The United States has experienced deep political turmoil several times before over the past century. The Great Depression caused Americans to doubt the country’s economic system. World War II and the Cold War presented threats from global totalitarian movements. The 1960s and ’70s were marred by assassinations, riots, a losing war and a disgraced president.
These earlier periods were each more alarming in some ways than anything that has happened in the United States recently. Yet during each of those previous times of tumult, the basic dynamics of American democracy held firm. Candidates who won the most votes were able to take power and attempt to address the country’s problems.

在过去的一个世纪里，美国经历过几次严重的政治动荡。大萧条使美国人怀疑国家的经济体系。第二次世界大战和冷战带来了全球极权主义运动的威胁。20世纪60年代和70年代被暗杀、暴动、失败的战争和一个名誉扫地的总统所破坏。
在某些方面，这些早期时期比美国最近发生的任何事情都更令人担忧。然而，在之前的每一次动荡中，美国民主的基本动力都没有动摇。赢得最多选票的候选人能够掌权，并试图解决国家的问题。

The current period is different. As a result, the United States today finds itself in a situation with little historical precedent. American democracy is facing two distinct threats, which together represent the most serious challenge to the country’s governing ideals in decades.
The first threat is acute: a growing movement inside one of the country’s two major parties — the Republican Party — to refuse to accept defeat in an election.
The violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress, meant to prevent the certification of President Biden’s election, was the clearest manifestation of this movement, but it has continued since then. Hundreds of elected Republican officials around the country falsely claim that the 2020 election was rigged. Some of them are running for statewide offices that would oversee future elections, potentially putting them in position to overturn an election in 2024 or beyond.
“There is the possibility, for the first time in American history, that a legitimately elected president will not be able to take office,” said Yascha Mounk, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University who studies democracy.

当前的情况有所不同。结果，今天的美国发现自己处于一个几乎没有历史先例的境地。美国民主正面临两种截然不同的威胁，这两种威胁加在一起，代表着几十年来对美国执政理念的最严重挑战。
第一个威胁是严峻的:在美国两大政党之一的共和党内部，拒绝接受选举失败的运动正在不断壮大。
2021年1月6日，旨在阻止拜登总统当选的暴力袭击国会，是这一运动最明显的表现，但自那以后它一直在继续。全国各地数百名当选的共和党官员虚伪地声称2020年的选举被操纵了。他们中的一些人正在竞选监督未来选举的州级职位，这可能会让他们有机会推翻2024年或以后的选举。
约翰霍普金斯大学研究民主的政治学家雅斯查·蒙克说，“合法选举的总统有可能无法就职，这在美国历史上尚属首次。”

The second threat to democracy is chronic but also growing: The power to set government policy is becoming increasingly disconnected from public opinion.
The run of recent Supreme Court decisions — both sweeping and, according to polls, unpopular — highlight this disconnect. Although the Democratic Party has won the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections, a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees seems poised to shape American politics for years, if not decades. And the court is only one of the means through which policy outcomes are becoming less closely tied to the popular will.

对民主的第二个威胁是长期存在的，但也在不断增长:制定政府政策的权力正日益与公众舆论脱节。
最近最高法院的一系列判决——包括广泛的和民意调查显示不受欢迎的——凸显了这种脱节。尽管民主党在过去8次总统选举中赢得了7次普选，但由共和党任命的人主导的最高法院，似乎要在未来几年，甚至几十年左右左右美国政治。而法院只是政策结果与民意联系越来越少的手段之一。

Two of the past four presidents have taken office despite losing the popular vote. Senators representing a majority of Americans are often unable to pass bills, partly because of the increasing use of the filibuster. Even the House, intended as the branch of the government that most reflects the popular will, does not always do so, because of the way districts are drawn.
“We are far and away the most countermajoritarian democracy in the world,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University and a co-author of the book “How Democracies Die,” with Daniel Ziblatt.
The causes of the twin threats to democracy are complex and debated among scholars.
The chronic threats to democracy generally spring from enduring features of American government, some written into the Constitution. But they did not conflict with majority opinion to the same degree in past decades. One reason is that more populous states, whose residents receive less power because of the Senate and the Electoral College, have grown so much larger than small states.

