How Democracies Die

DNF. This was utter nonsense.

“Some might consider Hitler to be an outsider. Some might consider Trump to be an outsider. Coincidence???”

“One historian said this guy reminded him of an authoritarian. For reasons. Even though he was never elected president, that means he was one.”

They don't produce any meaningful definitions of authoritarian or democracy. At some point, they argue that using propaganda is democratic, and bribing people is authoritarian. You can't just do this. You can't draw a gigantic circle around every political figure you've ever disliked and call it authoritarian.

I get that the purpose of the book is to argue that Trump is an authoritarian dictator, or whatever. In the opening pages of the book, it talks about the removal of Allende, an event that they don't mention was sponsored, endorsed, and created by the US. The US actively destroyed democracy in another country, causing a disaster, but in the minds of these authors, that's OK
The scary thing to them is that sometimes Trump doesn't like the New York Times. Get real.

I felt like the book title and opening promise a more generalized view of democracies throughout history and how they in general go but it became fairly US-centric shortly in and uses the world examples only as a cautionary tale for Americans. Other than that minor disappointment, I thought it was a good analysis of how US democracy has managed to succeed so far, how it has handled authoritarian advances in the past and how it is not well-equipped to handle it in the near future.

I didn't really take this as a Trump sucks book, but I am biased. I found it a study of Trump's election and why he succeeded why others have failed in the same kind of attempt.

I highly recommend this book, especially if you were too young or not paying attention to international news and or American news 10 to 20 years ago. While this book centers America it seems to me that it contains information that is particularly valuable for people who live in countries that are highly influenced by the US and therefore tend to follow in its path (looking at you Canada).
The prose and writing style are very approachable and doesn't require that you have prior knowledge of a lot of verbiage so it's also a good entry point in the topic.

This book is incredibly interesting. As a forewarning the beginning and ends of this book do address the current administration but the majority of this book is looking at other democracies and how they failed or continue to thrive. It was interesting to see that even democracies that literally copied our constitution, government, courts and politics have fallen into authoritarianism and demagoguery. We are not unique in that our democracy is unique but in that our “soft guardrails” remained mostly intact for so long, until recently.

One of the things they found that eventually led to most failed democracies was their guardrails stopped working. Guardrails being:
Mutual toleration: The idea that all political rivals treat each other with civility and worthy of the positions. Not criminals or anti-patriots.
Institutional forbearance: The idea that those in power do not use the full power of their position to inhibit rivals from coming to power or pass legislation. They do not tilt the playing field unfairly in their favor. Basically, playing political hard-ball.

The book talks about reasons that these soft guardrails are failing, most notably the polarization of the parties, the enfranchising of diverse minority groups, declining middle-class and income inequality.

I feel like I've read this before, and still there are no viable solutions to the problem of GOP overreach.

I was expecting the book to be more about the death of democracies in general with a specific look at the United States at the end. But it's very much focused on the US from the start. Considering how bad the situation is (and if you don't think so, you will by the time you finish the book), I can't blame the authors.

The book makes clear that Trump is a great, immediate danger (certainly if a crisis should hit) but that things have been messed up for a while and quickly getting worse. They do propose a way out of the quagmire, but it would require a lot of citizens and politicians to start listening to the better angels of their natures.