The obvious answer is Yes...we already have. Racism and resentments have restored a man without dignity or principle to the White House.
Our Constittuion accomodated slavery by design. Then - despite the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, the Supreme Court, Congress and state lawmakers accommodated blatant racial discrimination for a century after the civil war. The ethic of nearly half of white Americans is comfortable with that legacy.
See T. Sharot, C. R. Sunstein, Look again: The Power of Noticing What was Always There. (Atria/One Signal Publishers, an Imprint of Simon and Schuster, LLC, New York, 2024).
- GWC
Will we habituate to the decline of democracy?
The recent attack on science in the US is not only undermining knowledge; it is also undermining democracy. In a healthy democracy, public policy is guided by evidence, and truth is the shared foundation for collective decision-making. When scientific expertise is dismissed or hidden in favor of ideology, it becomes harder for citizens to deliberate, to solve problems, and to hold leaders accountable. The diminution and marginalization of science are thus central parts of the erosion of democracy itself.
This erosion is not hypothetical. Political scientists and global watchdogs have warned that democracy in the US is in decline. The Economist’s Democracy Index (https://thehill.com/homenews/news/537204-us-score-falls-in-economists-2020-democracy-index/) no longer categorizes the US as a “full democracy” (like Germany, the UK, and Canada) but a “flawed democracy.” The Varieties of Democracy Project (V-Dem, https://v-dem.net/documents/60/V-dem-dr__2025_lowres.pdf), based in Sweden, describes the US as experiencing a period of “substantial autocratization.” The undermining of fair elections, increased polarization, and restrictions on freedom of speech, privacy rights, and due process of law are all symptoms of the decline.
While it may seem that the deterioration began only recently, democratic norms have been declining gradually for a while (albeit with abrupt accelerations at key moments). For example, polarization has been growing steadily since the 1990s (https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2023/09/polarization-democracy-and-political-violence-in-the-united-states-what-the-research-says?lang=en) and the outsized influence of wealthy individuals on politics goes back for many years and was legitimated 15 years ago in the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case (https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/pdf/08-205P.ZO). Indeed, Freedom House (https://freedomhouse.org/article/new-report-us-democracy-has-declined-significantly-past-decade-reforms-urgently-needed), which has tracked global political freedom since the 1970s, has downgraded the US consistently over the past decade.
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