Opinion: America is facing a legitimacy crisis
By Charles Lane Charles Lane Editorial writer and columnist specializing in economic and fiscal policy Email Bio Follow Opinion writer May 6 at 6:04 PM Thirty years ago this month, the Soviet empire began to end. Officials from a new reform-minded communist Hungary and its democratic neighbor, Austria, dismantled the barbed-wire border fence that had separated them and deterred free movement of people from the Soviet-dominated East to the American-allied West.
As Europe threw off the communist yoke in 1989, it seemed not only a victory for U.S. power but also a vindication for U.S. political ideals and institutions. Nowadays, though, it seems that 1989 planted the seeds of instability in the United States, too. Since the Soviet Union dissolved on Dec. 26, 1991, however, U.S. politics have gradually — and, in recent years, rapidly — reverted to something like the vicious zero-sum partisan game of the 19th century. The very idea of compromise has fallen into disrepute, scorned on all sides as a symptom of corruption, not consensus.
Perhaps most extraordinary, and dangerous, is that politicians compete to delegitimize not just each other but also the system of which they are supposed to be stewards. President Trump and his opponents routinely portray each other as the authors, or beneficiaries, of conspiracies or rigged elections.
The end of the Cold War set loose sources of domestic discord, many of which, such as racial and gender inequalities, needed to be aired. Will the 2020 presidential election, already the subject of warnings that it could somehow be stolen or the results not respected, sharpen or ease America’s legitimacy crisis?
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