在过去的四位总统中，有两位是在失去普选票数的情况下就任的。代表大多数美国人的参议员经常无法通过法案，部分原因是越来越多地使用拖延战术。即使是作为议会的分支，最能反映民意的众议院，也并非总能通过，因为选区划分的方式。
“我们无疑是世界上最反多数主义的民主国家，”哈佛大学政府学教授史蒂文·莱维茨基说，他与丹尼尔·齐布拉特合著了《民主是如何消亡的》一书。
民主面临双重威胁的原因是复杂的，在学者中争论不休。
对民主的长期威胁通常来自美国政府的持久特征，有些被写入了宪法。但在过去的几十年里，他们与多数人的意见并没有产生同样程度的冲突。一个原因是，由于参议院和选举人团制度，人口较多的州的居民获得的权力较少，这些州的人口比小州大得多。

The acute threats to democracy — and the rise of authoritarian sentiment, or at least the acceptance of it, among many voters — have different causes. They partly reflect frustration over nearly a half-century of slow-growing living standards for the American working class and middle class. They also reflect cultural fears, especially among white people, that the United States is being transformed into a new country, more racially diverse and less religious, with rapidly changing attitudes toward gender, language and more.
The economic frustrations and cultural fears have combined to create a chasm in American political life, between prosperous, diverse major metropolitan areas and more traditional, religious and economically struggling smaller cities and rural areas. The first category is increasingly liberal and Democratic, the second increasingly conservative and Republican.

对民主的严重威胁——以及许多选民中威权主义情绪的抬头(或至少是对威权主义的接受程度)——有着不同的原因。这在一定程度上反映了美国工人阶级和中产阶级近半个世纪来生活水平增长缓慢的挫败感。它们也反映出文化上的恐惧，尤其是在白人当中，他们担心美国正在转变为一个新的国家，一个种族更加多样化、宗教色彩更少的国家，对性别、语言等的态度正在迅速转变。
经济上的挫折和文化上的恐惧交织在一起，在繁荣、多样化的主要大都市地区与更加传统、宗教和经济困难的小城市和农村地区之间，在美国的政治生活中造成了一道鸿沟。第一类是越来越多的自由派和民主党人，第二类是越来越多的保守派和共和党人。

The political contest between the two can feel existential to people in both camps, with disagreements over nearly every prominent issue. “When we’re voting, we’re not just voting for a set of policies but for what we think makes us Americans and who we are as a people,” Lilliana Mason, a political scientist and the author of “Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity,” said. “If our party loses the election, then all of these parts of us feel like losers.”
These sharp disagreements have led many Americans to doubt the country’s system of government. In a recent poll by Quinnipiac University, 69 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of Republicans said that democracy was “in danger of collapse.” Of course, the two sides have very different opinions about the nature of the threat.

对于两个阵营的人来说，两者之间的政治竞争都是存在的，双方在几乎所有重大问题上都存在分歧。“当我们投票时，我们投的不仅仅是一系列政策，而是我们认为是什么让我们成为美国人，以及我们是谁，”政治学家、《不文明的协议：政治如何成为我们的身份》的作者莉莉安娜·梅森说，“如果我们的党在选举中失败，那么我们所有人都会觉得自己是失败者。”
这些尖锐的分歧导致许多美国人怀疑美国的政府制度。昆尼皮亚克大学最近进行的一项民意调查显示，69%的民主党人和69%的共和党人表示，民主“有崩溃的危险”。当然，双方对这一威胁的性质有截然不同的看法。

Many Democrats share the concerns of historians and scholars who study democracy, pointing to the possibility of overturned election results and the deterioration of majority rule. “Equality and democracy are under assault,” President Biden said in a speech this month in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. “We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise.”
Many Republicans have defended their increasingly aggressive tactics by saying they are trying to protect American values. In some cases, these claims rely on falsehoods — about election fraud, Mr. Biden’s supposed “socialism,” Barack Obama’s birthplace, and more.
In others, they are rooted in anxiety over real developments, including illegal immigration and “cancel culture.” Some on the left now consider widely held opinions among conservative and moderate Americans — on abortion, policing, affirmative action, Covid-19 and other subjects — to be so obxtionable that they cannot be debated. In the view of many conservatives and some experts, this intolerance is stifling open debate at the heart of the American political system.

