I wrote last week that rather than living in “late capitalism,” we were actually living in “late democracy.” Late capitalism is a communist fantasy created over a century ago. Late democracy is very real.
Democracy — even in a democratic republic like ours, rather than pure democracy — is contingent. When you try it in the less developed parts of the world, you typically get “one man, one vote, one time.” And by less developed I don’t mean less economically developed — though that generally applies too — as less morally and civically developed. But now that kind of “less developed” describes us too. . . .
We used to say “politics ain’t beanbag,” but there were limits, on both behavior and rhetoric. The opposition was a political movement to be defeated, not an evil to be extirpated. The stakes in elections may have been high, but they weren’t existential. Nobody feared death or prison just for losing an election.
That sort of thing was for banana republics, like Brazil.
Now we have prominent Democrats talking about throwing their opponents in jail, seizing Elon Musk’s companies — after throwing him in jail for, I dunno, the crime of being in opposition I guess — and enacting various changes, like packing the Supreme Court, adding Puerto Rico and DC as states, and opening the borders to ensure that no election can remove them from power again.
That’s “late democracy.” Very late.
Join the Conversation
VIP members get the ability to comment on articles.