Equality and democracy are under assault.
It's easy to see why Joe Biden thinks America's democracy's in peril. Elections,
aren't being trusted. Institutions are being undermined.
A mob stormed the capital on January 6th.
A Supreme court ruling on abortion has further divided a country.
And now an ex-president who's being investigated. These were long-simmering
symptoms that even could date back to the founding of the country.
When Donald Trump came, he definitely amplified the divisions.
The great replacement. Yeah. It's not a conspiracy theory.
It's their electoral strategy.
They've been talking about this actually since the end of the civil war. This,
this theory goes back to that period because with the freeing of 4 million
enslaved Africans who became citizens by 1868,
and as black males had the right the vote by 1870,
gave them the opportunity to have more kids. And they had more kids that would,
um, lead to the fall of Southern control,
white Southern control over the south.
We've seen recent shootings in various parts of the country were about great
replacement theory.
People issuing manifestos about great replacement theory and how they were
influenced by the New Zealander who picked up a,
a rifle and killed up a whole bunch of folks and New Zealand a few years back
because he was afraid his country was going to be more influenced by
immigrant cultures.
So the relationship between the threat to American democracy and race and
racism, there it is.
It's around white supremacy and white supremacy is a racist ideology.
The political environment of today is often compared to the 1960s
when social unrest about the Vietnam war and civil rights threatened to
tear the nation apart.
But that push ricocheted back to the right with the Reagan revolution in the
1980s, followed by the ascension of conservative talk,
radio Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich in Congress then came Barack
Obama in 2008.
And that was supposed to be a post racial moment of unification and hope.
Instead, what happened two years later, the hardline tea party movement emerged.
And in 2016, Donald Trump was elected president.
So for every action, there seems to be a reaction from the other side.
The moment we're in today is, um,
nearly if not as dangerous as the period leading up to the civil war.
One of the main differences between today and the civil rights era was that the
main sort of foment, um,
during the civil rights area was for greater rights. Um,
and while we're seeing right, a, a key element of that,
we think about the black lives matter movement. And so on,
most of the upheaval,
most of the distrust is actually coming right?
Not from those who are seeking to, uh,
to support greater democratic rights,
wider democratic rights for more of the population,
but are actually looking to narrow who has access to power that is
profoundly troubling for the practice of democracy itself.
Conservative radio was a huge launching pad for conservative speak in the
1990s, but the real accelerant may have been social media.
But the other thing that's really important to keep in mind about the impact of
social media is that it's created a new space within
this larger ecosystem.
That those who seek to manipulate the democratic process,
manipulate voters and citizens can use to bring the sort of
traditional means of communication to the people directly to the people.
But now they're having it reinforced on social media and vice versa.
And so that echo chamber becomes right, even stronger,
even harder to penetrate.
Among the central foundations of a working democracy is the press.
But lately we've seen that press being mistrusted,
diminished, some by our own doing.
Local journalism has been absolutely decimated. Uh,
in the last decade,
we need to rebuild local news primarily because that's where
people live.
Now,
we're seeing candidates all over the country who are claiming they didn't lose
even when the ballots came in.
Why would I release it to a bunch of people who denied that there was fraud when
there was obviously fraud.
The risk is our election system. And I think, you know,
I will just keep coming back to you that that is the place where if you're
worried,
you should be paying attention and making sure that the public servants who lead
our elections do not feel terrorized at home.
Making sure that we are not actually encouraging people to seek those offices
who are fundamentally opposed to the premise of American democracy.
There are very motivated,
small number of people who are attacking a very weak point in our democracy.
It is a small number of people. The weak point is the exception, not the rule,
but if not confronted directly,
you could see an oversized traumatic impact on American democracy
because of the combination of the weakness of our election system,
the ability of social media to inflame and organize and a leader in president
Trump, who believes he benefits from that dynamic.
One of the potential issues with
democracy's fragile status is the balance of power between the executive,
the president, and Congress.
We've had four presidents thus far in the 21st century, Bush Obama,
Trump, and now Biden.
Each of them has expanded the orbit of the presidency in a
number of significant ways.
Bush helps create the Homeland security state and also engages in signing
statements that kind of put, put his stamp on legislation.
Obama calls it for the pen and a phone presidency where he specifically
says that he's gonna do things by executive order that he previously said would
be unconstitutional for him to do in that way.
Trump in a variety of ways tries to have a unilateral presidency.
And then Biden is trying to do an LBJ or FDR
type legislative package with a very narrow majority.
All of those are really expansions of the role of the president.
The president is stepping in where Congress has created a vacuum,
but going forward, it would be better if the Congress could do its job,
could do the budgeting that it's supposed to do.
And the president can step back a little and not necessarily be the one
man unilateral determiner of what all our laws are because that's not the role
of the president, in our constitutional system.
We have a separation of powers for a reason.
Even the Supreme court,
once considered a bellwether for the integrity and independence of American
institutions, has fallen prey to political distrust,
especially in the wake of its decision this year to overturn Roe V Wade.
Many Americans question, how can it be that abortion rights,
which most people favor according to polls are now left to states looking to ban
abortions outright. It doesn't make sense to those people. For them,
democracy isn't working.
The truth in the matter is,
is that we've lived in the country that has been restricting people's civil
rights and human rights, right from the beginning.
And that creates a lot of tension. When you have a democracy that's, you know,
on paper looks like it's free, but in reality,
restricts so many people from enjoying the freedoms that, you know,
certain groups, particularly elite whites and elite white males have.
American democracy is always tumultuous. It's always been tumultuous.
Think back to the Shay's rebellion or the whiskey rebellion, uh,
think about the civil war,
but there are always challenges with democracy and especially in the American
system, we have challenges.
But we're also a system we've survived those other errors and I think we're
gonna survive this one.