"I’m experiencing democracy grief. For anyone born after the civil rights movement made democracy in America real, liberal democracy has always been part of the climate, as easy to take for granted as clean air or the changing of the seasons. When I contemplate the sort of illiberal oligarchy that would await my children should Donald Trump win another term, the scale of the loss feels so vast that I can barely process it. The entire Trump presidency has been marked, for many of us who are part of the plurality that despises it, by anxiety and anger. But lately I’ve noticed, and not just in myself, a demoralizing degree of fear, even depression. Therapists, are observing this politically induced misery in their patients. After Trump’s election, a number of books explained, as one title put it, “How Democracies Die.” In the years since, it’s breathtaking how much is dead already."
At www.nytimes.com
