This piece is evidence of why phycotherapy services are so needed today for our fellow Americans... the hysteria and derangement they demonstrate over Trump's mythological right "authoritarianism" is only exceeded by their support of the real left authoritarianism we experienced over the last decade.
Are you raising TDS again? The people that currently have TDS are Trump sycophants that think that he can do no wrong. They lack self reflection or conscience, and consider it weak to experience empathy. Why are you blaming anything on leftists? The danger is not coming from them.
I don't know any Trump supporters that think he can do no wrong. I know many that oppose Trump that lack the demonstrated ability to admit when he is right.
Today it is that his administration is failing to release the Epstein files and failing to prosecute. A lot of Trump supporters are unhappy about his first term with Warp Speed and all the pandemic spending. They are also unhappy with the current budget failing to address are exploding national debt. Many are unhappy with his tariffs and others are unhappy that he isn't prioritizing protecting farm workers and other service sector workers from being swept up in the illegal immigrant purge. In general, his supporters wish he would be more thoughtful and nuanced in his speech. Many of his supporters are impatient about inflation not resolving more quickly. They are also worried about potential impacts to their government benefits... although it is left media hyperbole and propaganda that has them overly concerned. Many oppose his lawsuits and attacks on media as too much conflict with God-given rights of free speech... although others are unhappy that he isn't doing more given what the media has done to him and MAGA over the last decade.
The Democrats are the party of the Professional Managerial Class establishment regime. Their armies of left radicals had infiltrated our education system and then our institutions from there. The pandemic caused them to show their collectivist authoritarian hand. We see how this left Regime authoritarianism manifests in other places like the UK lacking the same Constitutional protections where they are jailing white British citizens for tweets but releasing recent immigrant rapists of young girls.
I have friends that fled to England after Trump won the first election who are now Trump supporters and are moving back to the states.
The primary "wrong" that we see in Trump, is that he is not doing enough to help destroy the lefty collectivist authoritarians that have infested the rest of the world. But then again, he is crafty. For example, he caused idiot frozen brain Canadians to vote again for another POS Trudeau to lead them because of being butt hurt over the 51st state comment. From one perspective his supporters are pissed he did not help Poilevre win. However, it is also possible that Trump and his advisors suggested that the best thing for Canada is to decline even more from their destructive left governance so that they frozen brained electorate truly wakes to reject everything about leftism.
"Perhaps they will soon understand that he cannot and never planned resolving the inflation."
For me, this demonstrates that you are not working hard enough to get information... you are probably just pulling from your reliable media sources that are in the bubble of left ideology and anti-Trumpism. You need to watch, read and listen to Scott Bessessent who is the primary architect of the Trump economic plan. You can start here. https://blog.umb.com/institutional-banking-3-3-3-plan-and-the-path-forward/
"you sound like a fascist TBH"
You sound like a partisan dipshit that is not really informed, cannot think, and throws around cheap childish talking points and memes.
"Would you be "butthurt" if someone said they want to annex your country?"
Since I have good emotional regulation control, being "butt hurt" over a comment like that if I was a Canadian, would not impact my vote. Only stupid people act on emotions.
"To be fair, PMC would govern 100x better than the harebrained MAGA idiots in the government now."
Well no. They are in fact over-educated idiots that have fucked up a lot. They allowed China into the WTO and gave it Favored Nation Trading status. They caused the Great Recession. They fucked up the global economy with COVID. I interact with these people in business, and they are not at all wise or capable. They are rent-seeking, looters and gamblers that don't know how to start and grow and real business. They are lazy and entitled and really quite stupid despite their ivy league degrees.
"Trump is deporting grandmas while not going for illegal immigrant gangsters at all. ICE are a bunch of cowards covering their faces."
Boy your algorithms is your media feeds have you about as ill-informed on reality than anyone else commenting on substack.
I voted for Trump and have posted on previous articles. I am very unhappy about the censorship of people criticizing the Gaza War. I am also not happy about the Iran war and wish that Trump would pressure Netanyahu to stop genocide. BUT I would vote for Trump again tomorrow as I have explained. The Covid autocracy, the woke nuttiness, and the neocon left , and the Biden internet censorship regime were all horrifying to me. Trump is way less authoritarian.
What about MAGA nuttiness and authoritarianism? Medicaid cuts? Deranged ICE thugs? I don't understand how you can say that Trump is less authoritarian.
You asked for some criticisms of Trump and I gave some, which many other Trump voters share. As for Medicaid cuts, the idea that able bodied people on Medicaid should work seems reasonable. Cutting Medicaid to illegal immigrants also seems fair also. An exception should be made for emergency care ( which exists in practice, because most hospitals will not turn away someone with an emergency). Illegals should go home to their own countries if they need extensive healthcare. ( Sorry if that sounds mean, but I believe this is the ony rational policy. Otherwise you create really warped incentives.)
My sense has been that Trump supporters tend to cite TDS when they're unable to rebut the arguments they disagree with. Would be interested, Frank, to hear what you disagree with in my assessment of Trump (https://gordonstrause.substack.com/p/the-return-of-donald-trump-a-tragedy). And I would also be interested to know what you consider to be the "left authoritarianism" of the last decade.
