I can totally understand why the New York Times has departed from its usual practice. As it argued in an editorial, Trump is “the worst nominee put forward by a major party in modern American history”. He is a threat to civil peace at home and the country’s standing abroad. An Italian friend compares it to the reaction of the newspaper La Repubblica when faced with the resistible rise of Silvio Berlusconi.
Unfortunately this taking sides may reinforce a structural trend that is itself corrosive of US democracy. The most characteristic American argument for free speech and for what we still anachronistically call a free “press” – as explicitly mentioned in the first amendment – is that this is necessary for democratic self-government: only if citizens can hear all the relevant arguments and evidence, as ancient Athenians did when they gathered on the Pnyx at the foot of the Acropolis, will they be able to make an informed choice and therefore meaningfully be said to be governing themselves. First voice, then vote. So you have to hear the arguments and evidence from both sides.
But in this respect Monday’s television duel between the two candidates is the exception that proves the rule: a brief moment of shared experience in the public square. The rest of the time, American voters are off in their own echo chambers, hearing views that reinforce their own.
No comments:
Post a Comment