The end of US democracy was all too predictable

In a democracy, anyone is free to run for office, including people who are completely unfit to lead or preside over government institutions. One of the clear signs of impropriety is the willingness to lie with abandon, especially by portraying oneself as a defender of people against both their internal and external enemies.

Plato thought that ordinary people were easily controlled by their emotions and thus susceptible to such messages; This is an argument that forms the true basis of democratic political philosophy.

Philosophers have also always been aware that such a policy is bound to succeed. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued, democracy is at its most vulnerable when inequality in a society is ingrained and very glaring.

Deep social and economic inequalities create the conditions that allow demagogues to prey on people’s resentments and the eventual collapse of democracy that Plato described. Rousseau thus concluded that democracy requires widespread equality; Only then can people’s resentments not be exploited so easily.

In my own work, I have tried to explain in great detail why and how people who feel ignored (financially or socially) accept pathologies such as racism, homophobia, misogyny, ethnic nationalism, and religious bigotry. If there was more equality they would reject it.

And what the United States lacks today is precisely the material conditions for a healthy and stable democracy. Rather, America has come to be uniquely defined by massive wealth inequality, a phenomenon that can only undermine social cohesion and foster resentment. While there is a 2,300-year-old democratic political philosophy that suggests that democracy cannot be sustained under these conditions, no one should be surprised by the outcome of the 2024 elections.

So, you may ask, why hasn’t this happened in the USA before? This was mainly because there was an unspoken agreement among politicians not to engage in such an extraordinarily divisive and violent form of politics. Remember the 2008 elections. Republican John McCain could have invoked racist stereotypes or conspiracy theories about the birth of Barack Obama, but he refused to do so. McCain lost, but he is remembered as an American statesman of impeccable integrity.

Of course, American politicians regularly use racism and homophobia in more subtle ways to win elections; Ultimately, it is a successful strategy. But the tacit agreement not to openly pursue such policies (what political theorist Tali Mendelberg calls the equality norm) prevented too overt appeals to racism. Instead, this had to be done through hidden messages, dog whistles, and stereotypes (such as talking about “laziness and crime in the inner city”).

But under conditions of deep inequality, this codified form of policy eventually becomes less effective than the explicit one. What Trump has done since 2016 is jettison the old tacit agreement to label immigrants as vermin and his political rivals as “enemies within.” As philosophers have always known, such a clear “us versus them” policy can be extremely effective.

So, democratic political philosophy’s analysis of the Trump phenomenon turned out to be correct. Tragically, it also offers a clear prediction of what will happen next. According to Plato, the person who campaigns in this way will rule as a tyrant.

From everything Trump has said and done during this campaign and in his first term, we can expect Plato to be proven right once again. The dominance of the Republican Party over all branches of government will turn the United States into a one-party state. The future may occasionally present opportunities for others to vie for power, but whatever political contests lie ahead will likely not be characterized as free and fair elections.

Jason Stanley is Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, Project Syndicate