Democracy Awakening: Book Review

Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America, Heather Cox Richardson, 2024. Democracies can die because of voting, but why? Germany in the 1930s went for a fascist government. “The key to the rise of authoritarians is their use of language and false history” (p. xvi). Change can make powerful groups feel left behind and willing to turn to a strongman telling them they have been cheated and join to reclaim the country. It’s a fantasy of the leader, who becomes destructive claiming the “enemies are evil.” It becomes hierarchy over equality. The economic destruction of the 1930s was global with different results, with the extremes being the US and Germany. Franklin Roosevelt led the US into a “New Deal,” creating an attitude of liberal democracy. Hitler led Germany to a Nazi takeover.

Danger to democracy in the US happened over decades, resulting in being downgraded to a “flawed democracy by 2016 according to the Economic Intelligent Unit. The Republican Party under Trump seemed to abandon democracy easily. Religious conservatives emphasized religion as necessary for virtue.

Part 1: Undermining Democracy. Chapter 1: American Conservatism. American Republicans in the 1930s opposed FDR’s New Deal and disliked helping ordinary people—a view held by Herbert Hoover [seemingly a sociopathic position]. Frances Perkins, who became the first female Secretary of Labor, believed government should protect workers, women, and children. She had witnessed the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire which killed almost 150 young women locked in the building.

Shocked by the corruption of the stock market and business of the 1920s, Congress regulated the stock market and banks. [That included the SEC, mainly greater disclosure under the developing generally accepted accounting principles, which I was familiar with as an accountant.] They also supported unions, provided jobs for the unemployed [including my father in the CCC], and increased the top tax rates. [They also shamed top executives making ridiculous amounts of money, which New Deal legislation required them to report. Now they take pride in making ridiculous amount of money].

Then, the anti-New Deal reaction, emphasizing that capitalism meant private investment and little to no regulation, “states rights, and self-reliance.” Business groups including chambers of commerce were all in. Some may have referred back to the “conservative position” of British MP in 1790, Edmund Burke, that the state should not have a government-enforced ideology but promote stability using traditional structures.

“Northerners of all parties organized against the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, under which Congress allowed the spread of slavery into lands that had for mor than 30 years been set aside for free labor” (p. 7). Franklin Pierce declared the US a “white man’s republic,” who ruled over Indians and Africans. Stephen Douglas in the 1858 Illinois Senate race, claimed Lincoln was a radical abolitionist. Lincoln lost. Lincoln as president and the Republicans wanted common people helped, creating available homesteads, publican universities [Texas A&M was one], funded a transcontinental railroad, and eventually ended slavery.

Chapter 2: The Liberal Consensus. “The New Deal … won the loyalty of Americans who blamed the rich for having manipulated the economy until the Great Crash revealed its hollow core” (p. 11).

Mussolini took over Italy as a Fascist in a military display and claimed they were leaders, demonizing opponents as “others,” deserving of hate. Hitler took over Germany in 1933 claiming it was the successor of the Holy Roman Empire dominating Central Europe.

During World War II, Black men, Latinos, Indians, and women made up millions of Americans who served in the military, including the Navaho “code talkers” who language could not be cracked. By the end of the war, FDR was popular and the consensus was government should regulate business and provide a basic safety net and infrastructure spending. The NAACP was founded in 1909 and “worked to secure voting rights, education, jobs, and complete equality before the law” (p. 14). Unfortunately, FDR could not introduce civil rights legislation because the Southern Democrats were segregationists. During Eisenhower’s administration (Republican), some success came including the 1954 decision Brown v Board of Education of Topeka.

