Demonstrating at Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, crowds protesting the election results.
Declines in the U.S. Freedom Index and Democracy Index
International scholars use big data to study the political systems and trends of various countries, and there are four major big data centers:
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a think tank that provides a variety of forecasting and advisory services through research and analysis, one of which is the Democracy Index.
Freedom House's database offers the Freedom Index.
Sweden's National Data Agency's Varieties of Democracy Institute, which offers a series of five democracy indices, based on its Varieties of Democracy Data Set (V-Dem), offers a series of five democracy indices: the Electoral Democracy Index, the Liberal Democracy Index, the Participatory Democracy Index, the Deliberative Democracy Index, and the Equal Democracy Index.
The Center for Systemic Peace, a supra-partisan research institute in Virginia, usa, engages in "innovative research on political violence in the context of the structure of global dynamic systems," which explores how to reduce the demands of political violence and its impact. It has a research project called The Polity Project, which uses the index classification of the center's "The POLITY data series" to monitor the political behavior of the world's major countries (with populations of more than 500,000) since 1800, dividing the polities into three categories: "authoritarian states" (-10 to -6), "anocracy" (-5 to +5), and "democracies" (+). 6 to +10).
Let's see what these big data centers are saying about the state of american politics:
1) In 2017, the Economist Information Department's (EIU) Democracy Index reduced the U.S. from "full democracy" to "flawed democracy."
2) In recent years, the Freedom Index published by the United States in Freedom House has been declining year by year, and it has fallen far behind Western Europe, scoring on par with Panama and Romania, and lower than Argentina, Lithuania and Mongolia!
3) Regarding Sweden's V-Dem Democracy Index, the US Democracy Index for 2020 is behind Argentina, Lithuania, Latvia, or even lower than Taiwan.
4) In 2020, the "Center for Systematic Peace" downgraded the United States from a "democratic system" to an "uncontrolled form of government" (+5), a hybrid of democracy and authoritarianism!
Over the past few years, many American right-wing celebrities have expressed their infinite yearning for Strongmen such as Putin in Russia and Orbán Victor in Hungary, and the rightists in the "lighthouse country" regard the rejection of democracy and the imitation of autocracy as "conservative" and fashionable!
Trump's coup layout
On January 6, 2021, the Southern Flag appeared in the Capitol for the first time in history. (Screenshot from The New York Times)
1. Since Biden's election on November 6, 2020, the "Big Lie" of campaign fraud fabricated and instigated by Trump has provoked many demonstrations and protests by Trump supporters. On January 6, 2021, Americans saw Trump on television agitating supporters to march into Capitol Hill, and as a result, many supporters used violence to storm Capitol. The news confirmed that Trump repeatedly threatened Vice President Pence to repudiate the election results at a congressional ceremony on Jan. 6 that accepted the election results. Because Pence did not dare to go unconstitutional and did not do so, the mob searched for him in the Capitol Hill in an attempt to hang Pence.
2. Not only that, but while all allegations of election fraud on Trump's team have been overturned by courts at all levels, the vast majority of Republican senators and members of the House of Representatives still boycott the election results. On the night of Jan. 6, 2021, two-thirds of Republican house members voted against accepting the election results, a serious injury to democracy. Because of the "big lie" created by Trump's team and the right-wing media, republican voters now think that the 2020 election was stolen by a conspiracy!
3. According to the New York Times on December 15, 2021, after the 2020 election, more than half a dozen Republican Rep. continued to spread rumors of electoral fraud and participated in Trump's campaign to overturn the election results, including: Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, and Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona. Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, and others. These anti-democratic activities were led and planned by Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
4. After the election results were announced, Minister of Justice Barr solemnly declared that everything was normal in the election and that the Ministry of Justice had not found any extensive cheating. Meanwhile, Barr was alert and retired before Christmas. Trump has then put even more brazen pressure on the Justice Department to declare that there was a lot of fraud in the election and that it needs to be investigated. When the acting attorney general said he couldn't find any evidence, Trump told him, "You're going to declare the elections corrupt, and the rest will be left to me and Republican lawmakers." ”
Jeffrey Clark, assistant attorney general for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, is the most active fan in the Justice Department, and his position is modest but ambitious. He asked the acting minister to declare the Georgia election null and void and to ask the state legislature to propose a new presidential elector! But Acting Minister Jeffrey Rosen and deputy Richard Donoghue refused to sign. Trump was furious and wanted to remove the acting secretary and promote Clark to acting secretary. Key officials of the Justice Department threatened to resign en masse to protest and paralyze the Justice Department, and Trump had no choice but to give up.
