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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026

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I have long said that the actual threat to democracy in our country is the hyper partisan attitude that led to calling Trump a threat to democracy. I still believe that, and I think we are likely to see that continue to erode our democratic government even after Trump is out of office.

That is a major issue but there was a preexisting slide(which this is doing nothing to arrest). One even more subtle issue is that the pro-democracy elites shy away from Trump due to all this 'he's anti democracy' BS and you wind up with more and more people in senior positions who don't care about democracy either way. Meanwhile normal mainstream democrats become more and more willing to give carte blanche to these types who think 'democracy is when the center left gets its way', regardless of the constitutional implications. Merrick Garland seems to have been caught in that trap.

Figures like Brett Devereaux have it backwards in deciding that getting rid of Trump will save democracy. But equally there are issues there that he's gesturing at; America really is hurtling towards a non-democratic future, and Trump's definitely a sign.