But the question I have for you that is actually relevant to the topic of the post is to know what you would actually consider a sign that the U.S. has crossed the threshold into a form of "autocracy"?
As it happens, I would agree with Damon's critics that we haven't crossed that line yet; increased funding for ICE isn't a red line for me. But here are things that would be:
- Expelling from the country naturalized citizens who are critics like Zohran or Andew Sullivan or Elon or anyone serving or running for office or in a position of prominence or credibly threatening deporation.
- Stripping someone like Elon or a Jeff Bezos of government contracts for being critical of him or his government.
- Refusing judges' orders to restore funding for program passed by congress which he disagrees with.
- Deploying the military to prevent peaceful protests.
- Interfering with the election process in any significant way
Do you agree that these types of action would constitute a descent into authoritarianism? If not, what would your red lines be?
No, I site TDS when the argument is emotional and not based on calm, cool, rational, critical thinking backed by facts and evidence.
The left-liberal-Democrat (all the same today) authoritarianism and political abuse of power has been unprecedented and breathtaking over the last 10 years beginning with the Russiagate episode and through COVID and the lies of Joe Biden's health.
Ignore all that evidence of authoritarianism and malice and you lose credibility for being objective on this topic.
There are two wings of this authoritarianism attempt we have experienced... they are joined for mutual benefit to defeat Trump and to effectively destroy the working middle class that prevent their upper class accumulation of more power and money. There is the globalist corporatist wing... the establishment regime funded by Wall Street and run by the Professional Managerial Class... this cohort has a rich looting sandbox in place that requires a continuation of the US-funded Global Order... something that MAGA and Trump are committed to end. The Democrat party today is the primary political home for the PMC. About 30% of Republicans are the same with the rest being ejected for the reformed GOP candidates. Call it the Uniparty. They are really the 1% and the 10% upper class. The 10% own 88% of the stock market. The bottom 80% own 8%.
The other wing is the collectivist loving radicals that pushed Critical Theory through the education system and corrupted the minds of millions of students with that toxic mind virus to infiltrate our media and institutions and foment social and economic chaos and disruption so to influence elections. These are also upper class people but move often cut out of the 10%. They are socioeconomic malcontents.
The former broke the long-standing principle under Obama of not doing the same internally... using our dark money infrastructure for the common practice of deep state disrupting society in other countries to influence elections. The former has exploited the latter (i.e., promoting and encouraging protest and riots and woke ideology being shoved down everyone's throats).
We see the outcome of this continuing in places like the UK. We see the EU actually canceling the election in Romania because it wasn't good for the establishment regime. They banned LePenn in France. These are the progressive authoritarian moves that the election of Trump and MAGA have thwarted in the US.
"- Expelling from the country naturalized citizens who are critics like Zohran or Andew Sullivan or Elon or anyone serving or running for office or in a position of prominence or credibly threatening deportation."
I don't support it, but those are just Trump saying extreme things to light Democrat and liberal media hair on fire so they focus on that and not the real MAGA agenda. Works for me.
"- Stripping someone like Elon or a Jeff Bezos of government contracts for being critical of him or his government."
Give me a break. Democrat administrations don't give government contracts to business that does not support them. And they always look for ways to cancel, ban, de-platform and harm their political opponents. This is common politics. The power of corporations to make or break a political outcome is YUGE. Only those that are supportive get benefits. That is the way it has always worked.
"- Refusing judges' orders to restore funding for program passed by congress which he disagrees with."
So, a judge is never partisan? A judge never gets it wrong? A judge is never more an activist than a real jurist? There are no left-leaning federal judges currently ignoring the ruling of the Supreme Court? Was it wrong for Joe Biden to ignore so many court orders like giving student loan forgiveness without Congressional approval? The Biden Justice Department was weaponized as an anti-Trump machine. Your outrage is too one-sided to have credibility here.
I think there is a mindset that the left can do radical things and the right should be all buttoned up and completely conservative. That is in fact what the GOP idiots had been doing and why candidates like Romney and McCain got trashed. It is all negative branding in the media with the Democrats. What I see is frustration that Democrats no longer have that advantage with Trump using their same playbook against them.
"- Deploying the military to prevent peaceful protests."
LOL. Did you write this on a laptop from your hotel room in LA with the neighborhood burning through your window? Note that the Supreme Court ruled on it. Do you only support the court decisions that comport with your politics?
- Interfering with the election process in any significant way
Yeah, like Russiagate, Lies about Hunter Biden's laptop, abuse of judicial and legal power to "stop Trump". Ballot harvesting. Threatening to eliminate the electoral college. Threatening media and tech to ban, cancel and deplatform any that oppose or criticize the Democrats. Threatening to pack the Supreme Court. Inviting in tens of millions of illegals to pad the census count and farm new Democrat moocher voters? Send billions to NGOs, campuses and the media to influence more people to hate Trump, hate working class people, hate white people, hate males... and generally vote for the feminist party of collectivist hell? Threatening media and big tech to silence all their Democrat opponents (Twitter Files, Facebook Files, etc.).
