American democracy fell this year.
It fell at home, it fell abroad, and each fall accelerated the other. It fell to an unholy trinity of old-school fascism, Russian mafia-statism and American gunslinging and fame-seeking. It fell in ways that were uniquely American but also in ways reminiscent of other despotic, murderous, expansionist, misogynistic and racist elected takeovers — ones that have led to tanks rolling across Europe.
