Democracy (Theory and Philosophy)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      ¿El mundo se está acabando? ¿O solo es el miedo?

      by

      ¿Qué podemos decir de este último año en Estados Unidos? Hay quien afirma que esto es el fin, o el principio del fin; que la infraestructura de nuestra democracia se está desmoronando; que los sismos de la economía auguran un colapso y que el riesgo nuclear en la guerra rusa contra Ucrania podría combustionar y provocar algo mucho mayor. En cambio, otros dicen que, a pesar de todas estas tensiones, en realidad estamos viendo cómo se sostiene el sistema, que la democracia prevalece y que el peligro se está disipando.Esos argumentos se pueden calificar de histéricos, displicentes o ajenos a la realidad, pero también se pueden plantear de manera abierta y franca. Quizás estemos de verdad al borde de algo peor, como en algunos largos periodos del siglo XX, y quizás así era como se sentía la gente en esas épocas sobre las cuales has leído. ¿Se está acabando el mundo tal como lo conocíamos? ¿Lo sabrías, siquiera, antes de que fuera demasiado tarde, antes de que en efecto se hubiera acabado?En 2022, podíamos ver cómo el discurso oscilaba entre el apocalipsis y la relativización, y entre el pánico y la cautela, en la política, en los medios, en Twitter e Instagram, en mensajes de texto, en persona, dentro y fuera de facciones ideológicas, sobre la guerra en Europa, el estado de la democracia estadounidense, el iliberalismo y el posible repliegue del globalismo, la violencia, la COVID-19, la inteligencia artificial, la inflación y los precios de la energía y el criptocontagio. Hay versiones profundas de este debate, y luego hay versiones reduccionistas que se entrevén en los comentarios de Instagram, o en una columna de opinión, que interpretan todo mal. Este debate incluso lo puede mantener una persona consigo misma.Lo más probable es que ya estés al tanto de las posibilidades apocalípticas respecto a la democracia estadounidense. Fundamentalmente, este país no funciona si el traspaso pacífico del poder no funciona. Este país no funciona, y no funcionó en la memoria reciente, si la gente no puede votar. Y puede haber un umbral a partir del cual deje de funcionar si el suficiente número de personas desconfía de los resultados electorales. Estas cuestiones existenciales se han canalizado ahora en problemas concretos: en 2022, hubo gente que llamó a las oficinas de campaña electoral y dejó amenazas de muerte; gente con equipo táctico apostada ante las urnas; y oficinas de campaña que instalaron cristales antibalas. Los republicanos mandaron candidatos a Arizona y Pensilvania que se postularon con la premisa de que en este país las elecciones son una mentira. Millones de personas vieron las audiencias sobre el 6 de enero donde se indagó en lo caóticos y precarios que fueron en realidad los últimos días de la Casa Blanca de Trump.Después, en este frágil paisaje de confianza, estaban las cortes. En verano, la Corte Suprema anuló completamente el caso Roe contra Wade, sentencia que se esperaba desde tiempo atrás, pero que aun así pareció conmocionar hasta a las personas que estaban a favor, incluso después de la surrealista publicación de un borrador de la opinión de la Corte en la primavera. Que eso llegara a suceder —que de pronto una mujer tuviera que ir a otro estado a realizarse un aborto para no arriesgarse a morir a causa de las complicaciones— no solo comportó ese tipo de consecuencias tangibles en mil momentos privados de la vida las personas, sino que también abrió un mundo de otras posibilidades que podrían ocurrir. Quizá la Corte revoque la igualdad del matrimonio. O refrende la rebuscada teoría de la “legislatura estatal independiente”, adoptada por un grupo de derechistas y que consiste en ampliar los poderes de las legislaturas estatales para celebrar elecciones, con el peligro de desestabilizar todo el sistema.Todos estos acontecimientos fueron aparejados de un discurso desorientador, de alto riesgo, sobre cómo y cuánto hablar de las teorías de la conspiración y las amenazas antidemocráticas. Sabemos que lo que dice la gente —lo que decimos— en las redes sociales, y por supuesto en los medios de comunicación, moldea la percepción de los demás sobre la política, pero de un modo difícil de medir, y saber esto puede convertir cada artículo o mensaje en las redes en una oportunidad o un error. Hubo articulistas que sostuvieron que centrarse excesivamente en la democracia podría ahuyentar a los votantes, en vez de persuadirlos, o incluso corromper las instituciones al entremezclar las preocupaciones constitucionales con las de índole partidista.Después estuvo el mundo más allá del discurso, donde nadie pudo controlar gran cosa más allá de un solo hombre. Desde la anexión de Crimea en 2014 y la tibieza con que respondió Occidente a ella, la gente llevaba meses, y años, advirtiendo de que Vladimir Putin ordenaría la invasión total de Ucrania. Y entonces ocurrió. No hay muchas personas, en Rusia u otras partes, que parezcan querer esto, más allá de Putin, pero eso no impidió que Ucrania se convirtiera en el tipo de lugar donde un niño tiene que averiguar por sí mismo que los soldados han fusilado a su madre y a su padrastro porque nadie sabe cómo decírselo; donde la gente tenía que beberse el agua de los radiadores para mantenerse con vida; donde, al reflexionar sobre las salvajes muertes en la ciudad, alguien puede acabar señalando con tristeza que “en teoría, los organismos internacionales tienen la autoridad de procesar los crímenes de guerra donde y cuandoquiera que se produzcan”.La rápida transición desde la invasión como algo esperado pero hipotético a algo muy real, con muertes innecesarias y millones de ucranianos y rusos teniendo que dejar sus casas quizá para siempre, abrió otras siniestras posibilidades. Parecía una cuestión existencial, primero para Ucrania, y después para el resto de Europa del este. La alianza de la OTAN podía fracturarse, en el caso de una escalada. La posibilidad de que China invadiera Taiwán —y de una guerra total a escala mundial— pareció de pronto más fácil de concebir, incluso de esperar. Las armas nucleares pasaron a ser algo en lo que gente piensa, en serio. Y, de forma más inmediata, pareció que las interrupciones en el suministro de gas y baterías y en la producción y distribución del grano iban a causar estragos a lo largo