Timothy Snyder writes:

When I am on media, television hosts ask how democracy is relevant to people who are voting on kitchen-table issues. That’s easy.

When Trump destroys our democracy, he will also destroy our economy.

Autocracy will bring poverty.

Think about the politicians Trump idolizes, Vladimir Putin in Russia and Viktor Orbán in Hungary. The first undid a democracy through fake emergencies, the second through persistent constitutional abuse. It is not hard to see why Trump likes them.

Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs. Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time. And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.

The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.

And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.

Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform. [Continue reading…]