How Did Our Democracy Get so Fragile?

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

President, Wickenden, Washington, Lizza, Obama, Wnyc, News, Barack, Politics

4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

We’re in the midst of another election season, and yet again American democracy hangs in the balance, with a leading Presidential candidate who has threatened to suspend parts of the Constitution. How did the foundations of our political system become so shaky? Jelani Cobb, the dean of the journalism school at Columbia University; Evan Osnos, a Washington correspondent for The New Yorker; and the best-selling author and historian Jill Lepore joined The New Yorker’s Michael Luo for a discussion of that very existential question during the most recent New Yorker Festival. From Cobb’s perspective, “it’s not that complicated,” he notes, “If we went all the way back to the fundamental dichotomy of the people who founded this country and the way they subsidized their mission of liberty with the lives of slaves. So we’ve always been engaged in that dialectic.” Lepore argues that people on both sides of the political divide choose to embrace an account of the past that accords with their politics, something she considers “incredibly dangerous.” Osnos, who witnessed the upheaval of January 6th firsthand, thinks the deeper problem is disengagement from the country and the political system. “I was struck by how many of [the rioters] told me it was their first trip to Washington,” Osnos says. “They came to Washington to sack the Capitol.”

CORRECTION: Jelani Cobb notes that Queens was at one time the second-whitest borough of New York City, and is the most diverse county in the United States. Measures of diversity vary; in some recent data, Queens ranks third among counties

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0:49.2	This is the political scene, and I'm David Remnick.
1:06.0	As we lurch painfully into another election season, we can't seem to avoid the phrase democracy hangs in the balance yet again.
1:09.2	We've been saying that since 2016, and sadly, alarmingly, it's even more the case today.
1:15.4	Donald Trump is ahead of Joe Biden in many polls, and he certainly isn't chastened by his efforts
1:20.8	to overturn the last election, and he certainly isn't chastened by his legal troubles.
1:26.0	Instead, he's called to suspend parts of the Constitution
1:28.5	and recently called his political enemies vermin, a word out of Hitler and Mussolini. And this year's
1:35.6	chaos in Congress, the like of which we hadn't seen in our history, certainly doesn't give you
1:40.5	much comfort. So how did we get here? And can we ever get from here to safer
1:46.5	ground where we can argue about things like tax rates? That's a question that some of the New Yorkers
1:54.5	best thinkers on politics gathered to discuss recently. Jelani Cobb, Jillipor,, and Evan Osnottes are all staff writers and collectively
2:03.2	the authors of a huge pile of excellent books on American history and cultural life.
2:08.6	They came together at the New Yorker Festival for a conversation moderated by Michael Lueh,
	...

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