and encourage my friends to be as involved as possible.

Though the event was labeled the Womens March, organizers insisted the movement would give a voice to all causes.

This proved true as women, men and children carried signs demanding equal pay, LGBT equality and health care access. There were signs about climate change, environmental causes and immigration, as well as countless others touching on each significant moment and cause of the past decade.

Countless chants went up among the protesters as they stood in the streets for hours, waiting to march:

No hate, no fear. Immigrants are welcome here!

Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!

Black lives matter!

As the women, men and children stood in the streets, waiting for the speakers they were too far away to hear, they sang songs to pass the time. The sounds of America the Beautiful, This Little Light of Mine and Amazing Grace were heard over crowds as people hugged strangers, passed out snacks and made new friends.

IF THE PURPOSE of the march was to make the voices of millions heard, the mission was certainly accomplished. Outside of Washington, millions of protesters around the world stood in solidarity with the Womens March, marching through the streets of Los Angeles, New York, London and Barcelona, and many others, demanding that their voices heard.

Women and men traveled for hours just to be a part of such a historic event. Hillary Hornyak, a young woman from western New York, left for the march Friday night and drove through the night, picking up friends along the way, to arrive at 8 a.m.

This is a part of history you cant miss, she said. Its not often that you get the opportunity to stand up with so many other people that are fighting for the same thing, and actually feel like people are listening.

The rest is here:
'This is what democracy looks like!' - Burlington Times News

Does democracy require journalists and educators to strive for political balance? Im hardly alone in thinking the answer is yes.But it also requires them to present the facts as they understand them and when it is not possible to be factual and balanced at the same time, democratic institutions risk collapse.

Consider the problem abstractly.Democracy X is dominated by two parties, Y and Z.Party Y is committed to the truth of propositions A, B and C, while Party Z is committed to the falsity of A, B and C.Slowly the evidence mounts: A, B and C look very likely to be false.Observers in the media and experts in the education system begin to see this, but the evidence isnt quite plain enough for non-experts, especially if those non-experts are aligned with Party Y and already committed to A, B and C.

Both psychological research and commonsense observation of the recent political situation (I think youll agree with this, whatever side youre on) demonstrate the great human capacity to rationalize and justify what you want to believe.The evidence against A can be very substantial compelling, even, from a neutral point of view without convincing people who are emotionally invested in the truth of A.

The journalists and educators who live in X now face a dilemma.They can present both sides in a balanced way, or they can call the facts as they see them.Either choice threatens the basic institutions of democracy.

If they present balanced cases for and against A, B and C, they give equal time to the false and the true.They create the misleading impression that the matter is still in doubt, that opinion is divided, that its equally reasonable to believe either side.They thereby undermine and discredit their own assessment that A, B and C are very likely to be false.This is dangerous, since democracy depends on a well-educated, informed voting public, aware of the relevant facts.

In the long term, journalists and educators will likely turn against balance, because they care intensely about the facts in question and dont wish to pretend that the evidence is unclear.They understand that they cannot routinely promote false equivalencies while retaining their integrity.

So ultimately they will tell the truth, mostly, as they see it.And this, too, is likely to harm democracy.Since the truth in our examplehappens to disproportionately favor Party Z over Party Y, and since the members of Party Y are understandably unready to abandon their prior commitments despite the evidence, Party Y will begin to see the media and academia as politically aligned with Party Z.And Party Y will be correct to see things that way.Journalists and scholars will tend to prefer Party Z, because Party Z has got it right about the facts they care about.

Thus begins a vicious cycle: Party Y attacks and undermines academia and the media for perceived bias, pushing the experts further toward Party Z.Members of Party Y become even less willing to listen to expert argument and opinion.

Being human, experts will have their biases.This worsens the cycle.Originally, they might have been more neutral or evenly split between the parties.But now, given their bad treatment by Party Y, they much prefer Party Z the party that supports, respects and believes them.Party Ys charges of bias thus find firmer footing: On this point, at least, Party Y is factually correct.

Party Ys followers react the same way.They believe, partly for good reason, that academia and the media are biased toward Party Z.They begin to perceive Party Y and its allies as the only trustworthy source.

Party Y and its supporters can now appeal to both real and perceived bias to justify suppressing and discrediting educators and the media or even replacing objective scholars and journalists with partisan stooges unmoved by the evidence, worsening and intensifying the cycle.

