It was, let us say, an interesting recent weekend for democracy.
Call it a tale of two cities. One is Dallas, where thousands of so-called “conservatives” – the word has less meaning by the day – gathered in support of Donald Trump and his ongoing efforts to delegitimize a free and fair election that he lost. The other is Havana where thousands of Cubans took to the streets to demand an end to a 62-year reign of communist repression.
The occasion in Dallas was the Conservative Political Action Conference’s summer gathering where people in funny hats and odd costumes roamed hotel hallways swapping conspiracy theories and bizarre schemes for returning Trump to the Oval Office. The occasion in Havana – and in dozens of other towns across Cuba – was an explosion of pent-up frustration as fed-up Cubans braved beatings and arrests to demand an end to a deadly dictatorship. “Libertad!” they cried. Which means “freedom.”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but in Texas, they flipped off democracy. In Cuba, they reached for it with both hands. It was the embodiment of an old aphorism: One person’s trash is, indeed, another person’s treasure.
Not that the political right has some monopoly on failing to value democracy. No, the markers of American indifference are bipartisan and manifold, ranging from anemic voter turnout to periodic calls for censorship of troublesome speech.