y ancho de los países.De debatir si la inflación pospandémica podría ser transitoria se pasó a plantear si podría parecerse a la de la década de 1970, con las dificultades de la estanflación y las escaseces de energía; después, de si la quiebra de las criptomonedas podría recordar a la del mercado inmobiliario en la década de 2000; qué consecuencias políticas y de otro tipo podría tener el disparo de los precios; y, peor aún, que los precios del grano puedan provocar una ola de hambrunas en todo el mundo. En Odd Lots, el pódcast sobre finanzas de Bloomberg, los presentadores señalan con frecuencia que se ha producido una “tormenta perfecta” de condiciones para la crisis: en la logística del comercio marítimo, en los precios del café, en la menor producción de cobre, en las dificultades de empezar a extraer más petróleo. Todo parece haberse estropeado o torcido un poco al mismo tiempo. ¿Se trata de un intenso periodo de acontecimientos inusuales, o de un momento de calma antes de que todas las piezas interconectadas colapsen?Y esto sin contar otras preocupaciones más profundas que tienen las personas, y que también contribuyen a generar la sensación de desintegración social: la depresión y la ansiedad entre los adolescentes, el descenso de nivel en lectura y matemáticas, la omnipresencia del fentanilo y el resurgimiento del antisemitismo y la violencia anti-LGBTQ. La policía tardó una hora en intervenir mientras un joven disparaba contra niños. Jóvenes que disparan a los clientes de una tienda de comestibles porque eran negros; clientes que lo hacen en un club gay y trans; y también jugadores de fútbol universitario, después de una excursión para ver un partido. Vidas truncadas en un contexto de normalidad, y pocas cosas pueden hacer sentir más a la gente que el mundo se acaba.Existe una razón por la que a muchas personas les preocupa una mayor soledad social, la cual es difícil de definir y más aún de subsanar. Existe una razón por la que muchas personas dicen que es como caminar en medio de la niebla. “Por ahora, estamos vivos en el fin del mundo, traumatizados por los titulares y las alarmas del reloj”, escribió el poeta Saeed Jones en su poemario más reciente.A pesar de todo este dolor y esta nefasta posibilidad, algunas noticias han desafiado las expectativas. Rusia no se ha llevado Ucrania por delante; Estados Unidos y Europa se mantienen unidos; la gente celebra en la retirada de las tropas rusas de sus ciudades sin luz. Muchos de los grandes exponentes de las teorías conspirativas sobre las elecciones en Estados Unidos —y en especial quienes querían hacerse con las riendas de la burocracia electoral— perdieron en los estados más importantes de cara al traspaso de poderes presidenciales. El colapso de las grandes plataformas de intercambio de criptomonedas no se ha extendido, por ahora, a todo el sistema financiero. La Corte Suprema pareció escéptica este mes respecto a la teoría de las legislaturas estatales, aunque en realidad no podremos confirmarlo hasta el año que viene. No ha habido violencia o agitación generales en la jornada electoral o en reacción a los resultados.Tal vez a los seres humanos se nos ha infravalorado frente a la inteligencia artificial, como apuntó mi colega Farhad Manjoo; hubo un avance en la fusión nuclear, aunque el desarrollo a partir de ahí podría ser verdaderamente complicado; es muy probable que pronto se administre una vacuna contra la malaria que pueda transformar el modo de propagación de la enfermedad. Algunas de las predicciones más funestas sobre el cambio climático podrían resultar al final haber sido demasiado funestas. Como escribió mi colega David Wallace-Wells este año: “El margen de posibles futuros climáticos se está reduciendo, y, por tanto, nos estamos haciendo una mejor idea de lo que vendrá: un nuevo mundo, lleno de disrupciones, pero también de miles de millones de personas que vivirán con un clima que distará de ser normal, pero también, afortunadamente, del verdadero apocalipsis climático”.Él sostiene que, en parte, algunos de esos mejores resultados se derivan de la movilización a causa de un profundo temor. Esto va ligado a la misteriosa relación entre las advertencias ominosas y los resultados positivos, a ese miedo que puede mitigar la causa del miedo. Quizá fue eso lo que impidió ganar las elecciones a los teóricos conspirativos a ultranza: que los votantes indecisos visualizaron el funesto panorama de lo que podría pasar y decidieron actuar. O quizá solo quieren más estabilidad; quizá mucha gente la quiere.Esta es, en teoría, la razón por la que la gente debate sobre el carácter de nuestros problemas y su gravedad en Twitter y en lugares como The New York Times: la respuesta. El debate científico privado y público sobre, por ejemplo, la gravedad de una nueva variante de un virus tiene el potencial de guiar la respuesta del gobierno y de la sociedad.Pero no puede bastar con eso, ciertamente, porque la mayoría de este tipo de conversaciones no se mantienen con la expectativa de que Joe Biden esté escuchándolas.Oír hablar de que el mundo se acaba, o que te digan que deberías calmarte, puede ser absolutamente exasperante si no tienes el ánimo para ello: la persona que parece demasiado alarmista, cuyo pánico te crispa los nervios o se filtra en tu psique y se adhiere a todas tus preocupaciones menores; o ese tipo de argumentos que dicen que la democracia está perdida: derribarán sin excepción cualquier cosa que digas que pueda hacer más compleja la imagen. O la persona que es demasiado displicente, incapaz de reconocer una preocupación genuina de la gente, que en última instancia no te reconoce a ti; que no ve, o se niega a ver, que la crisis está aquí ya.Preocuparse sobre el fin de todo, desdeñar eso, debatirlo, apostar por lo que vendrá después: esta podría ser una manera de ejercer control sobre lo incontrolable, de afirmar nuestra propia voluntad de acción o marcar distancias entre nosotros y lo inesperado. Las cosas simplemente suceden ahora, más allá de las creencias, la racionalidad y, a veces, las palabras. Y tiene algo de esperanzador —en cuanto validación de que estamos vivos y podemos influir en los acontecimientos— que intentemos darle sentido a todo ello.Katherine Miller es redactora y editora de Opinión. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Adam Schiff: Don’t Forget That Many Republicans in Congress Enabled Trump’s Big Lie

