# The U.S. is becoming less stable

We focus so much on arguing over who is at fault in this country that I think sometimes we fail to alert on what's actually happening. I would just like to point out, without attempting to assign blame, that American political institutions appear to be losing common knowledge of their legitimacy, and abandoning certain important traditions of cooperative governance. It would be slightly hyperbolic, but not unreasonable to me, to term what has happened "democratic backsliding". 

Let's imagine America of 2012 was measured 0.8 on the fictionally accurate "legitimate democracy index", and Hungary of 2012 was measured 0.5. My thesis is that we'd now be at 0.75, and that our regressions seem to have calcified despite a calming culture war. Within the last three or four years we have seen:

*   The world's largest [protest-riot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests) ever, when measured by estimated damage to property.
*   The leader of the opposition party being arrested on a mix of [real](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_prosecution_of_Donald_Trump_(2020_election_case)) and [recently-invented](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecution_of_Donald_Trump_in_New_York) process crimes in several different jurisdictions a year before his campaign.
*   A presidential candidate openly contesting an election as fradulent; a third[^qg765l67ylr] of Americans coming to believe that our last presidential election was probably or definitely illegitimate.
*   [Spontaneous mob assaults](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capitol_attack) of the capitol building.
*   Recent, and novel, legislative movements by Republicans to censure and fine Democratic congressmen millions of dollars outside of the criminal justice system.[^0w77lukhb8ua]
*   Serious and underreported attempts at dramatically expanding political control over the civil service[^npahcy3lovl] and, if you'll permit me to speak anecdotally, serious and *successful* attempts at unprecedented political loyalty testing of appointed silovik.

You can disagree with how any one political faction is characterizing the above events, or how I'm characterizing the above events. But I think that's missing the point. Maybe Donald Trump is a clown and all of his indictments are perfectly legitimate and that they ultimately demonstrate the dispassionate fairness of our nation's prosecutors. Even if that's the case, *perception* is the leading indicator for democratic stability, and a large amount of Republicans do not agree. Since Republicans now *believe* that the arrests are politically motivated, and that Democrats are defecting against longstanding political norms, they are pressuring their politicians to escalate[^0w77lukhb8ua][^6gc2m7vocr6] and calling them traitors when they refuse to do so. Democrats, in turn, will see this behavior and change their posture whether the election was actually stolen to begin with or not. 

It's possible to exaggerate the danger. I do not *expect* the entire political system of the United States to change anytime soon. But since 1989 I think it has been appropriate to have a degree of knightian uncertainty in predicting the eternal dominance of this or that regime, on the basis that modern technology and secret police make resistance impossible. If you currently habitually round probabilities of serious repression or further democratic backsliding in the West to zero, I suggest moving that up to 1%-per-decade and spending a little bit of time thinking about what you'd do if this continues for five more years and your estimate increases to 5 or 10 percent.

[^qg765l67ylr]: Presidential Election Poll, January 2021, Umass 

[^0w77lukhb8ua]: Adam Schiff defeats effort to fine and censure him 15 million dollars 

[^npahcy3lovl]: Schedule F Appointment 

[^6gc2m7vocr6]: Trump's inner circle is secretly making plans to fire thousands government employees if he wins in 2024, report says