So Is Today Truly The “End Of Democracy?”

That feels overwrought, no? Like a bit too much?

We’ve long been told that “democracy dies in darkness,” and the absolute branding of the 2022 midterm elections is that democracy is on the ballot and will probably end by sometime around noon tomorrow. That seems really big, meaning we need to rush out and vote to prevent that from happening, but the 2018 midterms — which had the highest turnout of any midterm since 1914 — still only saw 49.4% of eligible voters vote. That’s, uh, less than half. 122 million people voting is nice, and we might eclipse that this time, but I’m not sure even a 53% clip means “democracy is dying.” If only 1 out of 2 people even care enough to vote (and yes, voter suppression is an issue), could we maybe argue that some aspects of democracy are also deceased?

Here’s the other thing: politics are great theater, and culture wars are orgasm-level fun, but people also have other life priorities.

Here’s a story I’ve told on this blog, and social media, a couple of times: back in 2018, when Brett Kavanaugh…