The expression is not mine, it is from Paul Krugman, who wonders if this can be “the last real election” in the United States. Obviously, the doubt is due to the possibility of a Trump victory, and the columnist did not have time to include the ruling of the New York court jury. Since last Thursday, the million-dollar question has become what the effect of the ruling could be for next November 5. There are answers for all tastes, but I lean toward the following: mobilization and tight ranks among Trump’s bases, doubts or desertions among those who were not so convinced of voting for him; but, above all, abandonment of any type of indecision or scruples among potential Biden voters. Since the outcome depends on a handful of votes in certain swing states, the current president should ultimately be favored. Now this should count on any democratic citizen. And I’m not referring to the party, but to the form of government.
Note that I have used a conditional, “should”, I am not sure that in the end this mobilization in favor of Biden will occur, but I refuse to believe that the citizens of the oldest democracy in the world are going to put it to rest by not attending to your rescue. The magnate’s reaction to the jury’s ruling has been, as is usual when something does not favor him, that the entire democratic system of his country is “rigged” (rigged), and that he feels like “a political prisoner.” Nothing that we have not heard from him before, they are his usual slander, and in the same way that on his day he questioned the electoral result, now he does so with the procedures of the judicial power. And, most seriously, with widespread applause from his faithful and a spectacular increase in funds for his campaign. Here, this is what I want to focus on, there is no hypocrisy, the message is clear: we do not mind sinking democracy, its institutions and procedures, as long as “ours” wins. Partisanship above the system.
It could be said that this is an effect of polarization or the presence of a character like Trump; I fear, however, that the problem is deeper and not unique to the United States. It has to do with the progressive erosion of an intangible essential for democratic politics, civic culture. This presupposes an exquisite following of the rules, and not their cynical instrumentalization; acceptance of the legitimacy of the adversary and broad levels of tolerance towards those who dissent from our positions; attention to our civic duties and not only to our rights; the predisposition to act following the general interest, not the strictly private interest. Now, on the contrary, citizen alertness is failing, distracted by the pursuit of what is their own when not atavistically linked to partisan loyalties that are considered above the fair play typical of democracy if not of its own legal order.
In short, Trump as a symptom of something deeper; namely, the eclipse of the budgets of public ethics without which there is no functioning democratic system. Much emphasis is placed on institutional reforms, but these are of little use if citizens are not willing to defend them. In the end they are the ultimate arbiter of the system. They were in Germany in January 1933, when Hitler came to power, and they will be on November 5 in the United States. Now many think that the beast can be tamed. Then they believed it too.
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