I found this opinion piece (Democrats aren't innocent bystanders) interesting on how both Democrats and Republicans share responsibility for polarizing the electorate and undermining some of its faith in democracy.
It references two other posts that were pretty good as well:
The second article is really long and heavy on history. But given all of the comparisons people make between the current times and those of post-WWI Germany, I found it interesting to dive in to understand where the comparisons are coming from and how close we really are. The short answer is that we aren't that close (phew). Seems like post-WWI Germany was incredibly fragile. This was a good excerpt that summarized it:
So, unlike the 60s, you have a dynamic in which both sides are behaving like radicals, in which the establishment isn’t yelling “stop,” and in which oikophobia is more evenly distributed, relative to its Boomer-era baseline. Taken individually, none of these differences would warrant Weimar analogies. But taken together, they suggest that we are closer to the precipice than we realize—or, as the historian Peter Gay limned Weimar, that we are “dancing on the edge of a volcano,” oblivious to the fiery depths below.
But although we're not that close, we're certainly close enough that it probably makes sense to reflect on how we've all individually contributed to this environment. As mentioned in one of the articles, "All Germans undermined democracy in Weimar".
Comments