Charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, former U.S. President Donald Trump was arraigned recently at the Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City, becoming the first former U.S. president to be criminally indicted.
The historic indictment revealed that political polarization and fierce partisan fight are aggravating in the United States, further tearing apart American society and causing decline of public confidence in American democracy.
Despite facing mounting problems of political dysfunction and social division at home, the U.S., claiming to be the beacon of democracy, has always peddled and imposed its democracy around the globe, only to create instability and chaos for other countries.
U.S. democracy suffers “chronic ills”
The myth of democracy the U.S. built around itself has long collapsed. In the United States, deep-rooted problems such as political polarization, money politics, racial discrimination, gun violence, widened wealth gaps, among others, remain entrenched in society.
These maladies afflicting American democracy further revealed U.S. governance failure and institutional defects.
The Brookings Institution concludes in a 2022 report that the once proud American democracy is facing a systemic crisis and is accelerating its decline.
Political polarization, especially the polarization of bipartisan politics, constitutes one of the most salient features of American politics.
The Democratic and Republican Parties are increasingly at odds in many aspects. Politicians put the interests of their political parties and factions above those of the country and attack and pin blames on each other.
Minutes after the indictment was announced last week, Trump, who is running for the White House for the third time, released a lengthy statement calling it part of a "witch hunt." He has repeatedly assailed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and egged on supporters to protest in the past weeks.
Republicans have rallied behind Trump, criticizing that the justice system has been weaponized by the Democratic Party for political purposes.
The unprecedented indictment of the former president showcased the dysfunction of American democracy amid increasingly extreme political polarization.
"Trump's criminal indictment unleashes a bitter new phase in American politics," wrote Stephen Collinson, a reporter for CNN Politics covering the White House, in an analysis, adding that it "creates a uniquely perilous moment for a polarized republic already repeatedly driven to the brink."
Political risk consultancy Eurasia Group listed "Divided States of America" as one of the top risks for 2023 in a recent report, saying the United States "remains one of the most politically polarized and dysfunctional of the world's advanced industrial democracies."
The 118th House speaker was elected after four days’ chaos and 15 rounds of voting by members of Congress, fully exposing the deep political polarization in the country.
Brad Bannon, president of a U.S. political consultancy, put it bluntly, "The impasse in the U.S. House of Representatives over the election of the Speaker is another demonstration of the decline in our political institutions.”
American elections have become a game for the rich with money in elections setting a new record.
According to an analysis published by OpenSecrets, the total cost of the 2022 state and federal midterm elections was nearly 17 billion dollars, the most expensive election in history.
"A government of the people, by the people, for the people," the ideal democratic government of the United States depicted by then U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in his landmark Gettysburg Address, has become "of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent, and for the 1 percent".
American democracy has increasingly degenerated into a “democracy for the few”, where only the power-holders, the rich, and the political elite have a final say. Despite a right to vote, the public does not have real sway over politics.
Helene Landemore, a political theorist at Yale University, wrote in an article published by the Foreign Policy magazine in December 2021 that American democracy lacks "people's power," and that only the very rich, a very small part of the population, can use their very high economic status to push for a set of policy priorities that serve themselves.
Americans are increasingly disillusioned with their own democracy.
Up to 67 percent of Americans think the nation's democracy is in danger of collapse, showed a poll by The Quinnipiac University Poll on Aug. 31, 2022.
According to a Pew Center poll, 65 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. democratic system needs major reforms, while 57 percent believe the U.S. is no longer a model of democracy.
Export democracy to bully the world
All those deep-rooted democratic ills have made narrative of American democracy even less convincing. How can the self-proclaimed “shining city on a hill” shine light on others when it is unable to illuminate its own backyard?
Instead of reflecting on those problems facing its own democracy, the United States continues to export American democratic values to other countries, and use democracy as a tool to serve its own agenda, which has created divisions and chaos worldwide.
The recently-concluded second "Summit for Democracy" is nothing but a ludicrous farce exposing Washington's attempt to maintain its dominance under the guise of promoting democracy.
The summit, as a matter of fact, split the world into so-called democratic and undemocratic camps by U.S. standards, in a blatant attempt to gang up, draw ideological lines and stoke divisions in the world, thus contravening and trampling on the spirit of democracy.
Harboring Cold War mentality, a hegemonic logic and a preference for bloc politics, Washington is trying to spread the false narrative of “democracy versus autocracy”, with a view to advance its own geostrategy under the disguise of democracy.
The U.S. is trying to use "a very narrow concept of democracy as a tool for dividing the world", which is "a very undemocratic approach", noted Josef Gregory Mahoney, an American professor of politics and international relations at the East China Normal University in Shanghai.
In the name of democracy, the "Summit for Democracy" enforces hegemony in practice, according to Shen Yi, director of the International Research Institute of Global Cyberspace Governance of Fudan University.
In an attempt to enforce its hegemony, the U.S. has exported wars and upheavals under the guise of "safeguarding democracy," bringing turbulence and destruction to a number of other countries.
Sovereign countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya have suffered numerous disasters due to U.S. invasion and its proxy wars.
Under the Biden administration, the U.S. ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan with a hasty withdrawal of troops after shattering the whole country and destroying the future of several generations.
Data released by the UK-based monitor group Airwars showed that U.S. airstrikes alone have killed as many as 48,000 civilians in nearly 100,000 bombings in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen since 2001.
Worse still, the U.S. has increasingly resorted to unilateral sanctions and “long-arm jurisdiction” against other countries such as Cuba and Iran, which have seriously damaged their economic development and people's livelihood in a systematic and massive violation of human rights.
As William Blum, a writer on U.S. foreign policy, pointed out in his book America's Deadliest Export: Democracy, "Washington's ambition for world domination is driven not by the cause of a deeper democracy or freedom, a more just world, ending poverty or violence, or a more liveable planet, but rather by economics and ideology."
No one-size-fits-all model of democracy
Democracy is humanity's common value and should not become a tool to advance hegemonic agenda of the privileged few.
The essence of democracy should ensure that the people are the masters of their country. Therefore, whether a country is democratic or not and how to better promote democracy should be judged by the people of a country, not to be dictated by few self-righteous nations.
As human civilization is diversified, it is natural that democracy takes different forms and develops along varied pathways in various countries.
There is no one-size-fits-all model of democracy for all countries in the world and each country has the right to choose a path of democratic development that suits its own national conditions.
"The basic principle of democracy is not to impose your model and your social values on others," said Marinko Ogorec, a Croatian political analyst, adding that different forms of democracy should be respected just like different values and traditions.
"Only when we respect those differences can we talk about democracy," Ogorec noted.
At the time when the world needs unity to solve common challenges, the U.S. should stop peddling its own democratic value, reflect on its own problems and respond with practical action to the global aspiration for peace and prosperity.
