Ultimately, indifference is deadly. The apathy. The feeling of impotence. And the idle silence that follows. People, including journalists, start thinking they can't do anything anyway. That proved to be the case in Turkey and Hungary and it has long been the situation in Russia and China as well. Will it also happen in the United States?
When democracy begins to erode, it seldom happens very quickly. Looking back, one can often determine the moment in which it became serious -- usually it was an election. How could Turkey have elected Erdogan, Russia Putin, Hungary Orbán and how could America have chosen Donald Trump with a clear conscience? When political discourse leads to a situation in which the discourse itself is replaced by demagogy, and when that demagogue is brought to power through a democratic process, then it's possible that democracy itself will be replaced by autocracy. » | A Commentary by Klaus Brinkbäumer | Tuesday, February 7, 2017