5. New evidence continues to pour out as a result of the Efforts of the House's "Jan. 6 Attacks Special Committee," as well as the Justice Department's investigation, and the Supreme Court's veto of Trump's boycott. On January 21, 2022, news outlet Politico reported that the committee found an unsigned executive order dated December 16, 2020, in the material. The executive order is titled: "President's Conclusions on Preserving, Collecting, and Analyzing National Security Information Related to the 2020 Election." The order repeats Trump's "Big Lie" about election fraud as a justification for instructing the defense secretary to seize, retain, and analyze "all voting machines, equipment, electronically stored information." It ordered the secretary of defense to submit to the president a preliminary assessment of electoral fraud after seven days of detention.
It is not known why this executive order was not signed, nor does it know whether the Minister of Defence received it. However, Trump actually considered using the military, which is a malicious contempt for the US Constitution, and the United States is not a country with a "gun out of power". The military was in the hands of the literati, which was the design of the U.S. Constitution. The military must not interfere in domestic politics, let alone in elections. This bottom line was almost broken by Trump! In fact, on July 1, 2020 (waving his hand and holding up a Bible), he wanted to use the army to suppress peaceful demonstrators in Washington, D.C., but the military vetoed it.
The Jan. 6 Attacks Task Force collected thousands of records from state officials and interviewed a pool of witnesses in an attempt to trace Trump's attempts to subvert the 2020 election. According to three sources with direct knowledge of the situation, the Trump campaign, led by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, led the planning in December 2020 of the selection (illegal substitution) of electors from the seven states in which Trump lost. They are: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada, and New Mexico. Giuliani also personally participated in the planning meetings of several state Republicans.
Documents from Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada explicitly and falsely state that Republican (alternative) electors are legitimate voters, accounting for a total of 59 electoral votes. The documents were also copied to the National Archives Office, apparently forging documents. Only pennsylvania and New Mexico added a condition to the documents: "If the court rules Trump wins."
Meshawn Maddock, co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, said at a public event: "We're going to take the presidential electorate's seat, which is what the Trump campaign is asking us to do." Sam DeMarco, from Pennsylvania, said they had direct contact with members of the Trump campaign. A former Trump campaign official told CNN: "They are all accomplices: Giuliani, John Eastman and Christina Bobb (OANN reporter for the far-right media outlet) are all colluding to provide false information to OANN to promote big lies." ”
Eastman, mentioned above, is a law professor and lawyer for Trump's campaign, who drafted a Six-Step Plan that Trump used as a legal basis to force Pence to comply. The Republican (alternative) presidential candidates in the seven states above waited for Pence to declare the original presidential candidate invalid, and then replaced them with the support of Republican members of Congress, or left it to the House of Representatives to decide who was elected. "Unfortunately" (fortunately) Pence did not dare to go unconstitutional, and those who seized power "lost all their achievements".
Seeing that the "Special Committee on the January 6 Attack" had unearthed a lot of news, the veteran Republican Party newt Gingrich could not hold back, and he wrote in Newsweek to raise threats to the committee. He also declared on Fox Radio on January 25, 2022, that in the future, when Republicans have a majority in Congress, the committee "will face a real risk of going to jail for violating various laws." He believed that the people who invaded Capitol Hill were innocent and good people, and that the committee "simply crushed the law and hunted down the innocent, who were basically a group of vigilantes." ”
I don't know which country's law Gingrich is basing! Gingrich's views represent the broad Republican mainstream ideology that rallied around Trump, even though in their bones they all know they are spreading the "Big Lie." As expected, Trump made the same accusation at a rally in Texas at the end of January, declaring that he would pardon the "good guys" when he was re-elected.
