Steven Bartlett

Instead of saying two people were killed, this is horrible, we need to have an investigation, this must not be allowed to happen again, the immediate instinct was to give them impunity, like –

We're not going to investigate this.

It's not a real problem.

The instinct was to put them above the law.

And when you have a military force, and as I said, especially one that's militarized and looks like – they're dressed like they're in Fallujah.

When you have a military force that's above the law, then it's really a paramilitary.

If you have a police force that can harm ordinary citizens and not pay any price for it and isn't accountable –

then you're not serving Americans.

You're serving the interests of the ruling party.

So first of all, that's a pretty accurate description of what's happening in the United States.

However, you have just touched on something that I feel very strongly about, which is that I don't believe in historical inevitability.

And I think it's very dangerous.

So the idea that we are on a slippery slope—

And we can't stop it because that's the way history is going.

Or alternatively, the idea that everything is fine and it will continue to be fine because liberal democracy has triumphed, which is what we thought in the 1990s.

Anytime you think that something is inevitable, that takes away your willingness to act.

What happens tomorrow and next year is completely dependent on what we do today.

Whether the United States survives as a democracy or not depends on choices Americans make, things they say, the arguments they have, you know, the degree of civic participation, not some historical rule that some very brilliant political scientist invented.

And as I said, I think this has happened before.

I think we had this moment of complacency after the fall of the Soviet Union.