Democracy

• The depth of that response will show just how deeply rooted American politics is, and has always been, in racial fears.
• The centrality of race to our politics is clear in the current presidential campaign.
• The most common campaign slogan is from the campaign of Donald Trump: “MAGA” – Make America Great Again.
• Former president Trump introduced MAGA as his campaign slogan when he began his presidential run in 2015.
• As the U.S. begins another presidential campaign in which Trump is likely to be the GOP nominee, here’s what we have found:

Racial resentment key

• White Americans’ racial resentment increased substantially during the Barack Obama presidency.
• The U.S. is not now “post racial,” free from racial prejudices or discrimination, nor has it ever been.
• White people are less likely than other racial groups to report that they have experienced negative responses from other people.
• And among Black adults, “those with self-reported darker skin tones are more likely to report discrimination experiences than those with lighter skin tones” – added evidence that observed racial differences affect the way people are treated.

Anxiety deepens resentment

• But racial resentment seems to deepen in times of anxiety, when many people seek a specific target for their fears rather than deal with a vaguer sense of dread.
• The U.S. has also faced social-demographic change at a speed that those with racial resentment may find threatening.
• These threats to the public’s health and to the image of the white American that so many traditionalists hold can encourage racial resentment.
• However understandable it may be, it’s hard to argue that racial resentment, or any other hatred rooted in immutable differences, benefits U.S. society.
• Some segments of society do benefit from racial resentment, of course, and they will resist losing it as a campaign tool to protect their privileged status.

Marjorie Hershey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Religious Freedom Requires Constant Protection,
  If a nation disrespects religious freedom, “all other rights
  Constant and vigorous protection of religious freedom is essential to world peace and democracy, an array of human rights experts and religious freedom leaders told the audience at a recent event hosted by the Universal Peace Federation (UPF) and The Washington Times Foundation.
• Religious freedom serves communities as well as individuals, said Prof. Cole Durham Jr., director of the Brigham Young University's International Center for Law and Religious Studies.
• UPF and The Washington Times Foundation are committed to protect, defend and advance religious liberty universally.
• Together we will roll back the tyranny of all God-denying ideologies and build a better world.”
  The UPF and Washington Times Foundation event was covered in a Jan. 31 Washington Times article, under the headline, “Japan’s dispute with church a test of liberty everywhere.”

• The site of the speech on Jan. 8, 2024, was Charleston, South Carolina’s Mother Emanuel AME Church, where, on a summer evening in 2015, an avowed white supremacist murdered nine Black worshipers, including Rev.
• At Pinckney’s funeral, then-President Barack Obama sang a heart-felt version of the Christian hymn Amazing Grace.
• “The word of God was pierced by bullets in hate and rage, propelled by not just gunpowder but by a poison,” Biden said.
• What I have learned is that Biden’s Mother Emanuel speech should rank with some of the most important speeches in our history.

The original big lie

• Boldly rejecting the Declaration of Independence as effusive “enthusiasm,” Smith injected white supremacy into public discourse.
• Smith, who owned several plantations and at least 71 enslaved people, was among more than 1,800 U.S. legislators who enslaved Black people.
• If you disagreed, vigilante thugs would beat you up or chase you into exile.

‘A house divided against itself cannot stand’

• The Supreme Court’s infamous 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford extended Southern racist ideology into the North.
• He addressed the consequences of slavery on America’s democracy and warned that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” “This government cannot endure,” he said, “permanently half slave and half free.
• It will become all one thing, or all the other.

• The Civil War was supposed to end slavery and the white supremacist ideology that underpinned it.
• The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, known as the Reconstruction amendments, made equality explicit in the Constitution, extending civil and political rights to newly freed African Americans.

Democracies in peril

• In his State of the Union address on Jan. 6, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sounded a new alarm.
• His “Four Freedoms” speech was an updated version of Lincoln’s and further defined freedom within a democracy.
• The immediate issue was whether the U.S. should help England and other European allies defend against the fascist regimes of German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
• Biden called out Trump for his “big lie” about the 2020 election that Trump has repeatedly claim was “rigged” against him.

Joseph Patrick Kelly volunteers for the Charleston County (SC) Democratic Party.

It’s been three years since Chad’s former president Idriss Déby Itno died. A transitional authority took over after his death. Yet the transition to democracy that was on the cards following his 31 years in power has failed to materialise. What Chadians hoped for was:
a referendum on whether they wanted to be a unitary or federal state
a return to constitutional order once that had been decided
a return to democracy with elections being held by October 2024.

• Chadians are concerned that the transitional authority isn’t acting in their interests but rather in the interest of transitional president Mahamat Idriss Déby.
• Chadians and international observers had assumed that voters could choose between two constitutions, a unitarian and a federal one.
• But the national commission in charge of running the referendum presented the option of approving or rejecting the complete draft for a centralised constitution.
• The appointment on 1 January of the former opposition leader Succès Masra as the new prime minister raised fresh concerns.

Who benefits from a centralised Chad?

• Under the late Déby’s reign, only politicians of the south repeatedly asked for federalism.
• Politicians used federalism to express their opposition to Idriss Déby’s authoritarian rule and to demand an equal share of state revenues.
• The opposition has always argued that a unitary state has not advanced the country since independence.
• On 1 January Masra was appointed as the new prime minister by the transitional president.

Uncertain future

• His appointment came as a surprise and raises a host of concerns, including the fact that it sidelined the transitional prime minister, Saleh Kebzabo.
• It was made up mainly of members of the transitional authorities and more than 200 political parties.
• Masra, president of the party Les Transformateurs, joined the coalition during the last days of the campaign and toured his native south.
• He has also managed to embed his most dangerous political opponent into the transitional structures and under his authority.
• Chadians, for their part, could well have lost the last bit of trust in politicians and democratic procedures.

Helga Dickow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.