Democracy Archives - Page 33 of 56

North America

Believing Donald Trump’s Lies is a Choice

How Trump’s blizzard of falsehoods enables white racism

August 31, 2020 • by John Stoehr

Dale's work is different categorically from fact-checking. Anyone can do that. Dale, however, makes the lies the story. Moreover, he permits his methodical reporting to culminate in a moral conclusion, one vital to the healthy functioning of a free and open republic. "Trump is a serial liar," Dale said. Before I go ...

Believing Donald Trump’s Lies is a Choice

Democracy

Fascism or Caesarism?

How Napoleon, not Hitler, exemplifies an enduring threat to modern democracies

August 27, 2020 • by David A. Bell

As a historian, my first reaction has been to answer the question with a resounding “no.” My professional training has led me to think of fascism as a specific historical phenomenon, largely limited to the period from the early 1920s to the end of World War II, and built around ...

North America

What America Got Wrong About COVID-19–and What We Can Learn from France and Italy

Institutional fragmentation and a lack of national solidarity have derailed the pandemic response

August 26, 2020 • by Isabel Perera and Sidney Tarrow

On Tuesday, August 11, just as Florida was setting a new daily record for deaths from Covid-19, Billy Woods, sheriff of Marion County in north central Florida, banned all of his employees, with a few exceptions, from wearing masks. “This is no longer a debate,” he told his staff, explaining how ...

What America Got Wrong About COVID-19–and What We Can Learn from France and Italy

Economy

How to Reopen the American Economy Now

We don’t have to choose between a depression and tens of thousands of avoidable deaths

August 24, 2020 • by Teresa Ghilarducci

And, of course, economists are on the case. In my favorite economic paper on the COVID-19 economy, Harvard University economist James Stock describes a new family of epidemiological-economic models that provide guidance about how best to reopen the economy. Here are his smart reopening requirements: promote collective behaviors to stop the spread of the ...

Democracy

Now Is Not the Time to Polemicize Against A Broad Anti-Trump Coalition

August 21, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

The next three months will be crucial for the fate of democracy in the U.S. And the outcome of the November election will determine whether the American system of government can furnish even minimally decent and effective responses to the pressing challenges of COVID-19 and racial and economic injustice. As more ...

Democracy

Memory Politics in an Illiberal Regime

Hungary’s new Trianon memorial

August 20, 2020 • by Szabolcs László

As problematic monuments are being brought down in recent anti-racist protests around the world, Hungary, in contrast, saw the completion of a deeply flawed and tone-deaf memorial. Built for the centennial of the Trianon Peace Treaty, the “Memorial of National Unity” in front of the Hungarian Parliament has a minimalist style ...

Democracy

Is Some Version of Our Future Now Playing Out on the Streets of Minsk?

August 17, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

A contest over the legitimacy of an election and the illegitimacy of an autocrat is currently playing out on the streets of Minsk and throughout Belarus. I have no particular expertise about Belarus and nothing profound to say about this conflict. Belarus’s longtime President Alexander Lukashenko is a dictator who rose to ...

Is Some Version of Our Future Now Playing Out on the Streets of Minsk?

Democracy

Democracy “As If“

August 17, 2020 • by Dagmar Kusá

More than a century ago, Hans Vaihinger formulated his philosophy “as if” to describe our willing choice to live in a world of logical contradictions. As we cannot reach our ideals (e.g. a truly just society), we produce imperfect fictional explanations full of deliberate errors to fill in logical gaps ...

Democracy

Pandemic Politics

Reflections on the first appearance of the Biden – Harris team

August 16, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

“Kamala is killing it!” “The two speeches, of Biden and Harris, affectively expressed compassion and warmth, as they made sharp political points.” These were my Facebook responses to the coming out of the Biden – Harris team. Although I generally don’t use Facebook to express such judgments, I couldn’t constrain myself, struck as ...

Democracy

Belarusian Plea to the Global Community

August 16, 2020 • by United Massmedia

North America

Public Seminar Books Presents: A Conversation with Eric Alterman

Hosted by co-executive editor Claire Potter, the topic is politics and Alterman’s new book, “Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie -And Why Trump is Worse” (Basic Books, 2020)

August 13, 2020 • by Claire Potter

If there’s one thing we know about Donald Trump, it’s that he lies. But he’s by no means the first president to do so. In Lying in State, Eric Alterman asks how we ended up with such a pathologically dishonest commander in chief, showing that, from early on, the United States ...

Public Seminar Books Presents: A Conversation with Eric Alterman

Democracy

From Mafia State to ”Parish” Republic

August 5, 2020 • by Michal Vašečka

Slovakia is a rather unique case within post-1989 Central Europe as far as democratic transition is concerned. The lack of a tradition of statehood is the most evident difference between Slovaks and the other nations of Central Europe. It is necessary to keep this fact in mind when examining the ...