Donald Trump and the MAGA movement have certainly caused a serious decline in America’s democracy and global influence. However, a close inspection demonstrates that is actually the people themselves, not Trump who are ultimately responsible for these challenges. This interesting article written by Tom Nichols is published by USA Today. Here is an excerpt:

I’ve written about a lot of unpleasant, even frightening, subjects. For most of my career, I have been a specialist in national security affairs, a cheerless area of study. I’ve written about war, terrorism, and even about the possibility of nuclear apocalypse, a project that required staring at maps and charts of how entire cities would be turned into ash and left for eternity as desolated mass graveyards.

And yet nothing was more difficult than writing about democracy in my own country. In the past, I brought – I hope – a scholarly and dispassionate eye to unpleasant subjects. Now, I was anguished. I was no longer writing about notional future wars or the faraway Russians. Now I was writing about my own people: my fellow citizens, my friends, my neighbors, my family.

And I did not like what I saw.

Read the full story here.