In my estimation, US democracy was officially declared dead with the supreme court decision permitting unlimited private campaign funding. That was 2010.
It had been in rough shape for decades, but you’d still get the odd twitch out of almost-dead corpse. That explains Jimmy Carter. It was easier to pretend America had a functioning democracy in those days.
That’s over. When political campaigns cost billions, politics becomes the plaything of billionaires. Which is not to suggest that America no longer has bitterly contested elections. In fact, they seem more bitterly contested than ever, now that they are virtually meaningless.
Take the transition from Trump to Biden, for example. What has changed? In spite of holding both congress and the senate, Team Blue couldn’t get anything done that people got excited about during the campaign. All that progressive feel-good stuff Biden promised just wafted into the ether.
Ditto in the foreign policy realm. Have any of Trump’s egregious violations of diplomatic norms been corrected?
Nope! The Golan now belongs to Israel and Israel’s capital is now Jerusalem. That Iran deal is way too complicated to revive. No point easing up on Cuba sanctions, which Obama had done and Trump reversed.
There’s a different guy in the White House, but the machine keeps lumbering on pretty much the same as before.
With US democracy dead and buried, the theatre of democracy becomes paramount.
Check this out. The character Donny J is rolling out his 2024 White House run in Arizona, to an arena full of enthusiastic fans. He comes on stage to the theme of that World Wrestling Entertainment character, “the Undertaker.” The fans love it!
Boo ya! Gonna save America!
American democracy is dead. Long live democracy theatre!
In some bizarre way it’s totally appropriate that Donald Trump is in the WWE Hall of Fame.
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