American democracy is hurtling toward an apocalyptic showdown about legitimacy

[yallerdawg]

From an opinion piece by David Faris, The Week.

While the gist of this article reflects on the "anti-system" Republican Party, we have sideshow carnival barkers in our Big Tent who loudly proclaim the de-legitimization of Democratic Party political power as "rigged" and "corrupt."

It wasn't always this way. Even while seeing their party captured by obstructionist ideologues, Republican voters continued to forward reasonable-seeming candidates as their presidential nominees. John McCain and Mitt Romney, despite being force-marched rightward by their own voters, were longstanding public servants, and even the manifestly incapable George W. Bush was a two-term governor with a narrow streak of tolerance that he maintained while his party went nativist. The willingness to place enormous power in the hands of Donald Trump, a hateful political neophyte with no grasp of policy and an unprecedented disregard for the norms of democracy, signals a new phase in the Republican Party's descent into madness.

Political scientists actually have a name for what the GOP has become: an anti-system party. The term was coined to describe parties — largely fascists on the right and communists on the left — that participated in European parliamentary democracies in order to annihilate them after attaining power.

Why do we have such disdain for the American political system - which is based on democratic principles - and who benefits from this institutional contempt?

"Little known in America, the Italian political scientist Giovanni Sartori's seminal 1976 book, Parties and Party Systems, is still considered the best guide to understanding the dynamics of multiparty politics. In it he defined an anti-system party as one that seeks "not just to change the government, but the very system of government itself."

Sartori's theory has two dimensions. The first is ideological — the party's stance vis-à-vis democracy. But we must also consider a party in terms of "relational anti-systemness" — the ideological distance between the party and other political actors in the system. As Sartori argued, "An anti-system opposition abides by a belief system that does not share the values of the political order within which it operates." A party, therefore, could still support democracy but careen so far ideologically from the other parties that it could be considered anti-system. Such anti-system parties are dangerous because of what Sartori called their "delegitimizing" impact on the system as a whole, which can be seen very clearly in the American public's sharp decline in trust and approval of our political institutions during the Obama presidency.

As we hear the 'demands' of factions within the Democratic Party insisting that certain policies and platforms be adopted by the winning majority - in the face of the rejection by the primary voter - we are again confronted with a portion of our Big Tent stridently demanding that the system was designed to preclude a fair outcome.

"Only the ignorant and corrupted would support that victorious candidate," they say. That even though the Party has spoken, those votes don't indicate a legitimate win.

In conclusion, replace GOP and Republican with Democratic Party and see if it fits.

If one acknowledges that consensus and compromise ought to be baked into American democracy, then the contemporary GOP — or at least a large contingent of it — is an anti-system party. So many members of the GOP do not believe in the consensus norms and patterns of cooperative behavior that structure the system that they have brought national governance itself to a calamitous halt. Even Republican voters increasingly prefer to elect politicians who refuse to entertain accommodation.

Read it at: http://theweek.com/articles/627994/american-democracy-hurtling-toward-apocalyptic-showdown-about-legitimacy

[VulgarPoet]

1. "Is hurtling?" That train wrecked a while back. eom