Aristotle worried that, in a democracy, a wealthy and talented demagogue could all too easily master the minds of the populace. Plato noted a particular risk for tyrants: that they would be surrounded in the end by yes-men and enablers. It takes a tremendous amount of work to educate citizens to resist the powerful pull of believing what they already believe, or what others around them believe, or what would make sense of their own previous choices. People believed him, which is not at all surprising. He wrongly claimed on Election Day that he had won and then steadily hardened his rhetoric: With time, his victory became a historic landslide and the various conspiracies that denied it ever more sophisticated and implausible. Biden in the polls, he spent months claiming that the presidential election would be rigged and signaling that he would not accept the results if they did not favor him. In 2020, in the knowledge that he was trailing Joseph R. He never took electoral democracy seriously nor accepted the legitimacy of its American version.Įven when he won, in 2016, he insisted that the election was fraudulent - that millions of false votes were cast for his opponent. 6 and urged them to march on the United States Capitol, he was doing what he had always done. When Donald Trump stood before his followers on Jan. To hear more audio stories from publishers like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |