This article argues that the widespread panic over the imminent collapse of American democracy is an illusion. Instead, it contends that democracy has already eroded for millions due to systemic inequalities and that the focus should shift from preserving a non-existent past to building a genuine, lived democracy through robust public infrastructures and grassroots action.
The author challenges the prevailing narrative that American democracy is on the brink of collapse, suggesting this 'permanent panic' is an illusion. Drawing on psychoanalytic concepts, the article posits that the fear of a future breakdown masks the reality of a democratic erosion that has already occurred for tens of millions of Americans, marked by precarious living conditions, inaccessible healthcare, unchecked policing, and exclusion from political power. This fixation on an imminent threat, the author argues, serves as a psychological defense and a political strategy, allowing liberal elites to avoid confronting their own complicity in the decades-long decline of democratic life, which predates Donald Trump and includes periods under Democratic leadership. The article critiques the nostalgic call to 'restore' a past democracy, highlighting its historical foundations in colonialism, slavery, and exclusion, and its subsequent hollowing out by mass incarceration, corporate capture, and economic inequality. True democracy, the text asserts, is not merely a constitutional arrangement but a lived experience fostered by robust public infrastructures like universal healthcare, housing, and education. The path forward involves moving beyond the illusion of preservation to the 'work of invention,' building a genuine democracy from the ground up through ambitious public policies and grassroots organizing, where people directly support one another rather than waiting for failed political institutions.
