Reprinted from hartmannreport.com
Voters who believe in democracy, a free press & a public education committed to honest inquiry & intellectual integrity must also step up and let their reps how important these things are to them"
For far too many years, Americans have made the mistake of assuming that our republican democracy will be safe as long as we elect competent and well-intentioned politicians as leaders.
Sadly, that's like thinking your surgeon, who is very good at what she does, will do a wonderful job even though the hospital can no longer provide her with sterile instruments or running water.
The reality is that democracies depend on a particular type of infrastructure to function properly. Without that infrastructure, they rapidly slide first into oligarchy and then into fascism. The two most recent examples are Russia and Hungary, although America is well down the road herself.
Recognizing the need for these core infrastructure elements to sustain democracy, neofascists within the GOP and the Supreme Court have been busily deconstructing them for the past 40 years, leading us directly to today's crisis.
The three core pillars that hold up democratic republics are a vibrant and free press, trustworthy electoral systems, and academic independence. Which is why Republicans have been trying to destroy all three.
In Russia, for example, the word is "dzherimendering." In the months before elections are held in that country, the government re-draws the maps for political districts to make sure Putin and his party maintain majority control of the parliament (Duma). It's a trick they brag they learned from Americans.
It's pretty much the same in Hungary, as Project Syndicate notes:
"After Fidesz won its first supermajority in 2010, it changed the electoral law unilaterally to boost its own future results (through gerrymandering and new rules awarding extra seats for big wins in individual districts). With these changes in place, Fidesz retained its supermajority in 2014, even though it received 8% less of the vote than it had in 2010.
"Changing the rules has since become the party's modus operandi. Its amendments to the electoral law now number in the hundreds; the latest were adopted just months ago. Owing to the electoral system's skewed rules, Fidesz has secured 68% of parliamentary seats with 53% of the vote."
And Viktor Orba'n's Fidesz party was only able to get 53% of the vote by similarly rigging the media. His government has taken over their public broadcasting equivalents of NPR and PBS, so they sing Orba'n's praises 24/7.
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