It will be a miracle if American democracy survives this election
Bit by bit, the US is becoming like some Central American banana republic, where presidents who lose office expect to be jailed. Americans have lost interest in the institutions that made them free.
The American republic is decaying in front of us. The precepts on which it was founded – that votes should be respected, that the law must apply evenly, that no one is bigger than the Constitution – are giving way one by one.
Both the conviction of Donald Trump and the reaction to it reveal a country where two sides start with their preferred result then reason backwards. Process is subordinated to outcome – an attitude that, in the end, is incompatible with liberal democracy.