      by

      On Dec. 27, 2020, more than six weeks after losing re-election, an infuriated President Donald Trump telephoned his acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen. Mr. Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, had announced his resignation less than two weeks earlier, after telling the president that the claims of election fraud Mr. Trump had been trumpeting were — as Mr. Barr later bluntly put it in testimony — “bullshit” and publicly affirming that there was no fraud on a scale that would affect the outcome of the election.With Mr. Rosen’s deputy, Richard Donoghue, also on the line, Mr. Trump launched into the same tired, disproved and discredited allegations he had propagated so often at rallies, during news conferences and on social media. None of it was true, and Mr. Donoghue told him so. According to Mr. Donoghue, Mr. Trump, exasperated that his own handpicked top appointees at the Justice Department would not affirm his baseless allegations, responded: “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”It was a remarkable statement, even for a president who had serially abused the powers of his office. Having been told by the very department that had investigated his claims of fraud that they were untrue, Mr. Trump told the acting attorney general and his deputy to lie about it and said he would take it from there.That Mr. Trump was willing to lie so baldly about a matter at the heart of our democracy — whether the American people can rely on elections to ensure the peaceful transfer of power — now seems self-evident, even unremarkable, when we consider the violent attack on the Capitol he incited days later. But Americans shouldn’t lose sight of how this behavior indicts the former president, and not just the former president but the Republican members of Congress whom he knew would go along with his big lie.The report released Thursday from the Jan. 6 committee, on which I served, makes abundantly clear that there were multiple lines of effort to overturn the 2020 election. Some involved attempts to pressure state legislatures to declare the loser to be the winner. Others involved a fake electors plot, pressure on the vice president to violate his constitutional duty and efforts to force an elections official to “find” thousands of votes that didn’t exist. It was only when all of these other efforts failed that the president resorted to inciting mob violence to try to stop the transfer of power.But one line of effort to overturn the election is given scant attention, and that involved the willingness of so many members of Congress to vote to overturn it. Even after Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police put down the insurrection at great cost to themselves, the majority of Republicans in the House picked up right where they left off, still voting to overturn the results in important states.At one of our Jan. 6 committee hearings, the committee vice chair Liz Cheney, a Republican, called out her colleagues in Congress for their duplicity in the most searing terms: “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”With our work on the committee largely concluded, it will now fall to the Justice Department to ensure a form of accountability that Congress is not empowered to provide, and to vindicate the rule of law in a manner beyond our reach: through prosecution. Multiple laws were violated in the course of a broad attempt to overturn the election, and not just by the foot soldiers who broke into the Capitol building that day and brutally assaulted police officers, but also by those who incited them, encouraged them and, when it was all over, gave them aid and comfort. Bringing a former president to justice who even now calls for the “termination” of our Constitution is a perilous endeavor. Not doing so is far more dangerous.There is a growing disdain for the law and for our country’s institutions, and a frightening acceptance of the use of violence to resolve political disputes. Mr. Trump’s big lie has been one of the most powerful instigators of political violence, since it persuaded millions of people that the election they lost must have been rigged or fraudulent. If people can be convinced of that, what is left but violence to decide who should govern? The attack on the Capitol was an all too foreseeable consequence of Mr. Trump’s relentless effort to alienate the people from their government and from the most important foundation of governance: their right to vote.Even the Constitution cannot protect us if the people sworn to uphold it do not give meaning to their oath of office, if that oath is not informed by ideas of right and wrong, and if people are unwilling to accept the basic truth of things. None of it will be enough.But if we allow ourselves to be guided by facts — not factions — and if we choose our representatives based on their allegiance to the law and to the Constitution, then we should have every confidence that our proud legacy of self-government will go on. It is our hope that this report will make a small contribution to that effort. Our country has never before faced the kind of threat we documented. May it never again.Adam B. Schiff is a Democratic member of Congress from California and the author, most recently, of “Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Israel’s New Government Pushes A Rush of Far-Right Initiatives

