Jason Stanley: The End of US Democracy Was All Too Predictable [View all]

[Nevilledog]

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-election-inequality-meant-that-us-democracy-was-doomed-by-jason-stanley-2024-11

Since Plato’s Republic 2,300 years ago, philosophers have understood the process by which demagogues come to power in free and fair elections, only to overthrow democracy and establish tyrannical rule. The process is straightforward, and we have now just watched it play out.

NEW YORK – Like others, since late Tuesday night, my phone has been blaring with text messages asking how this could have happened (as some of my friends, colleagues, and acquaintances know, I had been fully convinced that Donald Trump would win this election handily). Instead of responding in detail to every message, I will offer my explanation here.

For 2,300 years, at least since Plato’s Republic, philosophers have known how demagogues and aspiring tyrants win democratic elections. The process is straightforward, and we have now just watched it play out.

In a democracy, anyone is free to run for office, including people who are thoroughly unsuitable to lead or preside over the institutions of government. One telltale sign of unsuitability is a willingness to lie with abandon, specifically by representing oneself as a defender against the people’s perceived enemies, both external and internal. Plato regarded ordinary people as being easily controlled by their emotions, and thus susceptible to such messaging – an argument that forms the true foundation of democratic political philosophy (as I have argued in previous work).

Philosophers have also always known that this kind of politics is not necessarily destined to succeed. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued, democracy is at its most vulnerable when inequality in a society has become entrenched and grown too glaring. Deep social and economic disparities create the conditions for demagogues to prey on people’s resentments, and for democracy ultimately to fall in the way that Plato described. Rousseau thus concluded that democracy requires widespread equality; only then can people’s resentments not be exploited so easily.

*snip*