Former US President Donald Trump now holds the dishonorable distinction of being twice impeached by the House of Representatives and both times securing an acquittal in the Senate. For Trump to incite an insurrection, leading to the siege on Capitol Hill that resulted in the deaths of four rioters and one police officer that could have also easily claimed the lives of multiple members of Congress, is deplorable even by his own standards. That only seven Republican Senators voted to convict Trump goes to show how miniscule the principled wing of the GOP really is. The 57-43 vote that fell well short of the required two-thirds majority to convict a President of impeachment, is a clear depiction of how split the United States has become. Although far off, Trump will be eyeing a second term in 2024 and until then he will make every effort to avoid a conviction in other pending cases against him that will be more easily pursued by various states where he has committed offences, now that he does not enjoy presidential immunity. Throughout its four years in office, the Trump administration, with the help of many GOP senators, built a post-truth America where facts are cherry-picked to support a particular narrative and there is no space for bipartisanship. This systematic dismantling of objective reality has produced some disastrous outcomes. The US would not have been so badly hit by the Covid-19 pandemic if President Trump hadn’t played down the threat posed by the virus and listened to his medical advisors instead of mocking them. On his way out, he convinced half the country that the election had been stolen from him despite there being absolutely no proof of any large-scale fraud. What his rhetoric eventually led to is a perfect example of how even a mature and relatively stable democracy can implode from within if a sufficient portion of the population is convinced that the other half is the enemy and has to be taken out, if not through the ballot then through force.
Pakistan and many other democracies around the world face a similar type of polarization. One of the key tools that have enabled political leaders to convince their base of an alternate reality is social media. In the absence of any meaningful regulation, fake news is able to spread much faster than factual news, allowing more Trumps to secure positions of power across the world. The democratic system may be a fragile one but it is still the best one we have. World leaders committed to its preservation and progression have a duty to protect it from the many threats it faces.