      by

      Benjamin Netanyahu needed the support of far-right factions to return to the prime minister’s office. Now they want to curb the powers of the judiciary, giving rise to fears about an erosion of democracy.JERUSALEM — As Israel’s prime minister designate, Benjamin Netanyahu, prepares to swear in his new hard-line government and return to office, his deals to cement the support of far-right coalition partners are raising widespread concerns about the country’s future as a liberal democracy.The emerging coalition will be the most hard-right and religious administration in Israel’s history, made up of Mr. Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party and another five far-right and ultra-Orthodox factions. Mr. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister, who was ousted 18 months ago, is on trial for corruption and has grown ever more dependent on these hard-line allies because the more liberal parties refuse to sit in a government led by a premier under criminal indictment.That dependency, critics say, has weakened him in the coalition negotiations, forcing him to go along with at least some of the demands for far-reaching changes that would limit the powers of the judiciary and curb the independence of the police.Mr. Netanyahu’s hard-line allies need him just as much as he needs them; they, too, have no alternative path to power. But their fundamental lack of trust in Mr. Netanyahu, who has a record of breaking promises to coalition partners, led them to insist on a rush of legislation to anchor their new roles and authorities in law, with potentially damaging consequences for the democratic system.Israelis demonstrating against the new government of Benjamin Netanyahu last week in Jerusalem.Atef Safadi/EPA, via Shutterstock“What we see in the legislation preceding the formation of the government is a change in the rules of the game of Israeli democracy,” said Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.The outgoing prime minister, Yair Lapid, a centrist, described the incoming government on Thursday as “dangerous, extremist, irresponsible.”“It will end badly,” he said, calling it “a clearance sale of Israel’s future.”The legislative rush and drafts of coalition agreements include proposals that would allow Parliament to override Supreme Court decisions and would give more weight to politicians in the selection of judges.Legal amendments would greatly expand the powers of the incoming minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the police. Mr. Ben-Gvir is the leader of the ultranationalist Jewish Power party and the main advocate of the bill, which would give him the authority to set policy for the police, something critics say will allow him to politicize the force’s operations.He was convicted in the past on charges of inciting racism and of support for a terrorist group, and ran in the election on a bullish ticket of fighting organized crime and increasing governance, particularly in areas heavily populated by members of Israel’s Arab minority.What to Know About Israel’s New GovernmentNetanyahu’s Return: Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, is set to return to power at the helm of the most right-wing administration in Israeli history.The Far Right’s Rise: To win election, Mr. Netanyahu and his far-right allies harnessed perceived threats to Israel’s Jewish identity after ethnic unrest and the subsequent inclusion of Arab lawmakers in the government.Arab Allies: Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right allies have a history of making anti-Arab statements. Three Arab countries that normalized relations with Israel in 2020 appear unconcerned.Worries Among Palestinians: To some Palestinians, the rise of Israel’s far right can scarcely make things worse. But many fear a surge of violence.Another amendment will allow Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the Religious Zionism party, to serve as a second minister in the hallowed Ministry of Defense. Mr. Smotrich, whose party ultimately seeks to annex the occupied West Bank, has been promised authority over the agencies dealing with Jewish settlements and Palestinian and Israeli civilian life in the occupied West Bank, in consultation with the prime minister.A third change will allow Aryeh Deri, the leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, to serve as a minister despite a recent conviction and a suspended prison sentence for tax fraud. That amendment, analysts say, could end up applying to Mr. Netanyahu should he ultimately be convicted or reach a plea deal including a suspended sentence.Mr. Netanyahu denies all wrongdoing and says the cases against him will collapse in court.The incoming minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the police. Mr. Ben-Gvir is the leader of the ultranationalist Jewish Power party and the main advocate behind a bill greatly expanding his powers.Gil Cohen-Magen/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesStill, experts say, the proposed changes outlined in the coalition agreements are still in flux.“Constitutional political changes are being carried out in record speed, even before the government has been established,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research center. “This demonstrates the fragility of our democracy.”But Mr. Plesner emphasized that such practices were not unprecedented in Israel and that there were still many possible outcomes.“There is a discrepancy,” he said, “between the ideas and initiatives and declarations of politicians before elections, and what is actually happening in the negotiating room and being manifested in coalition agreements and government policy.”Mr. Netanyahu, who has already pushed Israel further to the right during his 15 years in power, will now be the main force of moderation in his government compared with his more hard-line partners. Though he is known for his aggressive campaign tactics, Mr. Netanyahu has generally protected the democratic system during his long tenure.He has rejected the warnings about damage to Israeli democracy as fear-mongering by those who lost the election and has pledged to act in the interest of all Israel’s citizens.“We were elected to lead in our way, the way of the national right and the way of the liberal right,” he said in a recent speech to Parliament, “and that’s what we will do.”The most immediate concerns revolve around the law expanding the powers of Mr. Ben-Gvir, the national security minister. It has passed its first reading in Parliament but is still pending final approval.In the past, the minister overseeing the police would set policy priorities in consultation with the commissioner of police, but would not interfere in operational matters or have any influence over investigations.The proposed legislation subordinates the police to the minister’s authority, leading legal officials and experts to fear a politicization of the force. And it grants the minister the right to set priorities and time frames for investigations in a departure from past practices.“The Israel Police will be run under a threatening and belligerent man who lacks responsibility and experience, who wishes to turn it into a political agency,” and to turn the police commissioner into a “puppet,” the outgoing minister of public security, Omer Bar-Lev, told Parliament this week.Mr. Ben-Gvir argues that the police should be subordinate to a minister’s policy in the same way that the military carries out the government’s policy. But critics say that unlike the military, which fights Israel’s enemies, the mission of the police is to deal with Israeli citizens — including corrupt politicians.Aida Touma-Sliman, a Palestinian-Israeli lawmaker, told the committee discussing the bill that the incoming minister’s goals were “ideological” and “racist” and would end up creating a “political police.”Human rights activists say they are worried that the legislation giving Mr. Ben-Gvir broader control over the police could be used to suppress protests.Noa Sattath, the executive director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, said her organization petitioned the parliamentary committee discussing the bill to exclude protests from Mr. Ben-Gvir’s areas of authority, as did the committee’s own legal adviser. But Mr. Ben-Gvir rejected that recommendation.“Clearly the minister wants to have authority over the way the police deal with protests,” said Ms. Sattath, who described the bill as endangering one of the foundations of the Israeli democratic system.Clash between Palestinians and the Israeli army in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday.Zain Jaafar/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn the face of mounting criticism, Mr. Ben-Gvir told the parliamentary committee on Thursday that he would postpone the discussions and voting on the most contentious parts of the bill until after the inauguration of the government.Also of concern are the proposals to change the way the judiciary operates.If implemented, they will dramatically curb the powers of the Supreme Court, which has long been seen by liberal Israelis and analysts as one of the country’s most important institutions safeguarding against the erosion of liberal democratic values. Because Israel has only one house of Parliament and no formal constitution, the judiciary plays a critical role in protecting minority rights and offsetting rule by the parliamentary majority.The coalition partners are keen to see these judicial changes, not least to ensure that the Supreme Court cannot overturn the hasty legislation now making its way through Parliament.“In the coming weeks we will have to face the most significant threats Israeli democracy has seen in recent decades,” Mr. Plesner said at a recent conference at his institute on the implications of the judicial changes proposed by members of the incoming coalition.“The issues on the agenda concern the nature of the state and the basic rights of each and every one of us.”Myra Noveck More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      The Last Lesson of the Jan. 6 Committee

      by

      The hearings of the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol presented a careful, convincing and disturbing account of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. They provided an abundance of detail about what we’ve long known: that Mr. Trump and his allies engaged not only in an assault on Congress, but on democracy itself.The work done by the committee over the past 18 months may be even more important than its report, which is expected to be released Thursday. The long months of scouring investigation and the carefully staged hearings, in which the evidence of Mr. Trump’s malfeasance was presented to the public, were critical elements in the nation’s full understanding of the attack on the Capitol. Through the work of these hearings, Congress showed that the best possible answer to political violence lay in the tools that were right at hand: the rule of law, checks and balances, testimony given under oath and the careful process of bureaucracy.Like a slow-motion replay, the committee’s work also gave Americans a second chance to comprehend the enormity of what transpired on Jan. 6. It seems plausible, as some members of the panel have asserted, that the hearings made protecting democracy a significant issue in the midterm elections and helped to persuade voters to reject some election deniers who ran for state offices. The sustained attention on Mr. Trump’s conduct in his final days in office is also valuable as he mounts a renewed campaign for the presidency. And the hearings focused the attention of the public and policymakers on the extremist groups that participated in the attack on the Capitol and that pose a threat of renewed violence.Congressional hearings are often filled with the distraction of partisan squabbling, grandstanding and detours into tangential subjects. The Jan. 6 committee was different, and the American people were better off for it. Mr. Trump and others refused to answer subpoenas from the committee, which would have given them an opportunity to answer questions and make their case. Their refusal is unfortunate; they deserve the chance to defend themselves and present their account of the facts, and Americans deserve the chance to hear from them. They’re still due that chance, and Mr. Trump may still have his say in a court of law.The seven Democrats and two Republicans who served on the committee captured the attention of Americans who may not have been sufficiently informed or alarmed about Mr. Trump’s role in the events of Jan. 6 to take notice. The two Republicans on the committee, Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, deserve particular credit for defying their own party to participate. Their presence, and the damning testimony delivered by Mr. Trump’s own aides and allies, conveyed the message that some things are necessarily more important than loyalty to a political party.Americans have also learned, thanks to these hearings, exactly how close this country came to even greater tragedies. Rioters came within 40 feet of Vice President Mike Pence. A Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, in late December 2020 sought to send a letter — based on lies — to officials in Georgia and potentially several other key states that warned of election irregularities and called for a special legislative session to select alternate slates of presidential electors.The lesson, in part, is that our democracy is inescapably fragile. It requires Americans, and those who serve them as elected officials and in law enforcement, to act in good faith. The committee rightly spent many hours of its work documenting the actions of all those local, state and federal officials who defied Mr. Trump’s demands and acted in many different ways to protect democracy.The dangers remain clear and present, so this work is not complete. House Republicans will be in the majority come January, including many who sought to overturn President Biden’s victory, and some who encouraged the rioters.Political violence is on the rise, especially among right-wing extremists.And Mr. Trump is running for president again on a platform of his grievances, still insistent that he did not lose the last election, still refusing to accept the rule of law. He is, in fact, escalating his rhetoric.The nation needs to respond to these threats. Congress needs to pass the reforms to the electoral process that are included in the year-end omnibus spending bill. Law enforcement can do more to crack down on extremist violence. Voters should reject Mr. Trump at the polls.As the select committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, emphasized at its final hearing on Monday, the government should continue to pursue those responsible for the Jan. 6 attack and to hold them accountable.More than 900 people already have been charged with crimes related to the attack on the Capitol, and several hundred of those have either been convicted or pleaded guilty. Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the extremist Oath Keepers group, was convicted of seditious conspiracy in November. Jury selection has begun in the federal trial of Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, another extremist group, who faces similar charges.The committee called upon the Justice Department to also bring criminal charges against Mr. Trump and the lawyer John Eastman, for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including Mr. Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack. The Justice Department is still engaged in its own investigation. As we wrote in August, if there is sufficient evidence to establish Mr. Trump’s guilt on a serious charge in a court of law, then he should be charged and tried; the same goes for all of the others whom the committee referred to the Justice Department.Mr. Thompson, urging action on all these fronts, said that as a nation, “We remain in strange and uncharted waters.” Yet the hearings also underscored that the country is better off with clarity and truth.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      As Tunisia Drifts Farther From Democracy, Voters Shun Election

