As 2022 draws to a close, The Fulcrum has invited leaders of democracy reform organizations to share their hopes and plans for the coming year. This is the fifth in the series.
Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
As we approach the end of 2022, I reflect on my journey that started 10 years ago to repair the political culture and political processes in our country. As I reflect, I realize how much has changed during that decade, unfortunately not for the best.
Ten years ago, I spoke at public events about the need for civil political discourse and a problem-solving approach to governance. In 2012, the unbridled lack of civility, crippling partisanship and dysfunctional gridlock that were preventing our country from solving the serious problems we were facing on a daily basis was top of mind for me.
Those problems of course still exist today and are certainly an important component of the work I do through The Bridge Alliance, The Fulcrum, and Citizen Connect but something else has changed dramatically. Today, almost two years after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on our democracy, I am now also focused on the need to protect and defend democracy to ensure its survival. And I’m not alone.
This is a major shift in thinking.
As recently reported in The Fulcrum, While partisan divides may keep Americans from agreeing on much, post-election polling by Georgetown University found that three-quarters of Americans agree that "democracy is under attack.”
While we agree that our democracy is under attack, the extent of the divide is so great that we can’t even agree as to the root causes. If we can’t agree on the causes, finding a solution to the threat becomes yet another unsolvable problem that is the result of our nation's partisan divide. For example, many more Democrats than Republicans are worried about election deniers threatening democracy while Republicans think voter fraud and the impact of “woke culture'' are the greatest threats to our democracy. Each claims the other is invoking authoritarian measures through election-rigging, infringement of free speech and abandoning the U.S. Constitution.
The impact of social media in the last 10 years is one of the greatest threats that must be addressed. The extent in which social media encourages division, facilitates confirmation bias and weakens the institutions needed to uphold our democracy is increasing at an alarming rate. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the case eloquently in his writing in The Atlantic titled, “ Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” Haidt is clear as to the impact of social media upon our democracy:
A mean tweet doesn’t kill anyone; it is an attempt to shame or punish someone publicly while broadcasting one’s own virtue, brilliance, or tribal loyalties. It’s more a dart than a bullet, causing pain but no fatalities. Even so, from 2009 to 2012, Facebook and Twitter passed out roughly a billion dart guns globally. We’ve been shooting one another ever since.
While the right has thrived on conspiracy-mongering and misinformation, the left has turned punitive. He continues:
When everyone was issued a dart gun in the early 2010s, many left-leaning institutions began shooting themselves in the brain. And, unfortunately, those were the brains that inform, instruct, and entertain most of the country.
Haidt’s prevailing metaphor of thoroughgoing fragmentation is the story of the Tower of Babel: The rise of social media has “unwittingly dissolved the mortar of trust, belief in institutions, and shared stories that had held a large and diverse secular democracy together.”
While it is tempting to just give up given the complexities of the problem facing our democracy, my belief in the ability of We, the People, drives me to work with others to find a better way.
We must create a new vision of what democracy is that includes a robust role for citizens.
I recently was inspired by a project titled, “Imagining Better Futures For American Democracy.” It was “born of a desire to gain succor and inspiration from those within and outside the democracy space who not only aren’t giving up, but instead are moving beyond critique and reaction to creation, who are inspiring those around them, generating abundant visions of better futures ahead, and laying the groundwork for achieving them.”
This is the role of Bridge Alliance, The Fulcrum and Citizen Connect. A place where people come to meet, talk and act into our future, to engage citizens and empower democracy. We lay the groundwork, along with others we know and have yet to meet, for the citizens of the United States so we can reclaim our rightful place of power and set our nation on the course towards a future we co-create.
And so I look to the future with hesitation but with hope – the hope as stated in the Better Futures report: A community “will emerge with a wide range of civil society actors who want to become part of a burgeoning positive visioning community – one capable of mobilizing and engaging growing numbers of people to realize better futures, including a robust, effective and healthy democracy.
I end with this inspiring song of democracy that hopefully will inspire you as well – well worth two and a half minutes to remind us what we have and what we could become.
"Democracy (Reprise)" from SOFT POWER | The Public Theaterwww.youtube.com
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.