What does Trump do? He holds rallies. He gets out to campaign. He says things to get the media to pay attention to him. He catches Democrat and liberal media hair on fire and gets them to chew off their own political arms and legs. He does all this while the opposition uses every dirty trick they can throw at the wall.
Democrat suck... they have gone full on negative character assassination as their primary political campaign strategy. They come to the table with nothing except why everyone should hate each other.
Elections have consequences. I support Trump cleaning up that mess.. making sure that the people involved in this moral race to the bottom are facing some harm for what they have done. That is not authoritarian... that is defense against real experienced authoritarianism and the power abuse of the bureaucracy and Regime.
Claiming Trump is an authoritarian risk is like claiming Churchill was the same during the 40s.
I'm afraid that was not a good reply Frank. You were so intent on listing everything you were upset about that you misunderstood what I wrote and then failed to respond at all to my question.
So let me try again. I'm going to repeat my post and add some commentary to make things clearer"
------
HERE IS WHAT I WROTE ABOVE
"But the question I have for you that is actually relevant to the topic of the post is to know what you would actually consider a sign that the U.S. has crossed the threshold into a form of "autocracy"?
As it happens, I would agree with Damon's critics that we haven't crossed that line yet; increased funding for ICE isn't a red line for me. But here are things that would be:
- Expelling from the country naturalized citizens who are critics like Zohran or Andew Sullivan or Elon or anyone serving or running for office or in a position of prominence or credibly threatening deporation.
- Stripping someone like Elon or a Jeff Bezos of government contracts for being critical of him or his government.
- Refusing judges' orders to restore funding for program passed by congress which he disagrees with.
- Deploying the military to prevent peaceful protests.
- Interfering with the election process in any significant way
Do you agree that these types of action would constitute a descent into authoritarianism? If not, what would your red lines be?"
-----
COMMENTARY
A few points. In terms of the examples I above, I'm NOT saying they have already happened. In fact, I'm explicitly saying they have NOT already happened; it is why I said I agree with Damon's critics that we haven't yet crossed the line into authoritarianism.
What I was asking is if you would agree that they would constitute authoritarianism if they were to happen? And if not, what are the actions that would cross this red line. The entire point here is ask you to respond to the question that Damon raised in his post: how will we know when a descent into authoritarianism has happened. Hopefully, you will take a shot at responding this time.
Meanwhile, a few additional observations in response to a few of the things :
- It's not true that adminstrations' historically have only given contracts to their supporters and stripped contracts from opponents. It wasn't true under Biden, Obama, and Clinton, and it wasn't true under Reagan nor the Bushes either. There are tons of examples I can provide of government contracts going to their critics while they were President. One of the great things about this country is historically we have kept this line which allowed people to freely support the candidate of their choice without worrying it would hurt their business. That is why Trump's threats in this area are so concerning (although I haven't yet seen enough to think this line has been definitively crossed).
- The one example you gave of Biden defying the courts was student loans but Biden abided by the Supreme Court's ruling against student loan forgiveness. That is how the system should work if the courts find the executive branch has overstepped it's authority. They are then free to try to get legislation passed to change the law or to find a different way to achieve their goals that is consistent with the law.
- With regard to "ballot harvesting", if you haven't already, you should read Tangle News' definitive summaries of these issues:
These were the things in your rant that I thought it would be constructive to respond to. That said, If there are other things you want a response to I'm happy to oblige but just one at a time. So start with the thing you're most concerned about.
"One of the great things about this country is historically we have kept this line which allowed people to freely support the candidate of their choice without worrying it would hurt their business."
I think you are naive about how this works. Here is an example... I live in CA. I am a Republican. I have had problems with our governor and our Democrat legislature. One of my businesses got rejected (and I learned from a friend within the Newsom admin at the time) for participation in a program we had applied for over comments I had posted in a community blog and a letter to the editor criticizing the governor's lack of backbone dealing with the CA public employee unions. My business always deals with federal programs. My company has a history of high compliance and super high compliance scores, but we got tagged by a special bullshit audit that threatened our business. That was clearly a political move as one of my competitors is a woke business with strong DC Democrat connections and we could clearly see the breadcrumbs coming from the political connections to strong-arm the agency to go after us. We also learned that this competitor company was filling the market with negative press about us "they are in trouble with the agency" to win more business from us.
This type of stuff happens all the time. Yes, it sucks, and I am not in support of it. It frankly infuriates me... it is abuse of political power. But it is more common from Democrat administrations as Republicans in general are pro-business and it goes against their principles. Democrats would prefer that government owns the means of production, so they don't really care that they harm business. Just look at the government actions against business during the pandemic and compare that to states and local governments run by Republicans.
With respect to what Trump has said, I would oppose it if actions. However, it is just words at this point, and I expect it to only stay words.
