The US is a dying democracy


One way that democracies end is suddenly, by means of a coup or other other extra-legal or quasi-legal means that replace an elected government by an unelected one.

But democracies can also die slowly. While the functions of governments are supposed to be based on the laws and constitutions that prescribe how they should operate, those cannot cover every possible eventuality. The filling of those gaps is heavily dependent on institutions and norms that have been built up over time. These institutions are the legal system, a free press, trade unions, and public interest groups that protect the rights of minorities and individuals against the unchecked use and abuse of governmental power. Democracies die more slowly when those institutions and norms that form the foundation upon which democracies are based are eroded and become merely shells and thus effectively eliminated.

My home country of Sri Lanka witnessed that steady slide away from democracy over decades as successive governments chipped away at those institutions and norms until it finally became an out-and-out kleptocracy where the ruling party and its cronies siphoned off public wealth into their pockets while starving the country and its people of the basic necessities. I have written many times before that what was happening in the US bore a disturbing resemblance to what I saw happening in Sri Lanka decades ago and now the pace of that degeneration has accelerated.

There are many examples of this decline. One is the question of presidential pardons. Section 2 of Article II of the US constitution gives the president the “Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” The idea was that there will always be instances in which someone innocent is convicted of a crime and imprisoned or sentenced to too long a term. The pardon power was meant to provide the president the ability to right an obvious wrong. But what it has become now is a way to give friends of the president carte blanche to do any damn thing they like, secure in the knowledge that they will get pardons as they walk out the door at the end of the president’s term.

While there has been an uproar over some of the pardons that Joe Biden has issued to family and others, Kevin Drum reminds us of what Trump did at the end of his first term, when he pardoned all manner of cronies, including his son-in-law’s father and some Republican congresspeople and donors to the party and those who had a personal connection to him. As Wikipedia says:

Since 1921, only two Presidents granted clemency on fewer occasions than Trump. In Trump’s first term, he granted clemency 237 times, compared with about 78 by George H.W. Bush and about 200 by George W. Bush. Of the pardons and commutations that Trump did grant, the vast majority were to persons to whom Trump had a personal or political connection, or persons for whom executive clemency served a political goal. A significant number had been convicted of fraud or public corruption. The New York Times reported that during the closing days of the Trump presidency, individuals with access to the administration, such as former administration officials, were soliciting fees to lobby for presidential pardons.

Trump’s use of the pardon power was marked by an unprecedented degree of favoritism. He frequently granted executive clemency to his supporters or political allies, or following personal appeals or campaigns in conservative media.

Trump granted executive clemency to three court-martialed U.S. military officers who were accused or convicted of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.[

Many wealthy individuals paid tens of thousands of dollars to former advisors to Trump for them to lobby Trump to grant pardons, bypassing the review process of the Office of the Pardon Attorney.

The US Department of Justice has the power to hound people for years and drive them to bankruptcy and ruin. This is why that particular institution has to be staffed by people of integrity and independence. Trump’s claims that it had been ‘weaponized’ against him was bogus. In fact, the department went out of its way to give him every possible break and thus he evaded jail. But Trump seems determined to weaponize it. Trump’s vindictiveness and openly stated desire to punish those whom he perceives as his enemies, including members of Joe Biden’s family, may have caused Biden to feel that he had to do this to protect people who are innocent or had only been doing their jobs. Whether that justified the use will be debated for a long time.

But the fact remains that now the norms that used to govern the issuance of pardons, though already seriously frayed, have been well and truly shredded. From now we can expect outgoing presidents to issue blanket pardons to all their cronies. Not only that, the people working for the president will expect it and will act as if they are above the law while the president is in office.

The norms and institutions of democracy take a long time to build. Once they are dismantled, however, they are not easily put back in place.

Back to Sri Lanka, within the last few months a new government has come into power that is free of the corruption, nepotism, and cronysim that had characterized previous governments. They have vowed to bring back true democracy and the country is waiting to see if they carry out their promises. But it is still early days. So far things look good, so there is hope that failed democracies can be reconstructed.

But while there is real hope that Sri Lanka has emerged from the nadir and will start climbing back up the hill towards democracy, the US is clearly on the downward slide and we cannot tell what its rock bottom will look like.

Comments

  1. moarscienceplz says

    Certainly there has been a hell of a lot of norm-breaking in the recent past, with Citizens United being perhaps the snowball that triggered the recent avalanche. But I’m not sure you can say we have a failed democracy when the guy who was certainly the worst President in the last 100 years, and quite possibly the worst President in the entire history of the USA, just won a second term, and this time with an actual popular majority. The People have spoken, and they said they want to be lied to, and they want to lie to themselves.

