U.S. Downgraded From ‘Full’ To ‘Flawed’ Democracy By British Think-Tank After Trump Inauguration

The United States democracy has been downgraded on a global scale following the election and inauguration of current U.S. president, Donald Trump. The Democracy Index, which is a measurement that many capitalists and businessmen around the world use to determine if they will seek investments in a country, has downgraded the United States from a “full” democracy to a “flawed” democracy.

The markets have second thoughts on Trump https://t.co/9ChS1nGQwp

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) January 26, 2017

The report of the downgrade to a flawed democracy following the inauguration of Donald Trump, as disseminated by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), does not automatically mean that Donald Trump is to blame for the shift in the British think-tank’s ratings system, but rather indicates that several factors may have led to this outcome.

As a matter of fact, the downgrade to the flawed democracy actually was initialized in 2016, which also happened to coincide with the primary election season that was burning through the republican and democratic field of candidates. That was about the same time that Donald Trump was squaring off with other republican candidates and constantly accusing them of being crooked politicians, or even making horrible comments on Twitter about his republican opponents.

There was also a hotly contested race going on between the two democratic heavyweights of the time, which were Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Sanders had consistently accused Hillary Clinton of being in bed with Wall Street as well as the Democratic National Chair at the time, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

The fiery rhetoric coming out of both major parties was highly publicized, thanks to the onslaught of social media and YouTube activists that were independently covering the multitude of campaigns that were going on at the time.

The Economist downgrade to a flawed democracy cited a loss of confidence the American people have in their government and called the situation a “democratic recession” that began in 2016, which was when Barack Obama was President. But given that it was an election year and that most of the American public was sharply divided over politics, it would be hard to fault Obama for such a loss in confidence.

Just consider what really came out of 2016, other than the election. The surge in social media made way for new startups for websites claiming to be real news. That surge also led to media reports that the onslaught of misinformation led to a war on “fake news,” which came out of both the right and the left.

Given the immense amount of fake news that came out of this political revolution, it is reasonable to assume that Americans do not trust their government. But that state of mistrust might be for the wrong reasons, which fake news can also be cited once again for that.

Absolutely no one is going to care about fake news when Donald Trump cannot acknowledge fake democracyhttps://t.co/f32thZAFfV

— Charlotte Gill (@C_C_Gill) January 16, 2017

But if the wave of fake news has gotten so bad that the Democracy Index has downgraded the United States to a flawed democracy, then that means that the problem might just be much worse than many may have thought.

The fallout for this mistrust of the government that led to the democracy downgrade has also been preyed upon, as reported by The Hill. Although Donald Trump cannot be to blame for the downgrade, he did use the mistrust the people had for the government as a tool to win the presidency.

The real question here is whether or not Donald Trump has what it takes to restore that democracy index, which the United States now shares with other nations like Japan and Italy. The real way to gauge the impact that Donald Trump has on the Democracy Index is by seeing where the United States lands next year at this time.

On the flipside, the nation with the highest ranking on the Democracy index is the Norway, which far exceeds the rating of the United States and has a nearly perfect score.

[Featured Image by Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images]