A Particularly Troubling Authoritarian Trend

In a perceptive column in yesterday’s Washington Post, veteran journalist Karen Tumulty discussed what is probably the greatest threat to American democracy, the proliferation of state legislatures with supermajorities of right-wing authoritarian-seeking Republicans who seek to entrench their power through anti-democratic measures, including gerrymandering state legislative and Congressional districts, instituting measures to suppress voting by those more likely to vote for Democrats, empowering partisan commissions to remove elected district attorneys, and changing requirements for ballot initiatives to prevent the exercise of popular will on issues such as forced birth and gun safety laws. The overall picture is that of an insidious, creeping process in which democratic institutions and safeguards are gradually whittled away until what’s left can no longer be called a democratic form of government.