Dear Express reader, The vaccination programme is about to roll out — January 16 is Vaccination Day One in India. Hopefully, Covid will finally be defeated. But post-Covid, will things go back to where they were? When we look back later, it may turn out that the coronavirus didn’t so much bend or reshape or change us. It may be, more, that it accelerated existing trends, put them on fast forward mode, showing us more clearly and starkly what was already there. And in doing so, it has sharpened our challenge in the post-Covid world. This week a lumpen mob of Trump loyalists stormed and briefly occupied the Capitol, vandalising, smashing and looting, sending lawmakers gathered to confirm Joe Biden’s victory fleeing to safety. America and the world were shocked. But should everyone have been surprised? President Trump is to blame, of course — ever since his defeat, he has refused to accept the verdict, and continued to peddle conspiracy theories and lies. In so many words, he stoked the January 6 violence. But Trump-centric explanations for what happened on Wednesday in Washington DC are terribly incomplete. For some time now, America has not seemed the epicentre of global power. The pandemic has showed it as the epicentre of global disease — the highest number of cases, the highest number of deaths are in America. But even before coronavirus struck, it has seemed to be the site of a terrible waning — the global trend of the “rise of illiberal democracy” has found a hospitable environment in America. “The rise of illiberal democracy” was also the name of political analyst and bestselling author Fareed Zakaria's much-cited 1997 essay in the journal ‘Foreign Affairs’. “From Peru to the Palestinian Authority, from Sierra Leone to Slovakia, from Pakistan to the Philippines,” he wrote, “we see the rise of a disturbing phenomenon in international life — illiberal democracy.” Zakaria made a critical distinction — between democracy and liberalism. Democracy is about free and fair elections, the participatory process by which governments are chosen. On the other hand, liberalism is about the habits and norms that shape political life. In a liberal state, the individual is protected not only against the abuse of power by a tyrant but also against the abuse of power by a democratic majority. Constitutional liberalism implies the rule of law and separation of powers, autonomy of institutions, including and especially the courts, the press and the university, and protection of minority rights. The distinction between an authoritarian system and one that is an illiberal democracy is that in the latter, democracy is used to cramp and crush democracy, democracy is shut down by democratic means. When he wrote the essay more than two decades ago, little would Zakaria — who, incidentally, will be our guest on January 13, at the Express e.Adda, the next in a series of informal interactions with newsmakers in the presence of a select audience — have known that Washington would become ground zero for his thesis on a cold Wednesday in January. But we should have seen it coming. The signs have been crowding in in the last several years in the US — of the expanding presidency, dwindling checks and balances, waning power of countervailing and intermediary institutions, amid a growing polarisation and declining trust in shared definitions of the common good, or even just facts. The silence and complicity, both, of the political party and cabinet and other institutions eventually become enabling factors for the American president inciting a violent mob to mount an attack on the Capitol as the world watched on January 6. How do we make sense of this moment in America and the world? What challenges does it pose — at the end of COVID and of the Trump presidency? We carried insightful pieces this week by Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Ashutosh Varshney. Tomorrow, we carry a thoughtful analysis by Peter DeSouza. We will stay with this important subject. Till next week, Vandita | 
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