Trump Reminds Us How Fragile Democracy Is

Too often do we take for granted the freedom of our society without measuring how fast we can lose it

Democracy is always one step away from descending into chaos and tyranny. For as long as humans have practiced it, they’ve known this. In 380 B.C. already, in The Republic, Plato asked “does not tyranny spring from democracy?”

A philosophy professor explains that Plato’s question sprang from the fact that, in a world where the principles of Aristotelician logic had not yet been coined, “power belonged to anyone who could harness the collective will of the citizens directly by appealing to their emotions rather than using evidence and facts to change their minds.”

Since Plato, we have discovered and refined Aristotelician logic. Our knowledge and scientific abilities have increased exponentially. We’ve witnessed countless times the horrors of tyranny and dictatorship. Millions of lives were lost in the fight for democracy and freedom.

And just like that, in an instant, we realise that all it takes for democracy to crumble is the bad faith of a single person, and the complicity of those whose duty it is to keep them in check.

Donald Trump is a stark reminder of how tenuous our grasp…