The customary “Happy New Year” wish was missing in the Day family Christmas newsletter this past holiday season.

No justification came to mind as I made that decision; but in retrospect, perhaps I was influenced by well-founded fears that we are witnessing the demise of constitutional freedom in the United States, and evidence that cultures the world around are devolving into chaos.

Ryan Urie’s pollyannaish claim (column, Dec. 24) that crises always result in better lives is simply fantasy. Since 1926, nine democracies have fallen into dictatorship.

They are Austria, Brazil, Chile, France, Germany, Nicaragua, Poland, Spain and Venezuela. It happened twice in Nicaragua; the first was for 11 years and the second, in 2006, remains under a dictator.

Dictators remained in control of those countries for five to 37 years, which is an average of 18 years. Two of the nine, Nicaragua and Venezuela, remain in dictatorships.

Many factors are associated with the flip of democracies to dictatorships. All are present in today’s United States.

Before former President Donald Trump’s attempt to remain in power by overthrowing the 2000 election, in 1933 a cabal of businessmen and financiers attempted to overthrow President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler was approached to bring the military into the plot, but they misapprehended Gen. Butler, who informed Congress of the conspiracy.

Ominous omens for our democracy include politically apathetic voters, declining voter turnouts, political polarization, political radicalization, social desperation and elites who become dissatisfied with a political situation that is financial and political interests.

The constitutional promise of democracy has never been fulfilled in the nearly 234 years since ratification and has been abandoned by both major parties. Democrats and Republicans alike are pursuing totalitarian government.

Reason staggers as both parties claim a mandate to recklessly pursue their own interests with as narrow a majority as one seat in the House or Senate.

The Constitution didn’t foresee the rise of political parties (then called factions) and many of our most prominent founders feared them as dangerous. And that’s the grave danger today of political parties leading us into a totalitarian government.

In “The Problem of Democracy,” authors Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein wrote of “ … masses of committed people surrendering their capacity for critical thinking to an unwavering party orthodoxy.”

And that’s exactly what we are seeing: a knife at the nation’s jugular vein.

There is, perhaps, no better example of the dangers than the East India Company’s role in precipitating the Revolutionary War between Great Britain and the American colonies.

The short story is that the tea company was so mammoth that it controlled more than half of the world market, as well as the British Parliament, which passed the Tea Act in 1773 to bail the East India Company out of financial trouble.

The act gave the company exclusive right to sell tea in the American colonies. That was the final straw in the politics that led to our revolution.

Today, our economy is controlled by huge corporations through the “purchase” of politicians campaigning for election. Congressional rules make it essentially impossible for government to stop the tsunami of money that floods the halls of government.

Corporations and the uber wealthy also stand guard against rational enforcement of government regulation of businesses.

Hello! Century-old restrictions on corporation donations to political campaigns were overturned in 2010 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared that corporations are people.

The decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Committee effectively allows corporations to engage in unlimited election spending on electioneering and advocating for the election or defeat of candidates.

It’s time for Americans to wake up and save representative democracy.

Day is a retired Washington State faculty member and a Pullman resident since 1972. He enjoys a lifelong interest in agriculture, history, law, politics and religion. He encourages email to terence@moscow.com.