The America I've always believed in doesn't exist

All my life I have believed in the promise of America, the idea that America was an exceptional country—the world’s greatest democracy. I admit that I bought in fully to the American mythology: that whatever our flaws, we were at heart a kind and generous nation whose citizens tenaciously believed in democracy and the rule of law, that we were jealous guardians of freedom at home and abroad, that we were a shining example of those ideals in the world.

I used to wonder how people in other countries with functioning democracies could so easily surrender their rights and freedoms to authoritarian rulers (Weimar Germany in the past; more recently, countries like Hungary, Turkey, the Philippines, and India). How could a citizenry succumb so foolishly to an obvious demagogue? How could a nation’s independent legislature and judiciary cower to a strongman without a fight? Having grown up in America, with its long, stable history of self-government, I found that backsliding hard to imagine.

Now I understand.

I understand, in a way I never could before, that America isn’t special. We are simply a nation of human beings, like humans in every other country, and no less susceptible to cheap demagoguery.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/7/2283729/-The-America-I-ve-always-believed-in-doesn-t-exist