I still have hopes, as an outsider looking at the big picture, that US democracy which has survived many challenges over the last two and a half centuries, is strong enough to meet and overcome this one. But it does increasingly begin to look like the last days of the Roman republic.

Part of the problem is probably complacency. Two and a half centuries ago, the US was one of the, most democratic countries in the western world, but the myth that no country could attain a better standard of democracy than it then possessed, seems to have effectively stopped progress. The rest of the world moved on improving and refining their institutions, but the US remains, apart from giving the vote to women, (Of which they were one of the late adopters. ) stuck in the eighteenth century.

The example if this, which struck home to me most recently, was a photo posted on this site not so long ago, of people forming a line ( for miles ) in the sun to cast their votes, and the information that some states were trying to stop water being given to them. Without dragging Americans across the Atlantic and forcing them all to live in Europe for a few years, it is hard to describe just how horrific, primitive and backward this looks to outsiders. There is absolutely no way that such a thing would even be accepted on the smallest scale, in most European countries, the very sight of it is shocking. Providing an easy, comfortable and fair way for everyone to cast their votes, is seen here as one of the first and most important duties of any government. Such a thing would result in the call for a rerun of the election.

I remember reading years ago as a school boy in history class, a text which listed the reasons why the ancient Roman republic failed and fell into the hands of tyrants. One of which was, that Roman democracy was so primitive and ill devised in the first place, that voters were herded around in crowds in the sun to cast their votes. As school children we thought that this was a great joke.

Yep'ers