It’s been nearly three years since most Americans elected president Biden into office; however, his election left some Americans hopeless and unsure of American exceptionalism regarding democracy as many American once knew it. The hopelessness is not because Biden can’t lead the country, nor is it because of his agender or his affiliated party agender. Instead, it’s all about the damage and undemocratic practice that some Americans have come to embrace. Former President Trump’s acts of undermining democratic norms have raised alarms for many experts who study democracy and politicians across the country. The term “Big lie” was coined by Timothy Snyder, who has been studying how oppressors skewer truth from the public. 

Many republican embrace the fiction that the 2020 election was rigged and corrupt (Block, 2021). A false assertion fueled the coup attempt or insurrection that Trump won the election. Many have warned that the big lie about a stolen election grows more dangerous and entrenched. Therefore, as Snyder (2021) pointed out, there are millions of reasons why Americans should be worried about this baseless narrative. According to Timothy Snyder, Trump exploited an old-age tactic people like Adolf Hitler used. The big lie narrative turns even the most influential people into victims and allows them to go the extra mile and exact vengeance as if it were a future promise. Snyder points out Adolf Hitler’s original depiction of the narrative and, more precisely, his blame on the Jews for Germany’s miseries and woes. Snyder states that the lie is so big that it could distort worldly order. That means that when people believe the big lie, they immediately imply that the other party is telling a lie. 

Recent elections across the country depict what could be the future of many candidates in elections to come. The results of early primaries seem to suggest that the United States democracy is in jeopardy. The critical aspects of the 2016 election appeared to be in line with the past patterns of American politics (Lieberman et al., 2017). Trump quickly pointed out that he could garner more primary votes than any past candidate by receiving 13.3 million votes (Lieberman et al., 2017). However, this was just the start of his big lie; he failed to acknowledge that he held a record 16 million GOP primary votes against him than any previous nominees and among the few candidates in recent years. In 2016, Trump failed to earn the support of at least half of the primary voters. As far as democratic norms are concerned, many accounts of the politics in the United States see its long-term stability and smooth functioning as dependent on how specific sets of norms operate. At the same time, political conflict and polarization are not contrary to democracy but rather an impetus. For one, democracy is a clear set of procedures and rules for managing and waging conflict through institutionalized approaches and techniques. However, on January 6, 2021, a mobilized mob stormed into the Capital Building based on the big lie that Donald Trump had won the election. Such acts should make Americans worried about the future of our democracy. To many American, it was difficult to imagine the idea of storming the U.S capital because these are acts that occur in authoritarian regimes. 

Responding to government malfeasance through mass mobilization is vital for democratic politics. However, one of the main aspects of contemporary democratic erosion is constitutional regression or stealth authoritarianism. This is a situation whereby the government uses democratic-related techniques to undermine democracy. The refusal to accept election results is more of an accelerator than the root cause of a democratic decline in our democratic practices. It was a game that tested the loyalty of Trump’s followers. The emergence of Donald Trump as an ethnic-nationalist-populist was not a cause but an outcome of democratic erosion in the country. That shows that his leaving of office will not be an end of an era but rather the start of a more excellent reckoning concerning the fragileness of the American democracy and systematic injustice. 

America has decentralized federalism that offers considerable authority to different government levels. Even though many perceive this as beneficial to democratic politics, it does it unevenly and contributes to the deepening of inequalities in democratic processes and democratic backsliding. Grumbach & Michener (2022) argue that if considered together, decentralized accountability, the exit threat, information asymmetry, mobile political resources, and mobile shifting can help highlight the corrosive implications of federalism on the country’s democracy. Federalism’s role in establishing and exacerbating institutional pathways to necessitate political inequality can jeopardize the core democratic aspirations and equal voice.

Mickey (2022) points out that democracy usually starts at home by emphasizing the importance of local elections. Whether in the local and state jurisdictions, Americans experience repressive policing or not, take part in fairly conducted elections, and choose to vote. As of now, there is an increasingly clear regional difference in the overall quality of local democracy. The northeastern and West Coast states are doing much better on local democracy than the southern states. In many southern states, there are efforts to enact voting laws that would make it difficult for many American to vote. Fully contested elections characterize democracies without massive fraud and full suffrage, coupled with an efficient guarantee of civil liberties such as freedom of association, assembly, and speech. The recent decline in the American democracy has mainly been linked to norms such as rising political violence and paranoia, violations of the rule of law, abuses of power and executive aggrandizement, and increasingly dysfunctional congress, among other things. 

Should we be worried about the future of our democracy? In part, Americans have every right to have some hope in our democracy. Moreover, the fact that some candidates endorsed by Trump who embrace the baseless big lie narrative are losing in primary elections shows hope for reviving democracy and standing out on the global stage. However, Americans should be worried about the big lie just for the time being. It destroys democracy by convincing people to believe what their leaders say, ignoring election results and voting. There is nothing good about the baseless narrative besides adding to truth decay, increasing political polarization, diminishing trust in institutions, and boosting inequality levels, among other causal trends contributing to democratic backsliding and erosion. Therefore, to strengthen the country’s democracy, all Americans should be thinking institutionally and systematically.

References

Block, M. (2021, December 23). The clear and present danger of Trump’s enduring ‘Big Lie.’ NPR. https://www.npr.org/2021/12/23/1065277246/trump-big-lie-jan-6-election

Grumbach, J. M., & Michener, J. (2022). American federalism, political inequality, and democratic erosion. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 699(1), 143-155.

Kamarck, E. (2022, May 25). The Georgia Republican primary: bad night for the Big Lie. Brookings.https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2022/05/25/the-georgia-republican-primary-bad-night-for-the-big-lie/

Lieberman, R., Mettler, S., Pepinsky, T. B., Roberts, K. M., & Valelly, R. (2017). Trump and American democracy: History, comparison, and the predicament of liberal democracy in the United States. Comparison, and the Predicament of Liberal Democracy in the United States (August 29, 2017).

Mickey, R. (2022). Challenges to subnational democracy in the United States, past and present. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 699(1), 118-129.

Rose, J. (2022, January 3). 6 in 10 Americans say U.S. democracy is in crisis as the ‘Big Lie’ takes root. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2022/01/03/1069764164/american-democracy-poll-jan-6

Snyder, T. (2021, January 12). The claim that Trump won the election is a Big Lie. Twitter. https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1349046338927919105

Wellman, I. E. & Kulich, C. (2021, January 26). The United States Has a Democracy Problem: What Democratic Erosion Scholarship Tells Us about January 6. SSRC. https://items.ssrc.org/democracy-papers/the-united-states-has-a-democracy-problem-what-democratic-erosion-scholarship-tells-us-about-january-6/