      by

      Turnout in Saturday’s parliamentary elections was just over 11 percent, reflecting deep skepticism that politics can solve the North African nation’s grave governmental and economic crises.A feeble turnout in Tunisia’s inconclusive parliamentary elections over the weekend drew opposition calls for the country’s strongman president to step down, with critics calling it yet another step in the North African’s nation descent from the only democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring uprisings to an increasingly autocratic state.Just over 11 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the first election since President Kais Saied orchestrated a sweeping power grab in 2021, suspending the Parliament and sidelining political parties. As Tunisia drifts farther and farther from its decade-long experiment with democracy, opponents say the president now relies on elections only to add a sheen of legitimacy to his actions.“No one can find a single party of importance across the political spectrum or a civil society organization that sees Saturday’s election as anything other than a sham vote to create a Potemkin parliament,” said Monica Marks, an assistant professor of Middle East politics at New York University Abu Dhabi.The largest opposition coalition, the Salvation Front, called for protests and sit-ins, saying the low turnout indicated that Mr. Saied lacked legitimacy and should leave office. Abir Moussi, the head of the opposition Free Constitutional Party, also called on the president to step down, saying that the vast majority of Tunisians had “rejected Saied’s plan.”The election was the first step in reinstating the Parliament, but with drastically reduced powers that will transform it essentially into an advisory body. It cannot fire the government or remove the president, and bills that Mr. Saied presents will take priority over those proposed by lawmakers. He also barred political parties from participating in elections, making it difficult to decipher the political leanings of the mostly unknown candidates who won seats.Ms. Marks described the candidates that were able to run under the new election law “a shambolic grab bag of individual esoteric loyalists, jobless people who simply wanted a salary and random community members.”President Kais Saied preparing to cast his ballot at a polling station on Saturday. Mr. Saied was elected in 2019 and concentrated power in his own hands in 2021, sidelining Parliament and political parties.Tunisian Presidential Press ServiceShe called Mr. Saied’s ruling style “adhocracy,” meaning he makes it up as he goes along, with minimal checks and balances.The election commission announced late Monday the victors in races for only 23 of the body’s 161 seats; most of the remainder will be decided in runoff elections expected next month.The election came just days after President Biden hosted leaders from across Africa in Washington to declare the United States’ commitment to the continent and voice his support for democracy.Mr. Saied attended the summit and roundly dismissed American criticism of his power grab in a meeting with the editorial board of The Washington Post. He blamed “fake news” for creating the sense that he is an autocrat and accused unidentified “foreign forces” of supporting his political foes.“There are so many enemies of democracy in Tunisia who want to do everything they can to torpedo the country’s democratic and social life from within,” Mr. Saied said.The Biden administration drew some criticism over its sanguine reaction to the election. Ned Price, a State Department spokesman, called it “an essential initial step toward restoring the country’s democratic trajectory.”Ms. Marks said on Twitter that the U.S. statement “absurdly dubbed the sham ballot ‘essential step’ to return to democracy.”The electoral commission said on Monday that only 11.2 percent of eligible voters had cast ballots in what was the country’s fourth election since Tunisians toppled their longtime dictator in a 2011 popular uprising, which set off the wave of Arab Spring revolts across the Middle East.That was the lowest participation level since the revolution and analysts attributed it to dwindling faith among voters in democracy itself. It was even below the roughly 30 percent turnout for a July constitutional referendum that enshrined the expansion of Mr. Saied’s powers and well below the participation rate in the 2019 presidential vote that brought him to power, which was about 50 percent. In 2014, about two-thirds of registered voters participated in parliamentary elections.The 23 confirmed winners included Ibrahim Bouderbala, the former head of the Tunisian Bar Association and a vocal supporter of Mr. Saied. Three women also won seats.When the Arab Spring revolts toppled leaders across the Arab world, Tunisia was lauded as the only one to emerge from the tumult as a multiparty democracy. But that legacy has fallen apart in recent years, as economic distress has spread and Mr. Saied has concentrated power in his hands, all but killing the country’s young democracy.After being elected by a large margin in 2019, Mr. Saied, formerly a little known constitutional law professor, suspended Parliament in 2021 in a move that many Tunisians welcomed, hoping it was a step toward curbing corruption and reviving the economy.A rally against Mr. Saied in Tunis this month organized by the opposition Salvation Front. The coalition called for protests and sit-ins after this weekend’s vote.Fethi Belaid/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut change has not come, with poverty spreading and increasing numbers of Tunisians attempting often-lethal boat trips to Europe in hopes of starting new lives. Mr. Saied has ruled by presidential decree, pushed through a new constitution that grants him greater powers and issued the electoral law that governed Saturday’s election.That law banned political parties from the electoral process, instead allowing voters to choose individual candidates in each district. It also did away with quotas for women and young candidates, provisions added after the revolution.Contributing to the low turnout was the absence of activities by political parties — which many Tunisians despise as corrupt and responsible for the country’s declining fortunes. The major parties boycotted the referendum this year that made Mr. Saied’s constitution into law.Also keeping people away were deep economic woes and a growing sense among voters that it would make little difference who won anyway.Mr. Saied’s supporters argued that the new electoral law would increase accountability by allowing voters to chose their representatives directly and not only as members of party lists.But critics said that keeping the parties out meant that only candidates wealthy enough to finance their own campaigns would be able to run.Analysts had low expectations for the newly chosen Parliament in any case, saying the lack of organized parties to set an agenda would leave it fractured and chaotic, and likely to follow Mr. Saied’s lead on any legislation.Ben Hubbard More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Was the World Collapsing? Or Were You Just Freaking Out?

