If a substantial portion of the 74 million voters who went for Trump in 2020 now believe the Big Lie that the election was stolen from him, what sort of precedent does that set for future demagogues? And what message does it send to the rest of the world? In a much-cited academic paper published in 2019, “Democracy Devouring Itself: The Rise of the Incompetent Citizen and the Appeal of Right Wing Populism,” the University of California, Irvine political scientist [Professor] Shawn Rosenberg argued that these phenomena are very likely permanent because the media and elected elites who kept democracy alive in the past have lost control of the conversation. And there seems to be no prospect for regaining that control. 

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