Chapter 3: Bringing the Declaration of Independence to Life. Equality remained aspirational. Truman established a President’s Committee on Civil Rights, but recommendations could not get through Congress. He did desegregate the military and civil service. NAACP lawyers Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley opposed segregation, especially in schools based on the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, then won the Brown v Board of Education case. White southerners set up all white schools. Then there was Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott, then the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Chapter 4: Race and Taxes. The “liberal consensus” continued to 1964, but the argument was made that tax dollars of white men was used for undeserving Black people. In 1870 Congress created the Department of Justice, in part, to protect the right of Black men, especially to vote. This was opposed by white supremacists on the grounds that whites paid the taxes for infrastructure and services, while Blacks wanted something for nothing. They celebrated the myth of the cowboy working hard and depending on nobody but themselves. This became a political propaganda tool. William Buckley called the liberal consensus “secularism and collectivism,” not the values of Christianity and individualism. Thus, Christianity versus communism and liberals were basically communists. This also rejected a fact-based analysis of government. For some reason, Buckley made the claim that business people should run the economy as they saw fit.   

The cold war was with the Soviet Union and Communist China when Mao defeated Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek. This created an increased fear of socialism in the US. Barry Goldwater became the rising star of Republicans in the late 1950s, rejecting the moderate approach of Eisenhower. “In Goldwater, Movement Conservatism and the racist mythology of the post-Civil War years came together” (p. 31). He defended states’ rights and racism.

Chapter 5: Nixon and the Southern Strategy. Black veteran James Meredith got the Department of Justice to make Old Miss register him. After rioting Kennedy called in the military. Kennedy was called a communist. Thus, black rights and communism were conflated. LBJ expanded civil rights including the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Goldwater objected, claiming “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” LBJ won the 1964 election against Goldwater in a landslide, but there remained a racist element in the Republican Party. There was “Bloody Sunday” as blacks crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge to Montgomery. Nixon pushed the “southern strategy” to gain Southern support for the 1968 election.

Chapter 6: Positive Polarization. Nixon appealed to emotion over reason. In 1968 a major issue was Vietnam, pushing LBJ out of the race in favor of Humphrey. “Nixon’s team offered voters a candidate weak on policy but big on carefully curated images of traditional America under siege from ‘others.’ His campaign contrasted powerfully with the chaos of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. … Nixon pulled together a coalition of pro-business Republicans, southern racists, traditionalists, and ‘law and order’ voters” (p. 42).

The National Security Act of 1947 concentrated foreign policy in the executive branch.

Pat Buchanan and Lee Atwater focused on polarization and anger, scape-goating student protesters and minorities, calling them “detractors of America.” Groups against the liberal consensus included the Heritage Foundation, Hoover Institution, American Enterprise Institute, chambers of commerce, Business Roundtable, and more. They fought regulation and taxes, demanding market-based solutions.

During the 1972 election was Nixon’s reelection group CREEP, using campaign sabotage. That included the Watergate break-in at Democratic National Headquarters, which Nixon attempted to cover up. He still won, with over 60% of the vote, then resigned. His administration had helped kick out Salvador Allende in Chile, replaced by the brutal regime of Augusto Pinochet.

Chapter 7: The Reagan Revolution. It was Goldwater and Nixon first, claiming some people are better than others. Reagan “honned Nixon’s rhetoric with a soft voice and made-up stories that pitted hardworking white men against a grasping government that served ‘special interests’ and nonexistent Black people living on the taxpayer’s dime” (p. 49). The cowboy image helped as did claiming the economy was a wreck; add “welfare queens” and states’ rights. “Corporate mergers were wiping out small businesses, and manufacturing was moving to the South or overseas. This change was hollowing out northern industrial cities” (p. 50). Then court white workers left behind. Inflation soared (Vietnam, social programs, oil embargo).

Religious groups piled on, including Jerry Falwell and the Southern Baptist Convention. Reagon added “make America great again.” They were victims of the “liberal media.” The term initially meant the importance of fact-based positions but became a Republican code word for political bias. The Reagan’s line “there you go again” worked. Supply-side economics meant tax cuts for the rich would help poor people because of “trickle down.” The economy continued to grow after 1980, but the benefits went to rich people, moving the economy from the “great compression” to the “great divergence.” Tax rates at the top went from 70% to 30%. [I managed to get a marginal tax rate actually higher than the rich people rate, presumably to avoid a budget deficit.] Welfare programs also were cut. The net result was the national debt tripled from $738 billion to $2.1 trillion.

