{"id":519,"date":"2024-01-03T09:23:43","date_gmt":"2024-01-03T09:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/03\/in-britain-and-the-us-elections-signify-democracy-they-also-mask-its-decline-rafael-behr\/"},"modified":"2024-01-03T09:23:43","modified_gmt":"2024-01-03T09:23:43","slug":"in-britain-and-the-us-elections-signify-democracy-they-also-mask-its-decline-rafael-behr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/03\/in-britain-and-the-us-elections-signify-democracy-they-also-mask-its-decline-rafael-behr\/","title":{"rendered":"In Britain and the US elections signify democracy. They also mask its decline  | Rafael Behr"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ballots in the UK are free by global standards, but that system alone is no bulwark against tyranny, as the spectre of Donald Trump proves<\/p>\n<p>This year, countries with a combined population of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2024\/01\/01\/what-to-watch-global-elections-2024-00133027\">about 4 billion<\/a> \u2013 half of all the people in the world \u2013 will hold elections. That would be cause for celebration if democracy consisted only of the act of voting.<\/p>\n<p>That it doesn\u2019t will be proved in March, when Russian citizens will be asked to choose a president, knowing in advance that the winner will be Vladimir Putin. Again.<\/p>\n<p>Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2024\/jan\/03\/britain-us-elections-democracy-decline-donald-trump\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ballots in the UK are free by global standards, but that system alone is no bulwark against tyranny, as the spectre of Donald Trump proves This year, countries with a combined population of about 4 billion \u2013 half of all the people in the world \u2013 will hold elections. That would be cause for celebration &#8230; <a title=\"In Britain and the US elections signify democracy. They also mask its decline  | Rafael Behr\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/03\/in-britain-and-the-us-elections-signify-democracy-they-also-mask-its-decline-rafael-behr\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about In Britain and the US elections signify democracy. They also mask its decline  | Rafael Behr\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}