I note one difference with people that work in professions moving words and figures around on paper vs people that make, build, grow and sell real products... words seem to be often conflated with action... as if we don't even need the action as proof because he/she said the words. I see that tendency as problematic especially at a time when our media is filled with so much crap... so many lies... so much hyperbole and breathless hysteria. I am a much more pragmatic person that can read the room of rhetoric and "advertising" if you will and ignore it while looking for real evidence of actions that would prove intent.
Biden did an end around with student loan forgiveness. He disregarded the spirit and intent of the Supreme Court ruling.
I will read the ballot harvesting articles you posted.
Exactly. Remember double masking? Lockdowns? Schools closed for 2 years? Covid vaccine mandates? Vaccine pass to go to restaurants and museums in New York? And dont get me started on the pronoun police, the on line censorship, the labelling of dissent as "hate speech."
The pandemic was a test-trap for the left liberals that could not control themselves with a orgasm of top-down authoritarian control. We can see the clear evidence in how Republican run states and cities handled it vs all the Democrat run states and cities.
While the author describes possible paths to autocracy, what makes the case for autocracy difficult to contemplate is the left's long practice of crying wolf about such things. It's so abused 'fascist,' 'Nazi,' 'autocrat,' 'dictator' that the crys now fall on deaf ears.
If you read Frank above he does sound like a fascist. When people start openly cheering going for non-white people, even citizens, and deporting them, it is fascism. When people say things like "inner-city rats" like the dumbest senator ever Tuberville, it is fascism.
I agree with most of this article, and share a lot of Damon's concerns, but like some other commenters question how dramatic a departure in governance Trump actually represents, even in his second term. The Supreme Court had long ago established Chevron Deference in good faith so that bureaucrats had a certain amount of wiggle room to interpret ambiguous statutes, which was good, but that became blatantly abused to sneakily enact progressive policy goals Congress never authorized. With the stroke of a pen, after repeated acknowledgment that it would be illegal, Obama declared DACA and essentially that immigration law was solely what the executive said it was. That was a strikingly undemocratic moment and enormous lurch down the road away from constitutional government. But working among progressive legal eagles at Columbia Law around that time, did I see any furrowed brows of concern or hear any suggestion that these things were at all troubling? No, never anything but glee and triumphalism. I struggle to find a sin of Trump's without extensive precedent under Obama and then Biden-Harris. I doubt there can be any way to reach a truce or reestablish some norms without that sort of truth & reconciliation acknowledgment.
Too many hypothetical theories aimed at one person. That's not balanced, unbiased reasoning. That is unreasonable vindictiveness and really shouldn't get an airing on a platform like Persuasion.
I'm not a fan of the piece, but the reason why isn't that there are "Too many hypothetical theories aimed at one person", which is a largely nonsensical complaint.
Many words, perhaps too many, have been written about threats to our constitutional democratic republic. What can we as ordinary citizens do to support our rights and institutions? As the old expression goes, don’t identify a problem without having a potential solution.
Damon is a great thinker and writer. Each of his points are thoughtful and fair. I submit, and he disagrees, that these breaking of norms (which is what he’s decrying) is simply reversing a decade of norms broken that one half of us despise while the other half describes as “progress”. New social norms fortified by laws that clearly play racial and gender favorites (Progressive customers). Egregious abuse, to the tune of 10M+ of our Cold War asylum policy to catch-and-release unvetted and God-knows-who immigrants. These “norms”, that Progressives cherish and are now being walked back, feel like Armageddon to them. But what Trump is reversing, every bit as aggressively as the original suppository of woke and open border dogma we’ve been forced to endure, is simply a regression to the mean. Back to a normal level we once ALL agreed on. Right?
It feels awful and cruel, but we never should have allowed it to reach this level. The pendulum swing back feels aggressive only because the initial swing was far too aggressive. It’s like the guys in hazmat suits who have to clean up the Vegas hotel the morning after Mike Tyson, the baby, the chicken, the broken teeth, and the face tattoo all made for a charming Hangover movie. Too far begets too far. And, of course, this will be agreed upon by NO Progressives reading it as their past decade of social triumph wasn’t “too far”, it wasn’t even “enough”.
This piece is evidence of why phycotherapy services are so needed today for our fellow Americans... the hysteria and derangement they demonstrate over Trump's mythological right "authoritarianism" is only exceeded by their support of the real left authoritarianism we experienced over the last decade.
Are you raising TDS again? The people that currently have TDS are Trump sycophants that think that he can do no wrong. They lack self reflection or conscience, and consider it weak to experience empathy. Why are you blaming anything on leftists? The danger is not coming from them.
I don't know any Trump supporters that think he can do no wrong. I know many that oppose Trump that lack the demonstrated ability to admit when he is right.
Lol can you point any criticism of Trump from his supporters?