The FCC’s Fairness Doctrine was ended by Reagan, then talk radio benefited from political vitriol, with Rush Limbaugh at the top. After Reagan, Bush ran against Michael Dukakis, Governor of Massachusetts. Bush used Lee Atwater and Riger Ailes to come up with ads like Willie Horton as ideological propaganda. Newt Gingrich urging Republicans to refer to Democrats with words like corrupt, disgrace, failure, lie, pathetic, sick, traitors, and abuse of power. Pat Buchanen added to the culture war.

“Republicans had created an underclass of Americans increasingly falling behind economically. And, crucially, they had given that underclass someone to hate” (p. 57).

Chapter 8: Skewing the System. Republican Grover Norquist required a no new tax pledge. Republicans long claimed voter fraud, especially in the 1996 election which returned Clinton to the White House. Florida purged a hundred thousand Black voters in 1997. This helped elect Bush over Gore in 2000 (also assisted by Governor Jeb Bush and the Supreme Court. Reagan had nominated Antonin Scalia, leader of the “originalists.” Reagan also nominated Bork to the court but was rejected by the Senate as too extreme. Reagan was part of the Iran/Contras debacle, illegally selling arms to Iran to help the extremist group. Eleven officials were convicted. Bush was also implicated, but still elected president (and pardoned the convicted officials).

Chapter 9: A New Global Project. Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president in 1991. Many Republicans included Paul Manafort and Roger Stone  represented various corrupt Russian officials to lobby and public relations, creating kleptocrats and oligarchs, parking money in the west. Bush did try to repair some of Reagan’s damage, resulting in his being a one-term president (in part by raising taxes).

Clinton was called “a queer-mongering, whore-hopping adulterer, a baby-killing, draft dodging, dope-tolerating, lying, two-faced, treasonous activist” (p. 68). In 1996 the Fox News channel started as a right-wing station claiming opponents were Soviets destroying the country.

On September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists flew commercial airplanes into the Twin Towers. Bush attacked the Taliban in Afghanistan. “A senior advisor to Bush disdainfully told journalist Ron Suskind that people like him—Suskind—were in the ‘reality-based community’ … we create our own reality’” (p. 72).

Chapter 10: Illegitimate Democracy. Sarah Palin accused Obama of ‘palling around with terrorists.’ As a democrat, he was a socialist. Trump brought up the Birther conspiracy. They kept up the falsehoods to the media plus “investigations,” keeping these falsehoods in the news. The Tea Party was created as Republicans on the extremes of voter fraud, racism, and socialism. Obamacare was socialized medicine, an “income redistribution play” according to Bill O’Reilly on Fox News, “flooding the zone with propaganda” (p. 75). The Citizens United case allowed unlimited campaign spending by corporations. At the same time, organized crime became international and sophisticated, creating the “iron triangle of organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders” (p. 76). The 2010 Republican plan for gerrymandering was called “Operation Redmap,” which they did, then they controlled legislatures like Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Another Supreme Court case gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Voter suppression followed.

McConnell became Senate Majority Leader in 2014, and Reagan appointed Supreme Court justices, followed by George W with two. McConnell held up Obama’s pick, allowing a Trump appointment.

Part 2: The Authoritarian Experiment. Chapter 11: A Snapshot of America. Trump came from reality TV, called by critics “Fascist TV” and a farce. Trump was unprepared for “The Apprentice,” but the TV version presented him in a favorable light. “Trump married Republican politics to authoritarianism” (p. 84). Of course, in Trump world he was better than anyone. Meanwhile, Russia wanted to destabilize American democracy to expand the “Russian Empire.” Steve Bannon wanted to reconfigure the system with “a few wealthy, white, Christian mal leaders in charge to direct and protect subordinates” (p. 86). Breitbart News attacked politically active women and Black Americans. These positions were favorable to Southern whites and evangelicals.

“The Republican contest had been front-loaded with elections in states dominated by low-information voters deemed likely to vote on the basis of name recognition” (p. 87). He won Super Tuesday, was nominated and picked Mike Pence as VP candidate to calm establishment Republicans. Russians furnished damaging material on Hillary Clinton, wanting sanctions dropped. Then, build a wall, drain the swamp in Washington, lock her up, and ban Muslims entering the US.

