I’m sure you will all share with me a concern about how Trump is really putting democracy at risk. His constant barking on about the vote being rigged and unlawful is just pathetic. It’s all about him. It’s not about democracy. However, his actions and behaviour and the silent support of the Republican Party, has made millions of people continue down the path of distrusting public institutions. This is really dangerous.
This week Chris Krebs, who was responsible for getting the electoral system in a better state than it had been in 2016 stood up and was interviewed. The honesty and ethics of this public servant is impressive. I watched the interview below and was delighted that somebody who had had such an important job, and who had been sacked by tweet by Trump, treated it as a public service. Because he believed in democracy. Here’s the interview. It’s a cracker:
When I was much younger, I read book after book about Senator Joseph McCarthy. I was fascinated how one dreadful politician could bring a cloud of darkness and suspicion in a country like America. He terrorised the country for years with his obsession that there were communists under every bed and around every corner. Great people had their lives destroyed by this monster.
I thought it could never happen these days. Then came Trump.
In the Washington Post this week they wrote:
Indeed, as CNN’s Ronald Brownstein aptly notes, all this is comparable to the 1950s. Just as Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s lies about communist subversion grew more wildly implausible, Trump is now implicating the “deep state” and more and more GOP governors in his invented conspiracy to steal the election from him. Now, as then, GOP leaders are largely silent.
The role of Civil Society is to keep politicians honest. To stop people getting into power and letting their party and dogma become more important than the role they have been put there in the first place, to govern.
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