"Quote; “Theoretically you have a free press, but in practice there is self-censorship,” he said. “Theoretically you have courts, in practice the courts adopt decisions dictated from above. Theoretically there are civil rights enshrined in the constitution; in practice you are not able to exercise some of these rights.If it sounds a bit hysterical to compare what’s happening in Trump’s America to Putin’s Russia..."
Yes it certainly does... this is "the resistance" gaining momentum again to shoot themselves in the foot. The Leftist Elite seem to be completely blind to their cognitive dissonance, which can become problematic if it leads, as it has done here, to this authors getting caught up in trying to rationalize his dissonance to the point of stressing himself out. The Left seem to have learnt nothing as to what happened in the past election, and the mood of America to democratically elect the present POTUS.
If you have a substantive counter to San's argument above, I'd be interested in reading it. Would also be interested to know what you think WOULD be sign we're sliding into authoritarianism. Presumably if Trump critics started being jailed or assassinated that would convince you. Is there anything short of that which would worry you?
It sounds like you think Sam is blowing things out of proportion, and you don't think the section he included blaming previous presidents (since 2001) was sufficient to fix this. How are Sam's examples dishonest or incorrect?
For folks like Nickerus, who have been persuaded that the legacy media is corrupt and set on "destroying America" (for reasons never fully explained), their news and information environment requires them to see any true criticism of Trump or his posse as TDS. Nickerus and millions like him are the nightmare of James Madison, "An ill-informed electorate". I'll bet that Nickerus will troll this post with the usual equivalency argument so dear to those who really believe that Fox, et al is real journalism.
It would seem that my comment has drawn out some further expressions of opinion, which is all that comments are intended to be. Life teaches us that those on the opposite side of the dividing line between Republican and Democrat in America are never going to convert those in opposition to change their minds on political topics. All that one can say is that opinions presented are just that, opinions. No one is right and no one is wrong. But what most of us would agree is that it is wrong, to use pejorative language in an attempt to shame and denigrate those of a different opinion.
You mean like accusing someone as having TDS? It’s clearly a pejorative taken in context and you used it freely. As one who has frequently been the target of TDS insults, your attempt to now appear above such tactics as “denigration” seems a stretch too far.
Nickerus: I would agree that minds are unlikely to be changed. Despite many people's best efforts, I'm not sure in the entire history of the internet whether anyone has actually changed their mind because of a comment disagreeing with them. To use Jonathan Haidt's brilliant "elephant and its rider" metaphor, we intuitively decide what we believe and then use logic to justify that decision (not the other way around). The upshot is you're never going to change someone's mind through logic; we're all always able to come up with some 'logical" rationalization for why what we want to believe is correct.
But while I don't think minds can be changed through online comments, I do think folks who haven't made up their mind already can find these discussions useful. So I think it would be useful to hear your reasons for why you believe Sam is getting it wrong.
Thank you for this. The last paragraph says it all IMHO. History tells us that the thin of the wedge towards authoritarianism does sometime happens surreptitiously, but always in stages. The claim that Trump has in anyway impugned the Constitution, is all scaremongering of the highest order and not to be believed. The Courts seem to be agin him and the SCOTUS with him - for reasons we both know why. America can’t fall victim to authoritarian rule in four years – with the mid terms as a blocker as well - IMHO this as far as from being possible as pigs can fly. That is my opinion and my reasoning. There must be a coup by the armed forces and or a civil war and there is no evidence of troop movements and concentrations let alone armed militia on the city streets. There is no underling evidence except “hearsay” of those opposing Trump, that he, being the POTUS is in anyway accelerating the slide into authoritarian rule over taking America, IMHO. Just an opinion of course. The Constitution is there to protect Americans, and it has up to now. IMHO it will continue to do so, in the next four years and many years after. If Americans are worried that their Constitution can no longer protect them, then change it. Yes.... I hear you "impossible you say"... and you are correct in that, in the light of the deep schism in American politics.
This is the third or fourth post about Trump's authoritarianism. And every time I leave the same comment. Which is more or less this: I voted for Trump but I don't like everything he does or has done. I particularly don't like the censorship and persecution of students criticizing Israel. Nor did I like Canada as a new state or Gulf of America. BUT most of the laments by the democrat aligned writers are so hypocritical.
Have you forgotten the Biden Covid regime? Have you forgotten that Meta, Twitter and others were pressured to censor dissent including by leading scientists like Jay Bhattacharya? Meta had a case in front of the Justice department at that time. So they had to listen.
Do you remember Elizabeth Warren telling Amazon to take Robert F Kennedy's books off their site? Amazon, like all the big tech companies, has massive government contracts for the cloud services. Do you remember the Fauci lab leak coverup, aided and abetted by the government? And what about the constant lawfare against Trump?
C'mon! ( as Joe Biden would say). Trump was prosecuted for overstating the value of a property when his company took out a loan like 20 years ago which they paid back in full.
Please...