In 1935, Frank Stanton (who later headed CBS) developed profiles of candidates to enable advertisers to target ads. Social sites like Facebook were added to this “research.” James Comey as FBI Director publicized Hillary’s emails just before the election. Trump was elected and his inaugural address emphasized carnage and hate, while other countries stole American jobs, promising “America first.” Bush declared: “that was some weird sh*t.”

Chapter 12: A Shocking Event. The liberal consensus looked dead. Trump expanded on dividing the country (a long-time Republican strategy), but called for authoritarianism supported by angry partisans. Part of the strategy was lying, knowing the media would cover it and therefore spread it—“alternative facts”—plus the demand that partisans would agree.

A Russian-American journalist noted: “the only people who were fully prepared to cover the Trump presidency properly were people who knew how authoritarian regimes worked” (p. 95).

Chapter 13: Russia, Russia, Russia. Trump had an affinity for Russia, including their disinformation. Ukraine was also a battleground for democracy versus autocracy. Putin took Crimea in 2014, with little response from Obama or Europe. Russia hacked Democratic computers and dumped it to WikiLeaks. “Users shared false content on Facebook 38 million times” (p. 104). Both advisor Michael Flynn and attorney general Sessions contacted Russia during the campaign. Several people were indicted. Trump claimed to be an innocent victim (part of the Trump Derangement Syndrome).

Chapter 14: The Streets of Charlottesville. The KKK and neo-Nazis met in Charlottesville in 2017, with Trump’s implicit approval. Anti-New Dealers had turned to European fascism and discovered populist violence. Violence happened against Black people, then expanded to government as well, like Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge and David Koresh in Waco. Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones added to the anger. Then Timothy McVeigh added violence in Oklahoma City.

Chapter 15: The First Impeachment. There was the 2017 tax cut including the corporate tax cut from 35% to 21%. Trump and McConnell added three Supreme Court justices, part of the decimation of the liberal consensus. Trump called Ukrainian president Zelensky to get dirt on Joe Bidden, pledging to withhold arms deliveries until an “investigation happened.” Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch stood against corruption in Ukraine and was recalled. Giuliani announced the Ukraine was investigating Hillary and the DNC. Yovanovitch, Fiona Hill, and Alexander Vindman testified before Congress, noting smearing Ukraine was equivalent to Russian disinformation.

Chapter 16: Destabilizing the Government. Trump expected loyalists and firing those that might stand up for principle was expected. That included making more civil service jobs subject to firing. The State Department and USAID were told to cut their budgets drastically. Agriculture moved from Washington to Kansas, resulting in many quitting. He used acting officials that would not servive Senate hearings. Inspectors Generals were fired.

Chapter 17. Embracing Authoritarianism. The administration was not prepared for Covid, having dumped Obama’s pandemic-preparedness measures. There was a lack of protective equipment and Kushner was put in charge, meaning poor results and blaming the WHO and demonizing Anthony Fauci. Trump favored states that supported him and much of the equipment went to private sector shops that sold it at huge markups. The pandemic crashed the economy.

In 2020 Trump was set to rig the election, trying to stop high voter participation and mail-in ballots. Trump encouraged violence, including attacking the Michigan statehouse and attempting to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Trump critic.

Derek Chavin killed George Floyd, the start of “Black Lives Matter” protests. In Washington Trump had police clear Lafayette Square so he could wave a Bible in front of St. John’s Church. Troops under Attorney General William Barr were sent to cities run by Democrats to “fight crime.”

Chapter 18: Rewriting American History. Putin and Orban in Hungary declared liberal democracy obsolete, in part because it welcome minorities, women, immigrants, and LGBTQ, rather than “Christian culture” with a traditional patriarchal society controlled by white men. Trump agreed that multiculturalism destroys the “real America.”  Trump incorporated “Nazi imagery” in messaging, generating added media coverage. Attacking the 1619 Project, he established the 1776 Commission.

