Hey there, it’s been a while! Have been doing lots of talking, reading, and taking action in the meantime.
First up, Sacramento. I was there last week with internal medicine residents from across the state. I met with aides to our local Asm. Haney, Sen. Wiener, and also Sen. Dahle who is a Republican representing a lot of northern California. As I waited in long lines to get through security into the building (literally around the block!), I reflected on what a tremendous privilege of democracy it is that any citizen can walk into the legislature and have the ear of their representative. Yes, we had appointments, but I could just as easily have wandered in off the street and entered the office of any legislator. In every corner of the building I saw ordinary people there to make their case on issues ranging from microplastics to religious freedom. I left the capitol feeling inspired by the hundreds of my fellow citizens who believed in our democracy enough to go make their voices heard in the state’s capitol.
Since then, I’ve been doing some reading. Thanks to my mom for sending me ‘At this point, we are a liberal democracy in decline’: A conversation with scholar Larry Diamond about the state of U.S. democracy (Washington Post). This helped me understand the distinction between some key features of democracy, namely (1) liberalism/freedom, versus (2) elections. You can have elections with suppression of freedoms in between. Diamond argues that this is where we’re headed — we’re clearly still an electoral democracy, but with a decline in liberties.
That article led me to “Is it happening here?” in the New Yorker. This piece, drawing heavily from the 2018 book “How Democracies Die” (by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt) (which I have also started audiobooking), talks about how modern-day authoritarianism is much more insidious than the violent coups of the past. They share how countries like Hungary have eroded democratic norms and suppressed freedoms while still holding elections and maintaining the shell of democracy, even while the insides are hollowed out. (note that I haven’t finished this piece yet but will update with more reflections in the next blog!)
My takeaway from all this is both a deepened gratitude for our democracy and a heightened fear that we can go deep down an autocratic path before most of the public sounds the alarm, because an illiberal electoral democracy can camouflage as a real democracy for a long time.
The Diamond interview in WaPo makes one important point — in several countries that suffered backsliding and then recovered their liberal democracy, they still were hampered by intense political polarization that impeded progress. I think we are at high risk for this. Even if Democrats take back the House in 2026 and the presidency in 2028, we may still be headed down a dark road unless we can unite the country.
Just more motivation to build a true pro-democracy movement. Hope to continue building towards that in the next 87 days of this journey.
Leave a Reply