# The Darkness

![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/images/article1.be68295a7e40.png)

## Metadata
- Author: [[Noah Smith]]
- Full Title: The Darkness
- Category: #articles
- URL: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-darkness

## Highlights
- electoral democracy in America relies on Democrats never losing an election, it’s doomed. If the GOP doesn’t change its tune and agree that the rules by which Americans choose their leaders are legitimate, the next decade could be one of rolling constitutional crises…or worse.
- America’s simultaneous relative economic decline and absolute moral decline created a vacuum at the top of the world.
- As Antonio Gramsci said, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
- And realistically, since Democrats will definitely not win an unbroken string of electoral victories from here to infinity, this means Republicans who recognize the threat of the Darkness have to stand up and take their party back from the people who think coups and election denial are good ideas.
- In the 20th century, democracy — not just the system of holding elections, but the entire package of human rights, minority rights, free expression, civil liberties, and social-democratic welfare protections — was the only system, the only ideology, that managed to defeat totalitarianism instead of morphing into totalitarianism. At its most fundamental level, what I’ve been calling the Darkness is a lack of respect for the value of individual human beings, while democracy (should I capitalize the “D”?) is the elevation of respect for humanity to the status of society’s fundamental organizing principle.
    - Tags: [[democracy]] [[favorite]]