Todd's Reviews > How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future

Welcome to Democracy Endgame. To tell the truth, I am not loving it as much as the origin story and the Rise of Democracy series. Say what you will, I am just not vibing with this installment of the Democracy saga as much as some of the simpler ones where the good guys won. Call me simple if you like.

If we’re honest with ourselves, this latest Endgame sequel is a little derivative of some of the older installments. I mean the whole first half of this book is really going over the classic endgame script from the Venezuelan Chavez spinoff, the Hungarian Viktor Orbán spinoff, the Peruvian Alberto Fujimori twist, the old Argentine Juan Perón formula, and even the old southern Jim Crow black and white formula. And then the second half of the book is going over how this latest installment is trying in various ways to rip off the old scripts and formulas. Spoiler alert, the plot twist is that this time Democracy Endgame is happening in America.

Still, they know how to work the drama. This is one of the rare books that actually got better over the second half. Call me a sucker for drama, but I got sucked in and am sitting on the edge of my seat to see how this one shapes up. In a classic flashback, they show that Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court used to exert as norms of governance mutual tolerance and institutional forbearance towards the other party, when they would hold back and they were not out to do-away with the other party by any means necessary. But in classic Western screenwriting, all of that is gone now. A lot of the townsfolk and citizens miss the not-too-distant democracy days, but they are mostly powerless to get Congress to bring it back. Still, I wouldn’t have minded an updated epilogue that talks about how there’s a new sheriff in town as President but his administration is still getting pushed up against the wall and struggling against the rules of Congress and the Supreme Court. The townsfolk even with the help of the new sheriff still may get overwhelmed and democracy in the town may still perish; talk about a cliffhanger. Their recommendations chapter was actually a nice section where they linked hard-lined immigration policy and escalating social inequality to the Republican reaction and made a case that anything that is to overcome the threat needs first to find a way to continue the embrace of minorities in the country and to find a way to address social and economic inequality. It might just be wishful thinking for the next installment though. At this point, I have trouble seeing how they are going to overcome everything they are up against. It’s tough watching those little guys getting crushed with social and economic inequality. Well, there is no easy way out, that’s for sure.

In any event, since I am already so deep in the series, I’ll be waiting for the sequel. A reboot, I hear, is highly unlikely; I was told that the publishers and the studios have zero interest. Hopefully, they don’t go down the derivative path and have it end the way those earlier endgame installments and spinoffs went down. If it does, I’ll be very disappointed. I’m holding out hope that in the next installment they throw in a real plot twist and things start to turn around. Too bad they can’t do those old dues ex machina tricks. Maybe they’ll get some new characters and actors. I guess I’ll have to keep tuning in and see how it turns out. Hopefully you do too. We can talk about it then in the comments and the DMs. Look forward to it. I’ll see you out there.