[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

You’re country is moving in the direction of nazism. Of fascism. If you don’t think so, like I said, brush up on Germany 1930-1939z

Whether you like it or not is irrelevant. Vote differently. Or not. But know the rest of the world, is not on board with where your country is going.

Populism has flared up across the Western world. Heard of Brexit? The National Front in France? Trump may be the most prominent example of resurgent populism, but the same anxieties and anger that brought him to power are shaking the foundations of the establishment in democracies around the world.

The rise of European populism and the collapse of the center-left

The rise of populism, mostly right-leaning, is the most important European political development of the 21st century. It has eaten into support for traditional center-right parties while dealing a knock-out blow to the center-left. The result is the end of the center-left/center-right duopoly that has dominated European politics since the end of World War II. Party systems throughout Europe have fragmented, and most have shifted toward the right. And the rise of populism has opened the door to increased Russian influence throughout Europe...

- Brookings

Populism Is a Problem. Elitist Technocrats Aren’t the Solution.

The problem isn’t too much democracy — it’s too little.

Democracy today seems to be in constant crisis. Democratic backsliding has occurred in countries from Venezuela to Poland, and autocratic leaders, including Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, proudly proclaim that the era of liberal democracy is over. Perhaps most worrying, even in the West where it has long been taken for granted, liberal democracy is under attack from populists, and, according to some scholars, it is no longer highly valued by many citizens.

In seeking to explain these troubling trends, most observers focus on the challenges currently facing democracy. They argue that globalization and rising automation have made life more insecure for the working and middle classes, privileged highly educated city dwellers over the less educated who live in rural areas, and made capitalism more of a zero-sum game. Alongside economic challenges, changing social norms and rising immigration — the percentage of foreign-born citizens is at an all-time high in many European countries and at levels last seen during the early 20th century in the United States — have left many citizens feeling uncomfortable and out of touch in their own neighborhoods.

But analyses that focus on only these challenges cannot explain the woes of an entire political system. Just as a healthy body fights off myriad viruses, so too do healthy political systems identify and respond to the challenges they face. Liberal democracies’ problems over the past years haven’t come merely or even primarily from the challenges they have faced but rather from a diminished capacity to recognize and respond to them. It is not just rapid economic and social changes that matter but the inability or unwillingness of national political actors and institutions to respond to those changes that has caused rising support for populists.

The real cause of Western democracies’ current travails is that many core political institutions have decayed dramatically over the past years — or ceded responsibility to unelected supranational bodies — hindering their ability to translate the demands of a broad range of their citizens into concrete action at home. Western democracies have, in short, become dramatically less democratic...

- Foreign Policy