Democracies don't just fail

They must be actively undermined and it's that process we need to focus on

‘People realised that, on this crowded, hungry continent, democracy was more terrifying than despotism. Everyone yearned for order and a strong government.’

—Liu Cixin, Death’s End (the final book of The Three Body Problem trilogy)

The phrase “crisis of democracy” is regularly invoked in contemporary discussion of politics, but we need to be careful with it. It directs our attention to the effects rather than the causes of the problems that confront us, and it’s that misdirection I want to talk about.¹

A monster being fed baskets of infants and excreting them with horns; symbolizing vaccination and its effects. Etching by Charles Williams, 1802 — Source.

The truth is you have to work hard to make a democracy fail.

The democratic collapse in the US, for instance, has been set up over decades as various forces have conspired to undermine and demonise every aspect of democratic practice. It has reached the point where a well-known commentator feels that this is a reasonable description of the…