I spent my career working to prevent violence and atrocities and build stability abroad. From the lens of this experience, the last few months in the U.S. have felt disturbingly familiar. Rampant misinformation. Polarizing rhetoric. Technical expertise dismissed. Political violence and attacks on civic infrastructure. The warning signs are clear.
These early tremors of deeper instability are what governance and violence prevention experts call “risk factors”: shrinking civic space, weaponization of disinformation, politicization of justice, increased political violence, and the steady corrosion of rule of law. Once those patterns take hold, they’re hard to reverse.
But here’s something I also know: most Americans feel that something is deeply off. They might not call it democratic backsliding or institutional decay, but they sense it—in the fatigue, the cyn…
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