      by

      What should we make of this year in America? There’s an argument that this is the end, or the beginning of the end, that the infrastructure of our democracy is crumbling, and that the jittery quality in the economy portends collapse and that the nuclear risk in Russia’s war in Ukraine could combust into something much bigger. There is, then, the counterargument that even with all these strains, we’re actually witnessing the system hold, that democracy prevails, that the danger is fading.Those arguments can register as hysterical or dismissive or out of touch, but they can also be considered in the most openhearted, late-night kind of way. Maybe we really are on the verge of something even worse, as in large stretches of the 20th century, and this is how people felt in previous eras that you read about. Is the world as we knew it ending? Would you even know, until it was too late, until it was actually over?In 2022, you could find the swings in discourse between apocalypse and dismissal, panic and caution, in politics, in the media, on Twitter and Instagram, over text, in person, within and between ideological factions, about war in Europe, about the state of American democracy, about illiberalism and the prospective retreat from globalism, about violence, about Covid, about artificial intelligence, about inflation and energy prices and crypto collapse contagion. There are deep versions of this debate, and reductive ones you catch a glimpse of in Instagram comments or in an op-ed that just gets it all wrong. This can even be a debate you have with yourself.You probably know about the apocalyptic possibilities for American democracy. Fundamentally, this country doesn’t work if the peaceful transfer of power does not work. This country doesn’t work, and didn’t work in living memory, if people can’t vote. And there might be a threshold at which it doesn’t work if enough people don’t trust election results. Those existential questions have now been channeled into concrete problems: In 2022, people called up election offices and left death threats; people in tactical gear staked out voter drop boxes; election offices installed bulletproof glass. Republicans fielded candidates in Arizona and Pennsylvania who ran on the premise that elections in this country were a lie. Millions watched the Jan. 6 hearings that delved into how chaotic and fragile the final days of the Trump White House really were.Then, in this fragile landscape of trust, there were the courts. In the summer, the Supreme Court fully overturned Roe v. Wade, a decision long expected, but one that still seemed to shock even the people who wanted it — even after the surreal publication of a drafted opinion in the spring. The fact that it really did happen — that suddenly a woman had to drive into another state to get an abortion so that she wouldn’t potentially die from complications — not only carried that kind of real-life consequence in a thousand private moments of people’s lives, but also opened up a world of other possibilities about what could happen. Maybe the court would roll back marriage equality. Or sign off on “independent state legislature” theory, an obscure theory adopted by a group of right-wingers that would grant expanded powers to state legislatures in carrying out elections and risk destabilizing the entire system.Accompanying all these events was a disorienting, high-stakes discourse about how to talk about conspiracy theories and antidemocratic threats, and about how much to do so. We know that what people say — what we say — on social platforms, and certainly in the media, shapes the way people perceive politics, but in a way that can be hard to measure — an awareness that can convert every piece or post into an opportunity or mistake. Writers argued that excessively focusing on democracy might alienate, rather than persuade, voters, or even corrupt institutions by intertwining constitutional and partisan concerns.Then there was the world beyond discourse, where no one could control much of anything beyond one man. For months, for years, since the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the West’s tepid response to it, people had warned that Vladimir Putin would eventually launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine — then it happened. Not many people in Russia or anywhere else seemed to want this beyond Mr. Putin, but that did nothing to prevent Ukraine from becoming the kind of place where a boy has to figure out for himself that troops shot his mother and stepfather because nobody knows how to tell him, where people had to drink the water from radiators to stay alive, where reflecting on brutal deaths in one city, someone can find themselves grimly observing, “In theory, international bodies have the authority to prosecute war crimes wherever and whenever they occur.” More

    • 75 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      How Will History Remember Jan. 6?

