Democracy Amid Crises: Further Thoughts.

There’s a nice, little town on Route 22 in New York State’s Dutchess County named Millerton, which has several gourmet coffee-bakeries, a couple of consignment shops and happens to be the hometown of Eddie Collins, who may have been the best 2nd-baseman ever to play in the major leagues.

The town also has a very nice, independent bookstore where I like to browse.

When you enter the store, you’re immediately confronted with a display which contains books that reflect the current political tilt. When Obama was President, there were a bunch of books about how he wasn’t born in America, or how he was undermining the Constitution, or how the whole county was in the grip of something called the Deep State.

These books were all replaced in 2017 when Obama was replaced by Trump, and now the books displayed in the Millerton bookshop were mostly about how Trump was ruining things. Trump was a racist, a Fascist or worse. And to this collection were then added books about how American democracy was going to hell in a handbasket after the Capitol riot on January 6th, 2021.

Now we have yet another book about how our democracy may be on its last legs, a study of how political attitudes and voting behavior put together by the Annenberg IOD Collaborative, IOD standing for Institutions of Democracy, which is what…