Today it is that his administration is failing to release the Epstein files and failing to prosecute. A lot of Trump supporters are unhappy about his first term with Warp Speed and all the pandemic spending. They are also unhappy with the current budget failing to address are exploding national debt. Many are unhappy with his tariffs and others are unhappy that he isn't prioritizing protecting farm workers and other service sector workers from being swept up in the illegal immigrant purge. In general, his supporters wish he would be more thoughtful and nuanced in his speech. Many of his supporters are impatient about inflation not resolving more quickly. They are also worried about potential impacts to their government benefits... although it is left media hyperbole and propaganda that has them overly concerned. Many oppose his lawsuits and attacks on media as too much conflict with God-given rights of free speech... although others are unhappy that he isn't doing more given what the media has done to him and MAGA over the last decade.
The Democrats are the party of the Professional Managerial Class establishment regime. Their armies of left radicals had infiltrated our education system and then our institutions from there. The pandemic caused them to show their collectivist authoritarian hand. We see how this left Regime authoritarianism manifests in other places like the UK lacking the same Constitutional protections where they are jailing white British citizens for tweets but releasing recent immigrant rapists of young girls.
I have friends that fled to England after Trump won the first election who are now Trump supporters and are moving back to the states.
The primary "wrong" that we see in Trump, is that he is not doing enough to help destroy the lefty collectivist authoritarians that have infested the rest of the world. But then again, he is crafty. For example, he caused idiot frozen brain Canadians to vote again for another POS Trudeau to lead them because of being butt hurt over the 51st state comment. From one perspective his supporters are pissed he did not help Poilevre win. However, it is also possible that Trump and his advisors suggested that the best thing for Canada is to decline even more from their destructive left governance so that they frozen brained electorate truly wakes to reject everything about leftism.
Ok but what are the actual personal examples? I can see one below.
> Many of his supporters are impatient about inflation not resolving more quickly
Perhaps they will soon understand that he cannot and never planned resolving the inflation.
> not doing enough to help destroy the lefty collectivist authoritarians that have infested the rest of the world
you sound like a fascist TBH.
> For example, he caused idiot frozen brain Canadians to vote again for another POS Trudeau to lead them because of being butt hurt over the 51st
Would you be "butthurt" if someone said they want to annex your country?
Why would Canadians want to join a dumpster fire of a country we have now? They get free healthcare, we get medicaid cuts.
> Professional Managerial Class establishment regime
To be fair, PMC would govern 100x better than the harebrained MAGA idiots in the government now.
> they are jailing white British citizens for tweets but releasing recent immigrant rapists of young girls.
Trump is deporting grandmas while not going for illegal immigrant gangsters at all. ICE are a bunch of cowards covering their faces.
"Perhaps they will soon understand that he cannot and never planned resolving the inflation."
For me, this demonstrates that you are not working hard enough to get information... you are probably just pulling from your reliable media sources that are in the bubble of left ideology and anti-Trumpism. You need to watch, read and listen to Scott Bessessent who is the primary architect of the Trump economic plan. You can start here. https://blog.umb.com/institutional-banking-3-3-3-plan-and-the-path-forward/
"you sound like a fascist TBH"
You sound like a partisan dipshit that is not really informed, cannot think, and throws around cheap childish talking points and memes.
"Would you be "butthurt" if someone said they want to annex your country?"
Since I have good emotional regulation control, being "butt hurt" over a comment like that if I was a Canadian, would not impact my vote. Only stupid people act on emotions.
"To be fair, PMC would govern 100x better than the harebrained MAGA idiots in the government now."
Well no. They are in fact over-educated idiots that have fucked up a lot. They allowed China into the WTO and gave it Favored Nation Trading status. They caused the Great Recession. They fucked up the global economy with COVID. I interact with these people in business, and they are not at all wise or capable. They are rent-seeking, looters and gamblers that don't know how to start and grow and real business. They are lazy and entitled and really quite stupid despite their ivy league degrees.
"Trump is deporting grandmas while not going for illegal immigrant gangsters at all. ICE are a bunch of cowards covering their faces."
Boy your algorithms is your media feeds have you about as ill-informed on reality than anyone else commenting on substack.
"The Social Misfit" moniker seems spot on.
And I know I hit a homerun in a comment when I get a response like this!
Frankly, I thank you!
I voted for Trump and have posted on previous articles. I am very unhappy about the censorship of people criticizing the Gaza War. I am also not happy about the Iran war and wish that Trump would pressure Netanyahu to stop genocide. BUT I would vote for Trump again tomorrow as I have explained. The Covid autocracy, the woke nuttiness, and the neocon left , and the Biden internet censorship regime were all horrifying to me. Trump is way less authoritarian.
What about MAGA nuttiness and authoritarianism? Medicaid cuts? Deranged ICE thugs? I don't understand how you can say that Trump is less authoritarian.
You asked for some criticisms of Trump and I gave some, which many other Trump voters share. As for Medicaid cuts, the idea that able bodied people on Medicaid should work seems reasonable. Cutting Medicaid to illegal immigrants also seems fair also. An exception should be made for emergency care ( which exists in practice, because most hospitals will not turn away someone with an emergency). Illegals should go home to their own countries if they need extensive healthcare. ( Sorry if that sounds mean, but I believe this is the ony rational policy. Otherwise you create really warped incentives.)