If the cycle continues too long, the end result is destruction of the free press and transformation of the education system into an organ of state propaganda.

In weak democracies, weve seen this cycle repeated over and over again. Aspiring politicians advocating false or mistaken views are called out by academics and the media.Academics and the media thus become their enemies.The battle is fought in the political or military arena, where scholars and journalists rarely have much skill.Public education and freedom of the press can only be saved if Party Z proves stronger.

This is all general and oversimplified.But its clear in the abstract and in the real world that knowledgeable people can be forced by the evidence to disproportionately favor one political party over another, creating a vicious cycle of bias and partisan alignment.

We might be entering this cycle in the United States.To fight against it, we must allow journalists, educators and researchers to speak freely. Political leaders and their supporters must not rush to the conclusion that experts who disagree with them even systematically are their enemies.

Eric Schwitzgebel is a professor of philosophy at UC Riverside and the author of Perplexities of Consciousness.He blogs at The Splintered Mind.

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What happens to democracy when the experts can't be both factual and balanced? - Los Angeles Times

The government of the United States got a downgrade this week: We're no longer afull democracy,according to theEconomist Intelligence Unit's latest Democracy Index. For the first time, wewere bumped down to flawed, thanks to an erosion of public trust in political institutions.

According to the report's authors, a flawed democracy has free elections but weak governance, an underdeveloped political culture and low levels of political participation. Other countries that share this dubious honor include Italy,Japan, France and India. Rankings are based on a country's electoral process, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation and political culture.

That downgrade puts us at 21 in the rankings. Norway, Iceland and Sweden were ranked as the world's most vibrant democracies, followed byNew Zealand and Denmark;Canada and Ireland tied for sixth place. Syria and North Korea came, somewhat predictably, in last.

[Trump is the U.S.s first Latin American president]

Americans are days into Donald Trump's presidency and just a couple of months out from one of the most divisive elections in history. But the report caution that our problems go back much further. The country has been teetering on the brink for years, the report says. Faith in our public institutions including Congress, newspapers and banks has been in decline for decades. Just 19 percent of Americans trust the government most of the time. Three-quarters believe that most elected officials put their own interests ahead of the country.

Trust in political institutions is an essential component of well-functioning democracies. Yet surveys by Pew, Gallup and other polling agencies have confirmed that public confidence in government has slumped to historic lows in the U.S. This has had a corrosive effect on the quality of democracy, the report found. This has created a legitimacy crisis, the report says.

The United States is in good company.Democracy is looking sickly the world over. The scores of almost half of the world's 167 countries declined between 2006 and 2016, thanks to the increasing role played by nonelected technocrats, increased voter abstention and curbs on civil liberties. Just 5 percent of the world's population live in a full democracy; 2.6 billion live under authoritarian regimes.

Or, in the words of the EIU: Democracy is in trouble in the West, in the mature democracies of western Europe and the U.S., which are no longer obvious beacons for those striving for democracy in the nondemocratic world.

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The US is no longer a 'full democracy,' a new study warns - Washington Post

The Nation.

US democracy is having a 'legitimacy crisis' New York Post America now joins nations such as Italy, Japan, and India as a flawed democracy which has free elections but weak governance, an underdeveloped political culture and low levels of political participation, according to Economist Intelligence Unit ... 'The Economist' Just Downgraded the US From a 'Full Democracy' to a 'Flawed Democracy'The Nation. U.S. demoted by analyst group from 'full democracy' to 'flawed democracy'UPI.com The U.S. has been downgraded from "full democracy" to "flawed democracy"VICE News Mother Jones -Salon -Christian Science Monitor -Economist Intelligence Unit all 90 news articles »

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US democracy is having a 'legitimacy crisis' - New York Post

Foreign Policy (blog)

Forget Dow 20000 the Boom Times Are Over. Is Democracy Foreign Policy (blog) With the swearing in of the Republican-dominated 115th Congress and the inauguration of Donald Trump as president, we are now faced with a series of unknowns about the future of liberalism and democracy. The politics of nationalism are one aggravating ... and more »

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Forget Dow 20000 the Boom Times Are Over. Is Democracy - Foreign Policy (blog)