  2. EigenSprocketUK says

    I wasn’t aware that Trump even knows or cares who Ross Ulbricht is (the Silk Road person) or what he was convicted for (narcotics, money laundering, hiring for contract killings). Or whether there is a reason for pardoning instead of commuting the life-term sentence(s).
     
    But perhaps the scholarly and justice-minded people around Trump are much better informed about the nuances of the case and the somewhat harsh sentence issued twelve years ago which was pardoned today.
    BBC: Trump pardons Silk Road dark web market creator Ross Ulbricht.
    Because it would surely be too cynical to think they were currying favour with libertarians and cryptobros, or that they were taking revenge on individuals within the DoJ.

  3. Dunc says

    Trump’s claims that it had been ‘weaponized’ against him was bogus. In fact, the department went out of its way to give him every possible break and thus he evaded jail. But Trump seems determined to weaponize it.

    Once again, every accusation is a confession.

  4. EigenSprocketUK says

    I remember from my youth what felt sometimes like weekly news reports of the civil war in Sri Lanka, yet despite Britain’s role in creating much of the conditions which led to it, I still know almost nothing of Sri Lanka’s politics. But I am greatly cheered that Mano feels hope for Sri Lanka’s future after such a long time.
    I hope (somewhat in vain) that the USA comes to see what is happening in its own country and how it is now openly being stacked in favour of the corrupt and the cronies at the expense of ordinary people.

  5. birgerjohansson says

    The status quo the leading Democrats worship has died, now that Tr*mp has showed how easily laws and institutions can be nullified.
    Remember primaries 2020 when Democrats were outraged Bernie wanted to get money out of politics.
    You have a mission: primary away any legacy Democrat who wants the corporations to keep funding his/her election campaign. These candidates will not fight to get rid of Citizen United, or reform the Supreme Court.

  6. friedfish2718 says

    President Trump = the Honey Badger.
    .
    The TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) virus is a most virulent virus, causing irreversible dementia.
    .
    The second wife (Biden) must be quite terrible for the husband (American Citizenry) to divorce her in order to marry back the first wife (Trump).
    .
    The American Citizenry has regained its sanity.

  7. mizzi says

    Thank you Mano, for highlighting the positive developments in Sri Lanka. Such news are what I sorely need, so I will try to beush up my sparse knowledge in the Asia section of the Guardian. Also: I’m keeping my eyes peeled for somewhere to emigrate to, should the necessity arise, and the Flora of this region very much appeals.

  8. sonofrojblake says

    One way that democracies end is suddenly, by means of a coup or other other extra-legal or quasi-legal means that replace an elected government by an unelected one.

    One quite frequent means of democracy ending is that the US turns up and topples the democractically elected government in favour of a dictator more closely aligned with US interests.

  9. Pierce R. Butler says

    Back to Sri Lanka, within the last few months a new government has come into power that is free of the corruption, nepotism, and cronysim that had characterized previous governments.

    A: This got a lot less coverage than did the fall of the previous government.

    B: Unless the corrupting SL agents as well as the corruptees have been purged, I can only take this statement’s factuality tentatively. Surely the briber-payers will continue to seek out bribe-takers, and eventually will find some.

    We currently have only a handful of (apparently) serious reformist governments in power globally: Poland, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Ukraine, Syria, Colombia, come to mind. Several others claim that status, with no credibility, including El Salvador, Argentina, Niger, Chad, and most recently the United States. (I just did a search for “reformist governments 2025” -- and it got me a bunch of links to Project 2025: insert despair emoji here.) Not sure how to describe, e.g., Bolivia.

    I hope our esteemed host will continue to apprise us of developments in beautiful/noble Lanka.

  10. says

    The US was a fictional democracy that fell apart in a civil war within a mere 100 years, failed to reconstruct itself and became another fictional democracy and has resolved its problem by becoming a plutocratic oligarchy. I really don’t see why anyone is particularly impressed other than that the US managed to achieve levels of violence that would make ghengis khan’s mongols blanch and new forms of decadence that would embarrass a Roman senator.

  11. says

    I wasn’t aware that Trump even knows or cares who Ross Ulbricht is

    “Don’t charge up the hill, me boys!”, brave Ulricht cried, but shots were fired and Kennedy died,
    all because Crooken Hillary lied.

  12. KG says

    friedfish2718@7,

    Trump is a liar, a bully, a rapist, a bigot, a narcissist, a hypocrite, a fascist. You could try to dispute these statements, but I’m pretty sure you won’t, because you know they are true. That the American electorate has re-elected him shows the deep corruption of American culture, its hatred of truth. You are an excellent exemplar of that corruption.

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