This reminds me of the words of Isaiah 50:2 of the Old Testament: "Zen, those who call evil good, good as evil, darkness as light, light as darkness, bitterness as sweetness, and sweetness as bitterness!" Not only will this group of people leave a notoriety in history, they are the source of the curse, in order to maintain the power of individuals and parties, they despise democratic institutions, and do not hesitate to bring the United States into the desperate situation of the "Banana Republic of the United States.".
The coup conspiracy of the republican core figures
Trump's coup plot didn't work out in 2020-2021, simply because there are still some backbone people in the state Republican Party who don't "pretend to be fake." Today, this group of people is being "purged." For example, in September 2021, media Pro Publica investigated key electoral battlegrounds. In the 65 counties they studied alone, they found that 8,500 new Republican district officials had signed up for the ballot work. With many impartial people squeezed out, this group of newcomers is likely to be a stalwart of THE MAGA.
So, what will happen in 2024?
Third Way is a Washington, D.C.-based public policy think tank founded in 2005. As the name suggests, it is neither left nor right, advocating a center-left public policy line. In 2013, Third Way was named North America's "Think Tank of the Year" by prospect, a British monthly journal, in recognition of its "original, influential and rigorous work on the most pressing challenges facing people, government and business".
The Third Way think tank published a presentation on July 26, 2022, "The Plot to Steal the Presidency," written by Matt Bennett, the think tank's executive vice president of public affairs. "The core of the Republican Party is engaged in a systematic, complex, and grim conspiracy to carry out the coup," Bennett said. They plan to steal the 2024 presidential election. He listed this conspiracy in five parts:
Suppress votes
Install a vote-counting mechanism for Big Lies
Threats against election officials
Seize legislative control
Sabotage the Electoral College
These five parts are gradual, and one is more severe than the other. As Michigan's Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson put it, "It was a five-thunder fire." If leaders and citizens do not make this the most important issue of our time and act accordingly, we may not be able to ensure that democracy triumphs again in 2024. ”
With regard to this five-part process, the document provides conclusive evidence for each of them, and they are happening. As for whether this conspiracy can succeed, it all depends on how the Americans will respond in the next two years and reduce the risk. Since this will significantly increase the length of this article, the details can only be discussed separately.
The risk of "civil war" in the United States
"Hate lives longer than hate." （Hate is more lasting than dislike. ）
— Hitler
The risks of a "coup" are discussed above, and now let's look at its opposite, the risk of civil war.
Professor Walter's new book: How the Civil War Began. and how to stop them
Barbara Walter, chair professor of international relations at the University of California, San Diego, published a new book early this year (2022): How the Civil War Began. How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them. In contrast to the possibility of a "coup" mentioned above, she believes that the United States is close to the brink of a "civil war." The former is top-down, the latter bottom-up.
Let's first look at Professor Walter's argument:
The "civil war" that Walter refers to is not necessarily a frontal battle between the two armies like the American Civil War, but it is more likely that the militias and scattered underground organizations on both sides are engaged in a large number of sabotage and assassination activities under the independent conditions, creating terror and even paralyzing the normal operation of society. I think That Professor Walter's "civil war" actually includes "civil strife between the two factions." For the sake of discussion, this article will not make any distinctions.
Walter has spent the past four years participating in a CIA-sponsored task force of scholars and experts called the Advisory Group on Political Instability. The task force's goal is to come up with a predictive model that will help governments predict where civil war is likely to break out in the world. Since World War II, there have been more than 200 civil wars around the world.
The advisory group injected more than 30 different variables into the model, such as poverty, ethnic diversity, and income inequality, and they collected all the factors that could come to mind that could lead a country to civil war. The advisory group was surprised to find that only two factors were clearly predictive.
The first factor is that civil war occurs only in mixed governments. According to the classification of the "Systemic Peace Center" political system, it is classified as an "anocracy", that is, a government system between full democracy (democracy index = +10) and full authoritarianism (democracy index = -10), with the democracy index between -5 and +5. Civil war will not take place in democracies, nor in authoritarian systems.
The second factor is identity politics. On political issues, the population of the country is not divided around ideology or on the left and right, but around identity, that is, according to ethnic or religious identity. When an ethnic group that was already in power (subjectively) felt threatened to survive, the risk of civil war increased.
