Fragile democracy

Sustaining it is a high-maintenance exercise

Former US President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial may have ended in an expected acquittal but the hearings in the Senate highlighted just how close democracy in the world’s most powerful country had come to destruction. The airing of previously unseen footage and recordings of emergency calls by the Capitol police showed that the peaceful transition of power that Americans have taken for granted for two centuries could well have ended differently. Armed white supremacist mobs, inflamed by Mr Trump’s speeches near the White House, had penetrated deep into the seat of the federal legislative branch. Visuals of intruders breaking