Chapter 19: January 6. Biden beat Trump in 2020, but Trump challenged the election, filing 63 unsuccessful lawsuits, called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for more votes, and called for false electors, then told Mike Pence to refuse to count the electors from “contested states.” Trump called a protest on January 6 to “stop the steal” and march on Congress. The mob did and caused considerable damage, but did not stop Pence.

Chapter 20: The Big Lie. “Trump had moved to the stage that scholars of authoritarianism call a ‘Big Lie.’ A key propaganda tool associated with Nazi Germany. … If leaders repeat it enough times, refusing to admit that it is a lie, people come to think it is the truth because surely no one would make up anything so outrageous. … Hitler’s psychology profile: His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong” (p. 156).

In 2021 Republican states made voting more difficult and moved certifying votes to partisan boards, part of the “independent state legislature doctrine.” Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022. “The destruction of federal power also signaled an end to federal regulation of business. … State houses passed draconian abortion laws, passed extreme gun laws, and wrote laws prohibiting public school teachers from teaching ‘divisive concepts’” (p. 159).

Part 3: Reclaiming America. Chapter 21: What is America? “Was the whole concept of American democracy a sham from the Start?” (p. 164). It did apply to propertied white males, not so much for anybody else. Nikkole Hannah-Jones used 1619 as a start date, when the first slaves were bought in Virginia. What made the US “exceptional.” Economic might and industrial power in the North, agriculture using slavery in the South—the inequities, violence, income inequality, legal system [property rights and rule of law], racial fears and hate, plus the powerless were considered inferior. Historical myths continued.

“Nazi Lawyers and judges turned to America’s Jim crow laws for inspiration. Hitler looked to America’s Indigenous reservations as a way to rid a country of ‘unwanted’ people” (p. 167). Former enslaved people had to sue their former enslavers for custody of their kids. Republican used the cowboy myth or manly white individualism as their symbol. Langston Hughes noted that America was “the land that never has been yet.”

Chapter 22: Declaring Independence. The early history of the US was people split by language, culture, and religion, plus legal status of Blacks, Indigenous, and women. Children were the property of the father. Generally, richer people were on the coast and poorer people moved west. The king’s ministers enacted revenue measures like the 1765 Stamp Act. The people concluded they wanted to govern themselves [at least the richer folk]. There were riots in Boston. Taxed goods were boycotted. The last tax was on tea, leading to the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Parliament closed the Port of Boston. Delegates from the colonies met at Carpenter’s Hall in 1774, creating the First Continental Congress. It led to ordering the arrest of Samuel Adams and John Hancock. That led to the Lexington killing of Americans by General Gage’s troops and counterattacks as the British marched home. The American Revolution had begun and independence declared.

Chapter 23: The Constitution. Under General Washington the war was won, the Continental Congress was not up to the job of governing, and a constitution was written in 1787. “Because the white men who drafted the Declaration saw it primarily as an assertion of their own right to be equal to other white men in England, they did not immediately take on the larger implications of their principled stand. … The US Constitution was based on the idea that the federal government, rather than the states, was the heart of the new system” (p. 179).

The winner-take-all system for presidential electors was established, giving their own candidates a leg up. The system also let the party in power to stay in power. The system was modified to protect rural areas as more people became urban.

Chapter 24: Expanding Democracy. The people not allowed to vote wanted that opportunity. Frederick Douglass asked: “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” The Seneca Fall Convention of 1848 called for equal rights of women. The courts split on the legality of slavery and the rights of women and Indigenous Americans. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Cherokee sovereignty, but President Andrew Jackson ignored their ruling and marched them to Oklahoma, created the Trail of Tears. “Manifest Destiny” and states rights maintained the role of white men. Franklin Pierce maintained “popular sovereignty,” which devolved into new states allowing slavery.

Chapter 25: Mudsills or Men. By 1860 Southern plantation owners were the nation’s richest, on the back of slavery and cotton—stating that “white men were a ‘superior race. … Most people were mudsills, named for the timber driven into the ground to support homes above. … and had low order of intellect and but little skill. … White elites made up only 4% of the southern white population” (p. 195). Poor whites were landless with no power. Northerners were considered money-grubbers, including merchants. Enslavers used media, churches, and politics for their views, taking over the Democratic Party and the Senate and Supreme Court. The North included much of the Northwest with substantial factories. Pierce was a Democratic president supporting a white man’s republic, opening up more states to slavery.   