Under U.S. law, the CIA cannot get involved in U.S. domestic affairs, and the task force can only focus on the rest of the world. However, Walter herself was interested in U.S. domestic affairs, and she applied the analysis of the "Database of Polities and Transformations" to the United States.
Speaking at the Brennen Center for Justice in mid-January 2022, Walter said: "In 2018, I sat in a panel meeting and wondered what was happening in my own country. I began to realize that these [Civil War] factors were already emerging in the United States. And they're coming at a surprising rate. This prompted me to have to deliver the message. ”
Walter said that the us democracy index has been +10 over the years, fell to +8 for the first time in 2016, to +7 in 2019, and to +5 at the end of 2020, becoming a "non-dominated polity", which is particularly fragile and began to recover after Biden took office, but the situation is still unstable.
Regarding the second factor, Walter mentions several typical examples in her new book.
One of them was the civil war in the former Yugoslavia sparked by Slobodan Milošević.
The former Yugoslavia was ethnically and religiously complex, but under the leadership of the strongman Tito, the various ethnic groups were at peace. In the case of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, ethnic groups live in peace without major contradictions.
Milosevic, who belonged to the Serbian ethnic group, was a staunch opponent of racism, but he later discovered that the spread of ethnic hatred was the best weapon for power, and he began to vigorously promote "Greater Serbianism", inciting discontent between the Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia and their Croatian, Bosnian and Albanian neighbours. He declared that the survival of Serbs everywhere was threatened and strongly advocated that "all Serbs should live in one unified state". He is deliberately creating contradictions. In 1992, he led a predominantly Serb-dominated Yugoslav army to bomb Sarajevo, breaking out into a brutal civil war and genocide. For the vast majority of the former Yugoslavia, civil war simply fell from the sky and suddenly came.
Another example is "The Troubles" in the second half of the 20th century.
Northern Ireland's catholic majority has been peacefully protesting British rule for decades, conducting sit-ins and processions. The IRA exists, but it is a marginalized group that cannot recruit enough people to develop its activities. Most Catholics in Northern Ireland don't want to have anything to do with an IRA. They don't believe in its violent methods.
London then sent British soldiers to Northern Ireland to disperse the peaceful protests. Some soldiers used very tough counter-insurgency tactics, breaking into homes, beating innocent civilians with batons, using tear gas and shooting at them, shooting peaceful protesters, victims including women and children. As a result, ordinary Catholics suddenly feel the existential crisis, and in despair the resistance is intensified, perhaps what the IRA said is true, and the British want to eliminate them. As a result, militias on both sides of the Catholic and Protestant sides clashed in paramilitary clashes, with numerous sabotage and assassinations. This violent conflict did not gradually ease until the end of the 20th century. However, despite the significant reduction in political violence, the enmity between the two communities has not disappeared, and the living quarters of Catholic nationalists and Protestant royalists remain strangers.
Walter pointed out that the civil war must have a trigger point. It will not happen in stable democracies or authoritarian regimes, it will happen in unstable middle ground. Another trigger (the issue of identity) is closely related to the so-called Sons of Soil.
These natives believe that they are the legitimate heirs of the country, that their language and values should dominate, and that they should dominate in power. Their culture and religion should be treated with privilege, and defending that identity and ideas is patriotic.
When these "children of the land" feel aggrieved, and their social status is gradually replaced, even to the point of losing hope, the contrast is difficult to accept. The angry, resentful people believe that the system is not working for them. At this point, however, they are not immediately recourse to violence. The professor's research shows that one of the events in which violence or the shift from nonviolent to violent means is the failure in a competitive election, or a series of defeats.
In the 2020 general election, turnout on both sides reached a record high. When Republican voters found that such a fervent investment still fell by nearly 8 million votes, they began to feel that the democratic system could no longer serve them, that the system was bad and needed to be revised. That feeling has been heating up since Obama took office. This time coupled with Trump's proponents constantly pushing for false information that the voting system is being manipulated. At this point, the only way is through violence. The conspirators succeeded in convincing an otherwise moderate group of people to join the anti-democratic bandwagon, and in an existential crisis, violence became a permissible means.