      by

      Far-right groups stockpiling guns and explosives, preparing for a violent overthrow of a government they deem illegitimate. Open antisemitism on the airwaves, expressed by mainstream media figures. Leading politicians openly embracing bigoted, authoritarian leaders abroad who disdain democracy and the rule of law.This might sound like a recap of the last few years in America, but it is actually the forgotten story told in a remarkable new podcast, Ultra, that recounts the shocking tale of how during World War II, Nazi propagandists infiltrated far-right American groups and the America First movement, wormed into the offices of senators and representatives and fomented a plot to overthrow the United States government.“This is a story about politics at the edge,” said the show’s creator and host, Rachel Maddow, in the opening episode. “And a criminal justice system trying, trying, but ill-suited to thwart this kind of danger.”Maddow is, of course, a master storyteller, and never lets the comparisons to today’s troubles get too on the nose. But as I hung on each episode, I couldn’t help think about Jan. 6 and wonder: Will that day and its aftermath be a hinge point in our country’s history? Or a forgotten episode to be plumbed by some podcaster decades from now?When asked about the meaning of contemporary events, historians like to jokingly reply, “Ask me in 100 years.” This week, the committee in the House of Representatives investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot will drop its doorstop-size report, a critical early installment in the historical record. Journalists, historians and activists have already generated much, much more material, and more is still to come.In January, a Republican majority will take over the House and many of its members have pledged to begin their own battery of investigations, including an investigation into the Jan. 6 investigation. What will come from this ouroboros of an inquiry one cannot say, but it cannot help but detract from the quest for accountability for the events of that day.Beyond that, polling ahead of this year’s midterm elections indicated that Americans have other things on their minds, perhaps even more so now that the threat of election deniers winning control over voting in key swing states has receded. But what it means for the story America tells itself about itself is an open question. And in the long run, that might mean more accountability than our current political moment permits.Why do we remember the things we remember, and why do we forget the things we forget? This is not a small question in a time divided by fights over history. We all know the old saying: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. But there is another truism that to my mind often countervails: We are always fighting the last war.The story that Maddow’s podcast tells is a doozy. It centers on a German American named George Sylvester Viereck, who was an agent for the Nazi government. Viereck was the focus of a Justice Department investigation into Nazi influence in America in the 1930s. For good reason: Lawmakers helped him in a variety of ways. One senator ran pro-German propaganda articles in magazines under his name that had actually been written by Viereck and would deliver pro-German speeches on the floor of Congress written by officials of the Nazi government. Others would reproduce these speeches and mail them to millions of Americans at taxpayer expense.Viereck also provided moral and financial support to a range of virulently antisemitic and racist organizations across the United States, along with paramilitary groups called the Silver Shirts and the Christian Front. Members of these groups sought to violently overthrow the government of the United States and replace it with a Nazi-style dictatorship.This was front-page news at the time. Investigative reporters dug up scoop after scoop about the politicians involved. Prosecutors brought criminal charges. Big trials were held. But today they are all but forgotten. One leading historian of Congress who was interviewed in the podcast, Nancy Beck Young, said she doubts that more than one or two people in her history department at the University of Houston knew about this scandal.Why was this episode consigned to oblivion? Selective amnesia has always been a critical component of the American experience. Americans are reared on myths that elide the genocide of Indigenous Americans, the central role of slavery in our history, America’s imperial adventures and more. As Susan Sontag put it, “What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened.”Our favorite stories are sealed narrative boxes with a clear arc — a heroic journey in which America is the hero. And it’s hard to imagine a narrative more cherished than the one wrought by the countless books, movies and prestige television that remember World War II as a story of American righteousness in the face of a death cult. There was some truth to that story. But that death cult also had adherents here at home who had the ear and the mouthpiece of some of the most powerful senators and representatives.It also had significant support from a broad swath of the American people, most of whom were at best indifferent to the fate of European Jewry, as “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” a documentary series by the filmmakers Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein that came out in September, does the painful work of showing. A virulent antisemite, Rev. Charles E. Coughlin, hosted by far the biggest radio show in the country. At his peak in the 1930s about 90 million people a week tuned in to hear his diatribes against Jews and communism.In some ways, it is understandable that this moment was treated as an aberration. The America First movement, which provided mainstream cover for extremist groups, evaporated almost instantly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Maybe it was even necessary to forget. When the war was over there was so much to do: rebuild Europe, integrate American servicemen back into society, confront the existential threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Who had the time to litigate who had been wrong about Germany in the 1930s?Even professional historians shied away from this period. Bradley Hart, a historian whose 2018 book “Hitler’s American Friends” unearthed a great deal of this saga, said that despite the wealth of documentary material there was little written about the subject. “This is a really uncomfortable chapter in American history because we want to believe the Second World War was this great moment when America was on the side of democracy and human rights,” Hart told me. “There is this sense that you have to forget certain parts of history in order to move on.”As anyone who has been married for a long time knows, sometimes forgetting is essential to peace. Even countries that have engaged in extensive post-conflict reconciliation processes, like South Africa and Argentina, were inevitably limited by the need to move on. After all, you make peace with your enemies, not your friends.The aftermath of Jan. 6 is unfolding almost like a photo negative of the scandal Maddow’s podcast unfurls. With very few exceptions almost everyone involved in the pro-Nazi movement escaped prosecution. A sedition trial devolved into a total debacle that ended with a mistrial. President Harry Truman, a former senator, ultimately helped out his old friend Senator Burton K. Wheeler, a figure in the plot to disseminate Nazi propaganda, by telling the Justice Department to fire the prosecutor who was investigating it.But the major political figures involved paid the ultimate political price: they were turfed out of office by voters.Many of the perpetrators of the Jan. 6 riot, on the other hand, have been brought to justice successfully: Roughly 900 people have been arrested; approximately 470 have pleaded guilty to a variety of federal charges; around 335 of those charged federally have been convicted and sentenced; more than 250 have been sentenced to prison or home confinement. Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, was convicted of seditious conspiracy, the most serious charge brought in any of these cases. In their report to be released this week, the Jan. 6 committee is expected to recommend further criminal indictments. One big question looming over it all is whether former President Donald Trump will be criminally charged for his role in whipping up the frenzy that led to the assault on the Capitol.A broader political reckoning seems much more distant. Election deniers and defenders of the Jan. 6 mob lost just about every major race in swing states in the 2022 midterms. But roughly 200 Republicans who supported the lie about the 2020 election being stolen won office across the country, The New York Times reported.What larger narrative about America might require us to remember Jan. 6? And what might require us to file it away as an aberration? The historian’s dodge — “ask me in 100 years” — is the only truly safe answer. But if the past is any guide, short-term political expediency may require it to be the latter.After all, it is only now that decades of work by scholars, activists and journalists has placed chattel slavery at the center of the American story rather than its periphery. What are the current battles about critical race theory but an attempt to repackage the sprawling, unfinished fight for civil rights into a tidy story about how Black people got their rights by appealing to the fundamental decency of white people and by simply asking nicely? In this telling, systematic racism ended when Rosa Parks could sit in the front of the bus. Anything that even lightly challenges finality of racial progress is at best an unwelcome rupture in the narrative matrix; at worst it is seen as a treasonous hatred of America.History, after all, is not just what happened. It is the meaning we make out of what happened and the story we tell with that meaning. If we included everything there would be no story. We cannot and will not remember things that have not been fashioned into a story we tell about ourselves, and because we are human, and because change is life, that story will evolve and change as we do.There is no better sign that our interpretation of history is in for revision than the Hollywood treatment. Last week it was reported that Steven Spielberg, our foremost chronicler of heroic World War II tales, plans to collaborate with Maddow to make Ultra into a movie. Perhaps this marks the beginning of a pop culture reconsideration of America’s role in the war, adding nuance that perturbs the accepted heroic narrative.And so I am not so worried about Jan. 6 fading from our consciousness for now. One day, maybe decades, maybe a century, some future Rachel Maddow will pick up the story and weave it more fully into the American fabric, not as an aberration but a continuous thread that runs through our imperfect tapestry. Maybe some future Steven Spielberg will even make it into a movie. I bet it’ll be a blockbuster.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 138 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      The Ideal of Democracy in a Jewish State Is in Jeopardy

