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There is a lot of hot air on this topic from the left and the right. People share their thoughts based on little more than individual political leanings and overheated emotions — no need to take my word for this. Just turn on CNN, Fox News, or scroll your Facebook or Instagram accounts, and you will get the idea pronto.
That said, there is also a great deal of learned and informed information and commentary to indicate that we are indeed a nation in distress. We are a nation facing divisions of historic proportions, on the precipice of sliding from a representative democracy toward a more authoritarian form of government.
My first brush with this powerful and terrifying possibility came when reading the 2018 book "How Democracies Die" by two Harvard political scientists. They chronicle how elected leaders undermine the political process to increase their power. It has happened to other democracies, and these authors see it unfolding in the United States. More recent books on the same theme include “Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy” and “American Democracy in Peril: Eight Challenges to America.”
These conversations have continued and expanded among scholars, historians and regular Americans who fear for our nation.
Here are some numbers to get us started. Last summer, a PBS Newshour/NPR/Marist poll found that 67% of American adults believe our nation's democracy is under attack. A more recent CNN poll finds that 93% of us believe that our democracy is under attack (56%) or is being tested (37%). A majority, 51% of us, believe that elected officials will overturn an election in coming years because their party lost.
Perhaps most alarmingly to me, the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank generally considered on the conservative side, reported earlier this month that Americans of all political stripes see the potential for violence. Thirty percent of Republicans, 17% of independents, and 11% of Democrats, now agree that violence might be necessary to save our nation.
If we concede that those who do not know or understand history are doomed to repeat it, then we really should be nervous.
Barbara Walter, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego and an advisor to the CIA on political instability, believes we are perilously close to another civil war. She and others cite extreme partisanship, geographic sectionalism, urban and rural divides and differing visions for state and federal governments.
Not all scholars and observers agree with her. Still, most are concerned about the toxic political atmosphere and systematic attacks on voting undermining public faith in the political process.
These ideas are alternately unsettling and baffling for most Americans, leaving us confused at best and terrified at worst.
Both ends of the political spectrum, those who think it is happening as you read this and those who scoff that it can never happen in our America, need to back up and take a deep breath.
The fact that "We the People" are now talking about this indicates we are concerned, even alarmed. It also tells us that both sides must be thoughtful in what we say and do as we go through a troubled and challenging period in our nation's history.
Western European nations fell to fascist governments in the first half of the 20th century, as did southern hemisphere nations in the second half. We are foolish to believe it could not happen here.
As frustrating and imperfect as democracy may be, 1947 Winston Churchill's take still rings true now. "Many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."