Democracy Day 2022: What those mourning fragility of American democracy get wrong

This article, originally published Jan. 29, 2021 by The Conversation, is part of Local News Matters’ participation in Democracy Day: a nationwide initiative by all types of media to draw attention to the crisis facing American democracy and provide context and information to encourage public dialogue.

FOR MANY PEOPLE, the lesson from the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — and more broadly from the experience of the last four years — is that American democracy has become newly and dangerously fragile.