许多民主党人和研究民主的历史学家和学者一样担心，他们指出选举结果可能被推翻，多数决原则可能恶化。“平等和民主正在受到攻击，”拜登总统本月在费城独立厅前发表演讲时说。“假装不是这样对我们自己没有好处。”
许多共和党人为他们日益激进的策略进行辩护，称他们是在努力保护美国的价值观。在某些情况下，这些说法依赖于谎言——关于选举舞弊、拜登所谓的“社会主义”、巴拉克·奥巴马的出生地等等。
在其他情况下，它们源于对现实发展的焦虑，包括非法移民和“取消文化”。一些左翼人士现在认为，保守派和温和派美国人普遍持有的观点——关于堕胎、治安、平权行动、新冠肺炎和其他主题——非常令人反感，以至于无法进行辩论。在许多保守派人士和一些专家看来，这种不宽容扼杀了美国政治体系核心的公开辩论。

The divergent sense of crisis on left and right can itself weaken democracy, and it has been exacerbated by technology.
Conspiracy theories and outright lies have a long American history, dating to the personal attacks that were a staple of the partisan press during the 18th century. In the mid-20th century, tens of thousands of Americans joined the John Birch Society, a far-right group that claimed Dwight Eisenhower was a secret Communist.
Today, however, falsehoods can spread much more easily, through social media and a fractured news environment. In the 1950s, no major television network spread the lies about Eisenhower. In recent years, the country’s most watched cable channel, Fox News, regularly promoted falsehoods about election results, Mr. Obama’s birthplace and other subjects.
These same forces — digital media, cultural change and economic stagnation in affluent countries — help explain why democracy is also struggling in other parts of the world. Only two decades ago, at the turn of the 21st century, democracy was the triumphant form of government around the world, with autocracy in retreat in the former Soviet empire, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, South Korea and elsewhere. Today, the global trend is moving in the other direction.

左翼和右翼的危机意识分歧本身就会削弱民主，科技的发展加剧了这种情况。阴谋论和赤裸裸的谎言在美国有着悠久的历史，可以追溯到18世纪党派媒体的主要内容——人身攻击。在20世纪中期，成千上万的美国人加入了约翰·伯奇协会，这是一个极右翼组织，声称德怀特·艾森豪威尔是一个秘密的共产主义者。
然而，如今，通过社交媒体和支离破碎的新闻环境，谎言的传播要容易得多。在20世纪50年代，没有一个主要的电视网络散布关于艾森豪威尔的谎言。近年来，美国收视率最高的有线电视频道福克斯新闻经常在选举结果、奥巴马的出生地等话题上宣传虚假信息。
这些同样的力量——数字媒体、文化变革和富裕国家的经济停滞——有助于解释为什么民主在世界其他地方也在挣扎。仅仅20年前，在21世纪之交，民主还是世界各地成功的政府形式，独裁在前苏联帝国、阿根廷、巴西、智利、南非、韩国和其他地方都在衰落。今天，全球趋势正在向另一个方向发展。

Some experts remain hopeful that the growing attention in the United States to democracy’s problems can help avert a constitutional crisis here. Already, Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election failed, partly because of the refusal of many Republican officials to participate, and both federal and state prosecutors are investigating his actions. And while the chronic decline of majority rule will not change anytime soon, it is also part of a larger historical struggle to create a more inclusive American democracy.
Still, many experts point out that it is still not clear how the country will escape a larger crisis, such as an overturned election, at some point in the coming decade. “This is not politics as usual,” said Carol Anderson, a professor at Emory University and the author of the book, “One Person, No Vote,” about voter suppression. “Be afraid.”

一些专家仍然希望，美国对民主问题越来越多的关注，可以帮助避免这里的宪法危机。唐纳德·特朗普推翻2020年大选的努力已经失败，部分原因是许多共和党官员拒绝参与，联邦和州检察官都在调查他的行为。
尽管多数决定原则的长期衰落不会在短时间内改变，它也是创造一个更具包容性的美国民主的更大的历史斗争的一部分。
尽管如此，许多专家指出，目前还不清楚该国将如何在未来十年的某个时刻摆脱更大的危机，比如选举被推翻。
“这不是以往的政治，”埃默里大学教授卡罗尔·安德森说，她著有关于选民压制的《一人无票》一书。“害怕”。

原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处