"Democracy" is always _becoming_. I'd parse this survey as "people are remembering that there's this thing called 'civic obligation' and we have a job to do as

"Democracy" is always _becoming_. I'd parse this survey as "people are remembering that there's this thing called 'civic obligation' and we have a job to do as citizens, and oh shit it involves actual work and responsibility, damn". How was it: When blacks were not even people, but property? When only white male property owners could vote? When the "Bill of Rights" applied only to the federal government? When "individual states of the Union (not the Federal Government) borrowed lavishly from foreign capitalists, especially English ones, to finance such public works are railways and canal building. The American financial crisis of 1837 forced many states to repudiate their debts...." (from the notes to A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, ed. Michael Slater, Penguin, 1982)? When there was a major struggle over admitting new "slave" states (like Texas!) to the Union, expanding and solidifying (in the case of Texas, where slavery had been illegal under Mexican law) the rule of law forcing some people to be property of other people? When blacks won the right to be citizens, but not the right to vote (the 15th Amendment wasn't implemented as law until the Voting Rights Act, which was gutted by Shelby v. Holder and Brnovich v. DNC? When the natives were forced into "reservations" or to go on death marches? When Japanese Americans were forced into concentration camps while we fought the Nazis who were...forcing people in to concentration camps? When we lynched people so freely and openly postcards were printed and sent around by the U.S. Mail? The U.S. Mail run by the same government that at the time was concerned with distributing James Joyce's Ulysses because a character at the end of the book briefly reflects on her sexual encounters? When four innocent students were gunned down on Kent State Campus simply because they were on campus, and the national reaction was: "Too bad"? When there was a police riot in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention, and the national reaction was "They shouldn’t be protesting war"? When protestors marched peacefully in city streets in America for civil rights and equal justice and the national reaction was they were "agitators" and "trouble-makers" and needed to "mind their place"? (A sentiment that only turned because the governments opposed to them unleashed such violence it was sickening, the very sight Dr. King knew would carry his message to legislators and the people.) In any of these cases, when government was used against people in ways violent and horrific, or in ways that illustrate with crystal clarity the validity of Critical Race Theory, was our democracy a "pretend one"? Or was it already "competitive authoritarianism"?