Our Brand of Democracy is Hard --- President Barack Obama

President Obama is right. Democracy is hard and unfortunately it's becoming less popular. 

Amazingly, Americans and especially young Americans in larger numbers believe democracy is a bad way to run a country and perhaps the military should be in charge. (See today's Washington Post, op-ed page, citing a study in Journal of Democracy.)

That sounds crazy but it fits the facts. Americans, especially young ones, have low opinions of almost all parts of society and show it by having a dismal voting turnout and by supporting a candidate who spouts authoritarian views. ("Only I can fix it," etc.)

This is horrible to contemplate. What happens to a country that loses faith in democracy and supports giving power to a man who is viewed as strong and "tells it like it is" and is willing to ignore key parts of our Constitution? Answer: See Germany in the 1930s.

"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, And if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power. --- Thomas Jefferson

 

But look at the faces of young people at Trump rallies and listen to the Trump supporters such as those in the video at https://youtu.be/6MubunsD-7g 

 

We live in difficult times, but our country has survived worse --- revolution against the greatest military power, Civil War that resulted in the deaths of 2% of our population and that reverberates more than 150 years later, Depression and World War 2. Still, we need to do more now. 

 

Apparently we are not educating children to understand what America is all about, what democracy means, and anything about our history. That's probably the only answer for the future.