My sense has been that Trump supporters tend to cite TDS when they're unable to rebut the arguments they disagree with. Would be interested, Frank, to hear what you disagree with in my assessment of Trump (https://gordonstrause.substack.com/p/the-return-of-donald-trump-a-tragedy). And I would also be interested to know what you consider to be the "left authoritarianism" of the last decade.
But the question I have for you that is actually relevant to the topic of the post is to know what you would actually consider a sign that the U.S. has crossed the threshold into a form of "autocracy"?
As it happens, I would agree with Damon's critics that we haven't crossed that line yet; increased funding for ICE isn't a red line for me. But here are things that would be:
- Expelling from the country naturalized citizens who are critics like Zohran or Andew Sullivan or Elon or anyone serving or running for office or in a position of prominence or credibly threatening deporation.
- Stripping someone like Elon or a Jeff Bezos of government contracts for being critical of him or his government.
- Refusing judges' orders to restore funding for program passed by congress which he disagrees with.
- Deploying the military to prevent peaceful protests.
- Interfering with the election process in any significant way
Do you agree that these types of action would constitute a descent into authoritarianism? If not, what would your red lines be?
Good post.
No, I site TDS when the argument is emotional and not based on calm, cool, rational, critical thinking backed by facts and evidence.
The left-liberal-Democrat (all the same today) authoritarianism and political abuse of power has been unprecedented and breathtaking over the last 10 years beginning with the Russiagate episode and through COVID and the lies of Joe Biden's health.
Ignore all that evidence of authoritarianism and malice and you lose credibility for being objective on this topic.
There are two wings of this authoritarianism attempt we have experienced... they are joined for mutual benefit to defeat Trump and to effectively destroy the working middle class that prevent their upper class accumulation of more power and money. There is the globalist corporatist wing... the establishment regime funded by Wall Street and run by the Professional Managerial Class... this cohort has a rich looting sandbox in place that requires a continuation of the US-funded Global Order... something that MAGA and Trump are committed to end. The Democrat party today is the primary political home for the PMC. About 30% of Republicans are the same with the rest being ejected for the reformed GOP candidates. Call it the Uniparty. They are really the 1% and the 10% upper class. The 10% own 88% of the stock market. The bottom 80% own 8%.
The other wing is the collectivist loving radicals that pushed Critical Theory through the education system and corrupted the minds of millions of students with that toxic mind virus to infiltrate our media and institutions and foment social and economic chaos and disruption so to influence elections. These are also upper class people but move often cut out of the 10%. They are socioeconomic malcontents.
The former broke the long-standing principle under Obama of not doing the same internally... using our dark money infrastructure for the common practice of deep state disrupting society in other countries to influence elections. The former has exploited the latter (i.e., promoting and encouraging protest and riots and woke ideology being shoved down everyone's throats).
We see the outcome of this continuing in places like the UK. We see the EU actually canceling the election in Romania because it wasn't good for the establishment regime. They banned LePenn in France. These are the progressive authoritarian moves that the election of Trump and MAGA have thwarted in the US.
"- Expelling from the country naturalized citizens who are critics like Zohran or Andew Sullivan or Elon or anyone serving or running for office or in a position of prominence or credibly threatening deportation."
I don't support it, but those are just Trump saying extreme things to light Democrat and liberal media hair on fire so they focus on that and not the real MAGA agenda. Works for me.
"- Stripping someone like Elon or a Jeff Bezos of government contracts for being critical of him or his government."
Give me a break. Democrat administrations don't give government contracts to business that does not support them. And they always look for ways to cancel, ban, de-platform and harm their political opponents. This is common politics. The power of corporations to make or break a political outcome is YUGE. Only those that are supportive get benefits. That is the way it has always worked.
"- Refusing judges' orders to restore funding for program passed by congress which he disagrees with."
So, a judge is never partisan? A judge never gets it wrong? A judge is never more an activist than a real jurist? There are no left-leaning federal judges currently ignoring the ruling of the Supreme Court? Was it wrong for Joe Biden to ignore so many court orders like giving student loan forgiveness without Congressional approval? The Biden Justice Department was weaponized as an anti-Trump machine. Your outrage is too one-sided to have credibility here.
I think there is a mindset that the left can do radical things and the right should be all buttoned up and completely conservative. That is in fact what the GOP idiots had been doing and why candidates like Romney and McCain got trashed. It is all negative branding in the media with the Democrats. What I see is frustration that Democrats no longer have that advantage with Trump using their same playbook against them.
"- Deploying the military to prevent peaceful protests."
LOL. Did you write this on a laptop from your hotel room in LA with the neighborhood burning through your window? Note that the Supreme Court ruled on it. Do you only support the court decisions that comport with your politics?
- Interfering with the election process in any significant way
Yeah, like Russiagate, Lies about Hunter Biden's laptop, abuse of judicial and legal power to "stop Trump". Ballot harvesting. Threatening to eliminate the electoral college. Threatening media and tech to ban, cancel and deplatform any that oppose or criticize the Democrats. Threatening to pack the Supreme Court. Inviting in tens of millions of illegals to pad the census count and farm new Democrat moocher voters? Send billions to NGOs, campuses and the media to influence more people to hate Trump, hate working class people, hate white people, hate males... and generally vote for the feminist party of collectivist hell? Threatening media and big tech to silence all their Democrat opponents (Twitter Files, Facebook Files, etc.).
