WASHINGTON—As citizens across the nation sought to insulate themselves from mounting evidence to the contrary, several reports indicated Monday that the idea of the total collapse of democracy was so horrifying that America decided it hadn’t happened yet. “We can’t let them take away our democracy,” said Prescott, AZ insurance agent Daniel Cross, echoing the concerns of a terrified American populace that imagined a future in which the nation’s democratic ideals were hopelessly compromised, and determined that in the meantime, the Electoral College, U.S. Senate, unelected Supreme Court, increased power concentrated in the presidency, lack of universal suffrage, frequent executive overrides of decisions that had majority support of the American populace, the manipulation of voting boundaries on the federal, state, and local levels, a strict two-party system that used legislative means to effectively prevent additional parties from gaining traction, widespread voter suppression, corporate control of the media, massive lobbying sector, outsourcing of public services to profit-driven private firms, concentration of power among a few wealthy individuals, complex legal labyrinths designed to prevent regular people from exercising their basic rights, deregulation that led to widespread health, environmental, and economic hardship, unfettered campaign donations, effective legal immunity on the basis of status, wealth, or membership in a state police force, legal and economic obstacles to free assembly and free speech, poor education in both critical thinking and democratic ideas, unelected local councils and boards with significant influence over the distribution of public resources without fair notice or inclusion of the general populace, and the repeated efforts by the United States to undermine democracy in foreign countries at the expense of undermining its own democratic processes at home didn’t currently exist. “This election is a make-or-break moment for our democracy. It’s the most important election of our lifetimes.” Additional reports suggested that the prospects of a badly compromised political system in the United States were so disturbing to contemplate that Americans decided that real democracy had at some point actually existed.
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