Is Civil War pending? Well Laurie has been reading opinion pieces that are preaching a very bleak future for the USA. She has posted links in the comments over here.
Now I have to agree with her that Trump questioning the Presidential election results like the immature narcissistic poor loser he is certainly did not help. Then again there are his willing cult followers who seem willing to doubt the results even though Biden won by 7.5 MILLION votes and 4 States. And this has NOT changed no matter how many recounts these idiots stage.
And it is correct that we now score as a FLAWED DEMOCRACY. Though we are the most complicated / diverse / large country near the top of the list. And we only score really low in 2 categories: "II. Functioning Of Government" "IV. Political Culture"
II. Functioning Of Government has some very Un-American Criteria... " Public confidence in political parties", "Public confidence in government", "Popular perceptions of the extent to which citizens have free choice and control over their lives.", "Does the government’s authority extend over the full territory of the country?", etc.
IV. Political Culture is equally at odds with American Culture. "Is there a sufficient degree of societal consensus and cohesion to underpin a stable, functioning democracy?", "Perceptions of leadership; proportion of the population that desires a strong leader who bypasses parliament and elections.", "There is a strong tradition of the separation of Church and State.", "Perceptions of rule by experts or technocratic government; proportion of the population that would prefer rule by experts or technocrats."
From my perception, no wonder we score questionably on this. Given that the FAR Left and FAR Right are sizeable blocks in our polarized country, what in the world would success look like? Since our States intentionally have significant power, what would success look like?
Here was their summary:
The global average score hit an all-time low.
As recorded in the Democracy Index in recent years, democracy has not been in robust health for some time. In 2020 its strength was further tested by the outbreak of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. The average global score in the 2020 Democracy Index fell from 5.44 in 2019 to 5.37. This is by far the worst global score since the index was first produced in 2006. The 2020 result represents a significant deterioration and came about largely—but not solely—because of government-imposed restrictions on individual freedoms and civil liberties that occurred across the globe in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The deterioration in the global score in 2020 was driven by a decline in the average regional score everywhere in the world, but by especially large falls in the “authoritarian regime”-dominated regions of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa. Their scores declined by 0.10 and 0.09, respectively, between 2019 and 2020. Western Europe and eastern Europe both recorded a fall in their average regional scores of 0.06. The score for Asia and Australasia, the region which has made the most democratic progress during the lifetime of the Democracy Index, fell by 0.05. Latin America’s average score declined by 0.04 in 2020, marking the fifth consecutive year of regression for the region. The average score for North America fell by only 0.01, but a bigger decline of 0.04 in the US score was masked by an improvement in Canada’s score.
US democracy under pressure from rising polarisation and declining social
cohesion. The US’s performance across several indicators changed in 2020, both for better and worse. However, the negatives outweighed the positives, and the US retained its “flawed democracy” status (see page 42). Increased political participation was the main positive: Americans have become much more engaged in politics in recent years, and several factors fuelled the continuation of this trend in 2020 including the politicisation of the coronavirus pandemic, movements to address police violence and racial injustice, and elections that attracted record voter turnout. The negatives include extremely low levels of trust in institutions and political parties, deep dysfunction in the functioning of government, increasing threats to freedom of expression, and a degree of societal polarisation that makes consensus almost impossible to achieve. Social cohesion has collapsed, and consensus has evaporated on fundamental issues—even the date of the country’s founding. The new president, Joe Biden, faces a huge challenge in bringing together a country that is deeply divided over core values.