What does Trump do? He holds rallies. He gets out to campaign. He says things to get the media to pay attention to him. He catches Democrat and liberal media hair on fire and gets them to chew off their own political arms and legs. He does all this while the opposition uses every dirty trick they can throw at the wall.
Democrat suck... they have gone full on negative character assassination as their primary political campaign strategy. They come to the table with nothing except why everyone should hate each other.
Elections have consequences. I support Trump cleaning up that mess.. making sure that the people involved in this moral race to the bottom are facing some harm for what they have done. That is not authoritarian... that is defense against real experienced authoritarianism and the power abuse of the bureaucracy and Regime.
Claiming Trump is an authoritarian risk is like claiming Churchill was the same during the 40s.
I'm afraid that was not a good reply Frank. You were so intent on listing everything you were upset about that you misunderstood what I wrote and then failed to respond at all to my question.
So let me try again. I'm going to repeat my post and add some commentary to make things clearer"
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HERE IS WHAT I WROTE ABOVE
"But the question I have for you that is actually relevant to the topic of the post is to know what you would actually consider a sign that the U.S. has crossed the threshold into a form of "autocracy"?
As it happens, I would agree with Damon's critics that we haven't crossed that line yet; increased funding for ICE isn't a red line for me. But here are things that would be:
- Expelling from the country naturalized citizens who are critics like Zohran or Andew Sullivan or Elon or anyone serving or running for office or in a position of prominence or credibly threatening deporation.
- Stripping someone like Elon or a Jeff Bezos of government contracts for being critical of him or his government.
- Refusing judges' orders to restore funding for program passed by congress which he disagrees with.
- Deploying the military to prevent peaceful protests.
- Interfering with the election process in any significant way
Do you agree that these types of action would constitute a descent into authoritarianism? If not, what would your red lines be?"
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COMMENTARY
A few points. In terms of the examples I above, I'm NOT saying they have already happened. In fact, I'm explicitly saying they have NOT already happened; it is why I said I agree with Damon's critics that we haven't yet crossed the line into authoritarianism.
What I was asking is if you would agree that they would constitute authoritarianism if they were to happen? And if not, what are the actions that would cross this red line. The entire point here is ask you to respond to the question that Damon raised in his post: how will we know when a descent into authoritarianism has happened. Hopefully, you will take a shot at responding this time.
Meanwhile, a few additional observations in response to a few of the things :
- It's not true that adminstrations' historically have only given contracts to their supporters and stripped contracts from opponents. It wasn't true under Biden, Obama, and Clinton, and it wasn't true under Reagan nor the Bushes either. There are tons of examples I can provide of government contracts going to their critics while they were President. One of the great things about this country is historically we have kept this line which allowed people to freely support the candidate of their choice without worrying it would hurt their business. That is why Trump's threats in this area are so concerning (although I haven't yet seen enough to think this line has been definitively crossed).
- The one example you gave of Biden defying the courts was student loans but Biden abided by the Supreme Court's ruling against student loan forgiveness. That is how the system should work if the courts find the executive branch has overstepped it's authority. They are then free to try to get legislation passed to change the law or to find a different way to achieve their goals that is consistent with the law.
- With regard to "ballot harvesting", if you haven't already, you should read Tangle News' definitive summaries of these issues:
https://www.readtangle.com/election-fraud-claims-debunked-donald-trump/
https://www.readtangle.com/2000-mules-fact-check-stolen-election/
https://www.readtangle.com/elon-musk-illegal-immigrant-lies/
These were the things in your rant that I thought it would be constructive to respond to. That said, If there are other things you want a response to I'm happy to oblige but just one at a time. So start with the thing you're most concerned about.
"One of the great things about this country is historically we have kept this line which allowed people to freely support the candidate of their choice without worrying it would hurt their business."
I think you are naive about how this works. Here is an example... I live in CA. I am a Republican. I have had problems with our governor and our Democrat legislature. One of my businesses got rejected (and I learned from a friend within the Newsom admin at the time) for participation in a program we had applied for over comments I had posted in a community blog and a letter to the editor criticizing the governor's lack of backbone dealing with the CA public employee unions. My business always deals with federal programs. My company has a history of high compliance and super high compliance scores, but we got tagged by a special bullshit audit that threatened our business. That was clearly a political move as one of my competitors is a woke business with strong DC Democrat connections and we could clearly see the breadcrumbs coming from the political connections to strong-arm the agency to go after us. We also learned that this competitor company was filling the market with negative press about us "they are in trouble with the agency" to win more business from us.
This type of stuff happens all the time. Yes, it sucks, and I am not in support of it. It frankly infuriates me... it is abuse of political power. But it is more common from Democrat administrations as Republicans in general are pro-business and it goes against their principles. Democrats would prefer that government owns the means of production, so they don't really care that they harm business. Just look at the government actions against business during the pandemic and compare that to states and local governments run by Republicans.