      by

      Israeli elections can be dramatic, and its five elections within four years have been full of political surprises and firsts, including the first time an independent Israeli Arab party joined a governing coalition. This series of new governments and the sometimes tumultuous process of forming them are part of Israel’s proud tradition as a boisterous and pluralistic democracy.Yet the far-right government that will soon take power, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, marks a qualitative and alarming break with all the other governments in Israel’s 75-year history. While Mr. Netanyahu clearly has the support of the Israeli electorate, his coalition’s victory was narrow and cannot be seen as a broad mandate to make concessions to ultrareligious and ultranationalist parties that are putting the ideal of a democratic Jewish state in jeopardy.This board has been a strong supporter of Israel and a two-state solution for many years, and we remain committed to that support. Antisemitism is on the rise around the globe, and at least some of the criticism of Israel is the result of such hatred.Mr. Netanyahu’s government, however, is a significant threat to the future of Israel — its direction, its security and even the idea of a Jewish homeland. For one, the government’s posture could make it militarily and politically impossible for a two-state solution to ever emerge. Rather than accept this outcome, the Biden administration should do everything it can to express its support for a society governed by equal rights and the rule of law in Israel, as it does in countries all over the world. That would be an act of friendship, consistent with the deep bond between the two nations.Mr. Netanyahu’s comeback as prime minister, a year and a half after he was ousted from office, can’t be divorced from the corruption allegations that have followed him. He is now doing everything he can to stay in power, by catering to the demands of the most extreme elements of Israeli politics. The new cabinet he is forming includes radical far-right parties that have called for, among other things, expanding and legalizing settlements in a way that would effectively render a Palestinian state in the West Bank impossible; changing the status quo on the Temple Mount, an action that risks provoking a new round of Arab-Israeli violence; and undermining the authority of the Israeli Supreme Court, thus freeing the Knesset, the Israeli legislature, to do whatever it wants, with little judicial restraint.Ministers in the new government are set to include figures such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, who was convicted in Israel in 2007 for incitement to racism and supporting a Jewish terrorist organization. He will probably be minister of national security. Bezalel Smotrich, who has long supported outright annexation of the West Bank, is expected to be named the next finance minister, with additional authority over the administration of the West Bank. For the deputy in the prime minister’s office in charge of Jewish identity, Mr. Netanyahu is expected to name Avi Maoz, who once described himself as a “proud homophobe.”These moves are troubling, and America’s leaders should say so. The Biden administration’s main response so far has been a cautious speech by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the liberal advocacy group J Street on Dec. 4, in which he declared that the United States would deal with Israeli policies, not individuals. The new government has yet to be formed, so it is not surprising that the State Department does not yet have a well-defined position, but the administration has already discussed, according to a report in Axios, how to manage its meetings with the most extreme members of the new cabinet and which core interests to focus on.This approach understates the potential consequences of the shift in Israeli politics that this government represents. The cabinet about to take charge is not simply another iteration of the unstable, shifting alliances that followed the past four inconclusive elections. Those coalitions, like many before them, often included fringe religious or nationalist parties, but they were usually kept in check by more moderate political parties or even by Mr. Netanyahu over the 15 years he served as prime minister.All that is now threatened. Right-wing parties have an absolute majority in the Knesset, and Mr. Netanyahu, hoping that the new government will save him from prosecution and potential prison time, is in their power. Among the targets of the new leaders is the Israeli Supreme Court, which, in the absence of a national constitution, has served to weigh government actions against international law and the Israeli state’s own traditions and values. The nationalists would diminish this authority by voting to give themselves the power to override Supreme Court decisions. Not incidentally, they have also proposed eliminating the law under which Mr. Netanyahu faces a possible prison term.As Thomas L. Friedman, a Times columnist who has closely followed Israeli affairs for four decades, wrote shortly after the election results were known, “We are truly entering a dark tunnel.” While Mr. Netanyahu in the past used the “energy of this illiberal Israeli constituency to win office,” Mr. Friedman wrote, until now, he had never given them this kind of ministerial authority over critical defense and economic portfolios.This is not simply a disappointing turn in an old ally. The relationship between Israel and the United States has long been one that transcends traditional definitions of a military alliance or of diplomatic friendship. A body of deeply shared values has forged powerful and complex bonds. A commitment to Israel, both in its security and in its treatment by the world, has been an unquestioned principle of American foreign and domestic policy for decades, even when Mr. Netanyahu openly defied Barack Obama or embraced Donald Trump. As Mr. Blinken said in his speech, the United States will hold Israel “to the mutual standards we have established in our relationship over the past seven decades.”Israel has been moving steadily rightward in recent years. That is, in part, due to genuine concerns about crime and security, especially after violence between Israeli Arabs and Jews last year. Many Israelis also express fear that the peace process has failed because of a lack of interest in peace among Palestinian leaders, a fear heightened by Hamas control in Gaza since 2007 and a sense that Mahmoud Abbas’s grip on the Palestinian Authority is coming to an end without a clear succession plan.Demographic change in Israel has also shifted the country’s politics. Religious families in Israel tend to have large families and to vote with the right. A recent analysis by the Israel Democracy Institute found that about 60 percent of Jewish Israelis identify as right wing today; among people ages 18 to 24, the number rises to 70 percent. In the Nov. 1 election, the old Labor Party, once the liberal face of Israel’s founders, won only four seats, and the left-wing Meretz won none.Moderating forces in Israeli politics and civil society are already planning energetic resistance to legislation that would curtail the powers of the Israeli Supreme Court or the rights of the Arab minority or the L.G.B.T.Q. community. They deserve support from the American public and from the Biden administration.Whatever the contours of the new Israeli government, the United States will continue to be engaged with it on many issues of shared concern. Negotiations on a new nuclear deal with Iran are all but dead, a situation that poses a threat to security across the region. The Abraham Accords, while not a substitute for peace with the Palestinians, normalized relations between Israel and several Arab nations. That is welcome progress, and the United States could play an important role in helping to expand them to include other countries, such as Saudi Arabia.While Palestinian-Israeli negotiations have long been moribund, the principle of someday achieving two states remains the bedrock of American and Israeli cooperation. Hopes for a Palestinian state have dimmed under the combined pressure of Israeli resistance and Palestinian corruption, ineptitude and internal divisions. Anything that undermines Israel’s democratic ideals — whether outright annexation of Jewish settlements or legalization of illegal settlements and outposts — would undermine the possibility of a two-state solution.America’s support for Israel reflects our two countries’ respect for democratic ideals. President Biden and Mr. Netanyahu should do everything they can to reaffirm that commitment.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More