Democracy Dies Slowly, Then All At Once

Photo by Lee Lawson on Unsplash

Democracy has been ebbing away since that day in 2015 when Donald Trump rode down the golden escalator at Trump Tower.

At first, he was greeted as a buffoon by almost everyone in both the Republican Party and the media — and yes, I also include Fox News in that cohort, whose anchors and analysts, I can tell you from personal experience, considered him a joke.

But as he seized the Republican nomination, all his previous opponents bent the knee, from Lindsey Graham (who once described Trump as a unique threat to his own party) to Ted Cruz (who once called Trump “utterly immoral” and a “pathological liar”) to Chris Christie (who was the first national figure to endorse Trump before breaking with him once Trump lost re-election).