With respect to what Trump has said, I would oppose it if actions. However, it is just words at this point, and I expect it to only stay words.
I note one difference with people that work in professions moving words and figures around on paper vs people that make, build, grow and sell real products... words seem to be often conflated with action... as if we don't even need the action as proof because he/she said the words. I see that tendency as problematic especially at a time when our media is filled with so much crap... so many lies... so much hyperbole and breathless hysteria. I am a much more pragmatic person that can read the room of rhetoric and "advertising" if you will and ignore it while looking for real evidence of actions that would prove intent.
Biden did an end around with student loan forgiveness. He disregarded the spirit and intent of the Supreme Court ruling.
I will read the ballot harvesting articles you posted.
Exactly. Remember double masking? Lockdowns? Schools closed for 2 years? Covid vaccine mandates? Vaccine pass to go to restaurants and museums in New York? And dont get me started on the pronoun police, the on line censorship, the labelling of dissent as "hate speech."
Pandemic was an exceptional situation. Trump is instead making an emergency out of nothing.
The pandemic was a test-trap for the left liberals that could not control themselves with a orgasm of top-down authoritarian control. We can see the clear evidence in how Republican run states and cities handled it vs all the Democrat run states and cities.
While the author describes possible paths to autocracy, what makes the case for autocracy difficult to contemplate is the left's long practice of crying wolf about such things. It's so abused 'fascist,' 'Nazi,' 'autocrat,' 'dictator' that the crys now fall on deaf ears.
If you read Frank above he does sound like a fascist. When people start openly cheering going for non-white people, even citizens, and deporting them, it is fascism. When people say things like "inner-city rats" like the dumbest senator ever Tuberville, it is fascism.
I agree with most of this article, and share a lot of Damon's concerns, but like some other commenters question how dramatic a departure in governance Trump actually represents, even in his second term. The Supreme Court had long ago established Chevron Deference in good faith so that bureaucrats had a certain amount of wiggle room to interpret ambiguous statutes, which was good, but that became blatantly abused to sneakily enact progressive policy goals Congress never authorized. With the stroke of a pen, after repeated acknowledgment that it would be illegal, Obama declared DACA and essentially that immigration law was solely what the executive said it was. That was a strikingly undemocratic moment and enormous lurch down the road away from constitutional government. But working among progressive legal eagles at Columbia Law around that time, did I see any furrowed brows of concern or hear any suggestion that these things were at all troubling? No, never anything but glee and triumphalism. I struggle to find a sin of Trump's without extensive precedent under Obama and then Biden-Harris. I doubt there can be any way to reach a truce or reestablish some norms without that sort of truth & reconciliation acknowledgment.
Too many hypothetical theories aimed at one person. That's not balanced, unbiased reasoning. That is unreasonable vindictiveness and really shouldn't get an airing on a platform like Persuasion.
I'm not a fan of the piece, but the reason why isn't that there are "Too many hypothetical theories aimed at one person", which is a largely nonsensical complaint.
This is because that person is exceptionally deranged and dangerous.
Many words, perhaps too many, have been written about threats to our constitutional democratic republic. What can we as ordinary citizens do to support our rights and institutions? As the old expression goes, don’t identify a problem without having a potential solution.
I think the best suggestion I've heard is to get involved in local politics. Reinvigorate our institutions from the bottom up.
I'm subscribed to Persuasion for BOTH problems AND solutions, but I would have liked to see some better suggestions alongside the piece
Damon is a great thinker and writer. Each of his points are thoughtful and fair. I submit, and he disagrees, that these breaking of norms (which is what he’s decrying) is simply reversing a decade of norms broken that one half of us despise while the other half describes as “progress”. New social norms fortified by laws that clearly play racial and gender favorites (Progressive customers). Egregious abuse, to the tune of 10M+ of our Cold War asylum policy to catch-and-release unvetted and God-knows-who immigrants. These “norms”, that Progressives cherish and are now being walked back, feel like Armageddon to them. But what Trump is reversing, every bit as aggressively as the original suppository of woke and open border dogma we’ve been forced to endure, is simply a regression to the mean. Back to a normal level we once ALL agreed on. Right?
It feels awful and cruel, but we never should have allowed it to reach this level. The pendulum swing back feels aggressive only because the initial swing was far too aggressive. It’s like the guys in hazmat suits who have to clean up the Vegas hotel the morning after Mike Tyson, the baby, the chicken, the broken teeth, and the face tattoo all made for a charming Hangover movie. Too far begets too far. And, of course, this will be agreed upon by NO Progressives reading it as their past decade of social triumph wasn’t “too far”, it wasn’t even “enough”.
PERSUASION seems to be a favorite site for DJT true believers to come troll.
Trump will push it as far as he thinks he can get away with. Why wouldn't he?
The frog will never know it is dead. Because it is dead.
C'mon man! 3 years 3 months 27 days.