U.S. added to list of "backsliding democracies" for 1st time

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It's truly alarming that so many Americans support overturning a democratic election for the sake of keeping a strongman-wannabe in office. That said, it's still heartening that even more Americans know the 2020 election was legitimate, and in fact had voted for Biden and for democracy.

in their minds they do it to stick it to people like myself who don't honor their philosophy by agreeing with it.

Yeah, your the nose they are cutting. 2016-2020 was an internecine conflict in American history. They are trying their best to sweep it under the carpet like constable bloggs saying "Ok folks, nothin to see here"

they are saying to me, "it's not me that's peeing on your leg, it's just your imagination."

Judging by the overall sentiment in this forum, it's fairly conservative so there are others here will say "it's all in your head"
I always took you to be fairly resilient though Blabs

Is there a link to that list? I would like to see what other countries are on it.

E very few months, it seems, the media report on a new international “study” asserting that the United States is backsliding into authoritarianism. A quick read usually reveals that these reports are little more than compendiums of leftist grievances. It’s unsurprising, then, that Democrats, who these days often confuse their partisan hobbyhorses with “democracy,” love to promote said studies. The newest one bouncing around social media is from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), which contends that “the United States, the bastion of global democracy, fell victim to authoritarian tendencies itself.” It’s always interesting when we are lectured about “democracy” by a continent which features governments that throw people in jail for speech crimes and control virtually every economic interaction.

As far as I can tell, the United States’ slide in the International IDEA report hinges on three alleged “authoritarian” developments. The first contends that the United States hasn’t done enough to “tackle inequality.” We should, of course, do better in creating opportunities to lift people out of poverty. We disagree on how that can be achieved. But fact is that on a per capita and median basis, we are the wealthiest people of any major nation. We are wealthier than most Europeans who rank higher on the “democracy” list — around $10,000 wealthier on a per capita basis than the Swedes who work at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. To put the preposterous criticism in context, understand that if the United States had compelled more redistribution and generated less wealth but more “equality,” we would likely get a better grade. The International IDEA treats dependency as a democratic value. Many Americans disagree.

The second apparent authoritarian issue we struggle with is “voting rights,” a topic that the authors of the report seem to know nothing about. “In the United States, for example, research indicates that some states’ voter registration and voting laws, either recently approved or currently under discussion, end up disproportionately affecting minorities in a negative way,” says the study, without linking to or providing any of this research. The “some people say” standard used in the study tells you a lot about the scientific rigor used by the authors. The authors simply accept the Democrats’ unhinged attacks as a fact. There is little evidence that voter-integrity laws disproportionately affect minorities, but it is, at least, a debatable point. What is hard to debate is that virtually every European nation has stricter voting requirements than Red States. Even in Sweden, considered one of the most liberal nations on the issue, citizens are required to have government-issued IDs when they show up at the ballot box.

Finally, the authors claim that former president Donald Trump’s attacks on the legitimacy of the 2020 election were a “historic turning point,” and they go on to note that “baseless allegations of electoral fraud and related disinformation undermined fundamental trust in the electoral process.” Even if we concede that Trump’s accusations about the 2020 election are largely nonsense — as I believe — this kind of rhetoric isn’t new. The International IDEA folks may have missed the past five years, when virtually the entire America political-media establishment and Congress were embroiled in wide-ranging, months-long investigations based on conspiratorial rumors and disinformation about stolen elections, which also undermined confidence in elections and institutions.

None of this is to say that the United States is without struggles, of course. Despite the best efforts of progressives, our system is still holding — the Electoral College, the Supreme Court and legislative filibuster have not been destroyed. The rights to free expression and self-defense are still generally upheld, despite increasingly illiberal attitudes and arguments from the Left. It is true that Democrats are right now abusing the legislative system by figuring out ways to circumvent traditional consensus lawmaking with a reconciliation bill that essentially implements a partisan, centralized, and direct democracy. But still, there is little evidence that Americans are less free today than they were five or ten years ago — and we are certainly no less free than most Western Europeans. The International IDEA’s claims, like many similar studies, seem to function under the impression that a “democracy” is tantamount to having a docile population that trusts the state to dictate truth and a centralized bureaucracy to mete out fairness. These ideas, though, are antithetical to American nature.

they are saying to me, "it's not me that's peeing on your leg, it's just your imagination."

Thats a very long list