In the US, first of all, the electoral system has been almost totally shredded. For a long time it's been pretty much run by private concentrated spending but now it's over the top. Elections increasingly over the years have been [public relations] extravaganzas.

The United States is a very insular society. Most people know very little about the outside world and don't care that much. They're concerned with their own affairs.

To pay attention to the actual core of the movement - that would be pretty hard. Can you concentrate for example on either the policy issues or the creation of functioning democratic communities of mutual support and say, well, that's what's lacking in our country that's why we don't have a functioning democracy - a community of real participation. That's really important. And that always gets smashed.

While Trump keeps the spotlight on himself, the "respectable" Republican establishment chips away at government programs that benefit the general population.

History records endless struggles to enlarge those realms, inspiring ones; it also records painful reversals and setbacks.

A default of the US government would not only be very harmful here, it would probably send the country back into deep recession, but it just might crash the international financial system.

Democracy, in any rational form, also imposes conditions on majority rule. That's what the Bill of Rights is about, for example.