So America was just downgraded from a full democracy to a flawed democracy
According to whom, why, and should you care? Well, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, a subset of the Economist magazine. They track such things and apparently are well respected. Apparently this has been coming for some time, so it isn't exactly a result of Trump's actions while in office.
We lost points because the American public has lost trust in our government, because our civil liberties are currently declining, and because our media is becoming less free and less honest. Many of Trump's voters supported him because they don't trust the government. Why they trusted him I will never understand, but here we are.
Apparently our racially motivated violence has been climbing for a while and our laws banning discrimination are in danger. You know, things that don't happen so much in democratic societies. People felt like their right to hurt people unlike them was being impinged upon so now we have to deal with a government that has even less interest in protecting minorities than it had before.
Fake news is nothing new. They used to call it yellow journalism last time it got big, and before that they just called it lying. I like that, let's go back to calling it lying. Even without banning real journalism, by undermining the credibility of the news Trump is enforcing soft censorship.
Now, I don't really trust the news media. I think they're too full of corporate interests to be reliable. They spin for ratings and to support their party affiliations. But here's the difference. I am a complete nobody. The news does not report on me and so my complaints are not likely to manipulate their motivations the way Trump's accusations are. We depend on the news to be impartial, even merciless in its judgment of our politicians. It isn't, or course, but now it will get even worse.
So, why should you care? Well, if you're reading this, maybe you shouldn't. You already know we're on the way to hell in a hand basket. You know that our government is untrustworthy, that hate crimes are committed every day, often by police, who are often unpunished. You know the media is being manipulated.
Some people, the people who feel insulted by this downgrade, don't already know these things. Here's why you should care. This is a place to start conversations. It's pretty big news, even if most people won't know what it means. Use this opportunity to further undermine their faith in the system. This is as good a tool as any to convince people to burn their flags and kill their heroes.
