“Illiberal democracy” implies a democracy. What we started with, in our lifetimes, was a sham democracy with all kinds of far-right imbalances baked into districts, elections, campaign financing rules, etc. And we are at the precipice of Trump ending the sham altogether & canceling the elections
We can fix things if we take it seriously, but we have to take it seriously. We have to drop the whole “we used to be a country” thing and stop bargaining with the unjust past to define who we will be in the future. This whole project has been screwy and we have the power to reboot it.
Those things that you mention are all features of the Orban regime in Hungary, classed as illiberal democracy. Essentially control of the press, making it hard for opposition parties, gerrymandering etc. Illiberal democracy - Wikipedia share.google/gjSBxXF2EKZ2...
Yes, we started from Orban and we’ve slipped from it. Easy fixes would only get us back to illiberal democracy. And it feels like we constantly bargain to let things get partly worse because people and institutions don’t want to do the work, or don’t have the capacity after years of deprivation