Walter felt fortunate that it was the police who were humiliated on January 6, but it was the people who held high the "law and order" and the "blue line flag" (support for the police) who committed violence against the police. Fortunately, there were no violent counterattacks from the military and police at all levels, otherwise, the mob and criminals would have become martyrs, and the further riots brought about would be even more unmanageable.
The shadow of the Civil War covers the whole of the United States
"Oath Keeper" founder Stuart Rhodes, a yale law graduate (Screenshot of The New Yorker)
On January 13 of this year (2022), the FBI announced the arrest of Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers' far-right (white racist) militia, and 10 members, accusing them of participating in "seditious conspiracy" crimes during the January 6, 2021 riots.
Prosecutors said that within days of the 2020 election, Rhodes began plotting a rebel plot "by force against the legitimate transfer of presidential power." Members of the Oath Keepers under his command stormed the Capitol on January 6 in a militarized formation in search of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The indictment says others are stationed in a nearby hotel as an armed "rapid reaction force."
Just two days after the election, Rhodes told several members that they refused to accept Biden's victory, the indictment said. He wrote on the encrypted chat app Signal: "We will not rest without civil war". He wrote on Signal. "It's too late. Prepare your mind, body, and spirit. ”
The Yale Law graduate Rhodes told his group members that they should use violence to stop Biden from taking office: "It will be a bloody and bitter struggle that cannot be avoided." ”
On January 6, 2021, a mob attacked Capitol Hill
Among the thousands of people involved in the Capitol riots were several of these right-wing white militia groups, such as Three Percenters, Proud Boys, and others. Most of the more than 700 mobs prosecuted are middle-class, including business owners and professionals, not desperate people at the bottom.
The shadow of the Civil War has overshadowed the United States.
What is the future for America?
Since Biden took office, although the United States has risen to +8 on the democracy index of the "Center for Systematic Peace", there are various indications that the general environment for democracy is not getting better, but worse. As the "Third Way" conspiracy to steal the presidency points out, republican organizations everywhere are brewing non-democratic means of seizing power; on the other hand, the sense of white crisis based on the "children of the land" and the rise of populist forces based on "Christian Nationalism" are not good signs.
Polarization in American politics has become a fashionable trend, the moderates in the Democratic camp have gradually lost their voices, their vitality has tilted to the ultra-left, and both the left and right are using the rhetoric of identity politics to bring about division. This extremely unstable situation is constantly being strengthened, amplified and heated up by various social media.
As for whether the future of the United States is more likely to be a coup d'état to seize power, or civil strife or civil war, no one knows, and it is more likely that the combination of the two will be combined. At this critical juncture, what the United States needs most is a cool head, to detract from the spell of identity politics, to return to the founding ideals and tenets, to face history, and to learn from history. That may be the only hope.
President Carter (Wiki Images)
President Carter wrote in The New York Times on January 5 of this year, on the eve of the first anniversary of the riots in Capitol Hill: "I'm Worried About Democracy in America." He warned: "Our great nation is now crumbling on the edge of the ever-widening abyss. If we do not act immediately, we will face a real crisis of civil war, leading to the loss of precious democratic institutions. The American people must put aside their differences and work together so that it is not too late. ”
In it, he made five major appeals to American politicians:
First, while citizens can disagree on policies, all different political factions must agree on the basic constitutional principles and norms of justice, civility and respect for the rule of law. Elections should be conducted peacefully and free from intimidation and threats of violence.
Secondly, we must promote reforms to ensure the security and universality of elections and to ensure public confidence in the accuracy of their results. False allegations of illegal voting and meaningless repeated audits can only undermine democratic ideals.
Third, we must resist the polarization that is reshaping our political identity.
Fourthly, there is no place for violence, and we must act immediately to either adopt or strengthen laws to end physical attacks, intimidation and the tendency of armed militias in political activities.
Fifth, the spread of disinformation must be curbed, especially on social media. We must reform these platforms and get into the habit of finding accurate information. U.S. businesses and religious groups should encourage efforts to respect democratic norms, participate in elections, and combat disinformation.
This article is deafening! Although Carter is already 97 years old, his mind is fresher and more mature than many young politicians. Can the political circles in the United States overcome difficulties and endure each other together?
Source: New York Chinese Information Network
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