Lincoln opposed white supremacy, favoring hard work and innovation of ordinary people. Government should guarantee equality under the law, with equal access to resources including education. He had worked his way up to respectability. When Lincoln was elected president in 1860, seven Southern states created the Confederacy, claiming it needed to uphold democracy.

Chapter 26: Of the People, by the People, for the People. Lincoln wanted the Republican Party to work for ordinary people (at least men), including education. The Union passed the Homestead Act, Land-Grant Colleges Act, Dept. of Agriculture, and the Pacific Railway Act. There was the Gettysburg Adress in 1863, then the 13th and 14th Amendments.

After the war ended, under Johnson, race riots against blacks happened in Memphis and New Orleans. Given that Blacks were counted as “whole persons,” the South had more power in Congress.

Chapter 27: America Renewed. An 1875 court case, Minor v. Happersett gave women citizenship, but not the right to vote. White supremacists used it to keep Blacks from voting. The Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882. Black middle classes expanded late in the 19th century as did Black newspapers, including journalists like Ida B. Wells. George Washington Carver experimented with peanuts. Jane Adams “settlement house” (Hull House) was one of several for immigrants.

Chapter 28. A Progressive America. One concept was poor men voting meant “socialism,” destroying individualism. Republicans favored helping men like Carnegie. Industrialists controlled Congress. The idea of government helping workers and farmers was “un-American.” Democrat Grover Cleveland was defeated by Benjamin Harrison as Congress went after Cleveland’s projects and corporations gained greater control. Cleveland was elected again, this time with a Democratic Congress—unfortunately, soon followed by the Panic of 1893.

Republican Teddy Roosevelt gained fame leading his Rough Riders in Cuba, emphasizing the cowboy image of hard work and independence. Progressives worked to regulate business, to stop business corruption. Regulations and government funding cleaned up sewage systems, protected public lands, and invested in public health and education.

Chapter 29: The Road to the New Deal. Ida B. Wells and WEB DuBoise were original members of the NAACP. Southern Democrats disenfranchised Republican voters, turning Southern states into one-party systems. New Yorker Grover Cleveland was a “New Democrat” with multicultural focus. Republican voting for Cleveland were called Mugwumps. James Farley was a leader of Tammany Hall.

Frances Perkins worked at Jane Adam’s Hull House as a secular social worker. She was appalled by the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. FDR’s New Deal was an urban New York Democratic experiment of the 1920s applied federally when elected president. This developed into the liberal consensus to regulate business, provide a social safety net, and work programs for the unemployed to provide infrastructure [my father worked for the CCC]. It was expanded under Truman and kept in place by Eisenhower as a Republican. The GI Bill allowed vocational and academic training [which I used decades later].

Chapter 30: Democracy Awakening. The Republicans moved to get rid of the liberal consensus with Goldwater and Reagan, in part by denigrating it, including the claim it cut economic growth. It included Medicare and Medicaid and the Great Society of LBJ. Nixon did some unwinding “by turning Americans against one another for political power” (p. 243). Reagan claimed the government couldn’t provide solutions.

Conclusions: Reclaiming Our Country. Reagan claimed the common good was a myth and the liberal consensus moved toward authoritarianism. Poor Americans were at fault for their failure. “The culprits were lazy, grasping, and immoral minorities and women” (p. 246). The Biden White House passed the American Rescue Plan after Covid, an infrastructure law, the Chips and Science Act, and the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.

Afterword: The Last Best Hope. Before Trump, Republicans supported business interests plus cut government spending. Supporters included Christian nationalists with a racial and gender hierarchy and dumping the international order. Fox News had to settle a lawsuit for $787 million for false claims. Trump was indicted several times. Republicans launched investigations to spread disinformation. Four of 44 people from the first Trump cabinet supported him for president. The Heritage Foundation wrote Project 2025 supporting authoritarian rule and killing the remnants of the liberal consensus.