But most importantly REMEMBER COVID! The world shut down, schools closed for two years in Dem states. Florida accused of being a death trap when it re opened earlier. Total unwilingness of the elites to open their eyes and admit that covid was a bad flu, masks didnt work, and the vaccine didn't stop transmission.. Biden MANDATED vaccines for millions, including pregnant women! A brand new, untested, mrna vaccine mandated for student to stay in college.
Cry me a river. I dont like everything Trump does, but the Biden years were a nightmare and I havent even talked about the transgender craziness in this comment.
Yes! I would like to see him address Covid and to the extensive censorship of dissenting voices, including those discussing covid origins. Thomas Massie has just sponsored a bill to repeal the nefarious PREP act which gave the vaccine makers and other corporation total liability protection.
I'm worried about lot of those too. Do you think the paragraph here failed to address the censorship of dissentong voices?
> The accusatory finger rests heavy on actions taken under the Biden administration to curtail voices skeptical of accepted narratives on the pandemic—with Biden himself accusing Facebook of “killing people” by failing to enact desired content moderation regimes and with Biden officials regularly browbeating executives at tech companies to more stringently monitor their platforms.
Well yes okay, he did touch on it briefly. But the covid regime was a big big deal. Lives were upended, some ruined. Inflation got started during covid. The deficit soared. It wasn't just a footnote. I dont think this writer gives the authoritarianism of the Biden admin enough weight. Thats my feelling. I dont like much of what Trump is doing, but what other choice do I have but to support him given the alternative? The democrats have yet to apologize for the covid tyranny. In fact I believe they will do it again when the next "pandemic" gets cooked up.
Trump was in power for the first year of covid and responsible for many of the restrictions.
Lots of claims and counterclaims were made during the pandemic, some helpful and some not. We were in a situation that was very new, most countries weren't prepared (also now made worse in the US by cuts and interference at the CDC) and policy was made somewhat on the hoof.
Schools, especially in the US, were closed for far too long, probably doing long term damage to many children.
Lives were upended by some of the restrictions and lives were upended by having friends and family dying from the disease or suffering long term consequences.
The vaccine was tested but, like all vaccines, has some side-effects that have, in some cases caused deaths.
The vaccine, by independent measures, saved millions of lives.
None of those pandemic-related measures have remained in place.
The changes currently being wrought by the Trump administration (corruption of the justice system, shutting down aid programs, destroying US research, ideological interference in the regulation of medicines, suppression of freedom of speech across many areas of life and work etc) are likely to remain in place for years to come, partly because the damage caused is permanent but also because it's shifting the needle to what is acceptable.
Well we don't agree about covid and the vaccines- which is fine, that's diversity of thought. But citizens like me were forced to be vaccinated with a new product, multiple times. Pregnant women included! This was unjustifed, as it was rapidly apparent that the vaccine did not prevent transmission or infection ( there was a lancet article about this quite early). But the mandates continued for several years. That's wrong....and authoritarian. ( and btw, very profitable for Moderna and Pfizer).
And a related point is this: Sure, in the beginning no one knew what was going on. And yes, Trump went along with the first lockdown and gave the go ahead to operation warp speed which he ( typically) bragged about. But a year later, there were lessons to be learned. Florida re opened early, Sweden never locked down, most European countries never made children wear masks in schools, vaccines weren't preventing transmission.
But the democrats stuck with ideological fervor to their positions. They wouldn't revise, wouldn't admit they were wrong. Not only that but at the time they labelled any dissenters as far right extremists and racists. ( I am not kidding, this really happened, to me as well as others).
If anything, it's a soft move to soft authoritarianism, but more than likely just a soft argument.
No sympathy whatsoever for the judge, and the perp walk seems like a small deal. If you believe in what you've done, then a perpwalk is a walk of honor.
As far as the ambitious falling in to line, we've had that for years as a result of left wing identitarianism. Don't believe it's systemic?You're cancelled. Don't believe patriarchy is still holding people back?You're cancelled. Don't believe in gender affirming care for minors or self-selection?You're cancelled. How about Merrick Garland's DOJ issuing a memorandum instructing law enforcement to treat the protesting of school boards' onboarding of woke progressive policies as potential domestic terrorist threats? Or the fake misinformation infrastructure (malinformation anyone?) created and employed by the last adminstration? Or the forced acceptance of millions of illegal migrants.
Those soft authoritarian episodes had broad acceptance from the left especially the media and academia so we never heard loud protests even if there were any.
There are still plenty of people on the right, in academia and in law firms and other professions, as well as in government, who have their lips buttoned for fear of reprisals or cancellation for their views.
I see no difference in substance or degree with what is happening now, other than Trump's personal loyalty fetish, and I'm not sure that part matters.
I would like to see a Peruasion writer do a mea culpa for the covid tyranny years. Is that possible? There is a good book out by a Princeton professor and a liberal: In Covids Wake by Macedo and Lee.
OMG! More TDS...
"Quote; “Theoretically you have a free press, but in practice there is self-censorship,” he said. “Theoretically you have courts, in practice the courts adopt decisions dictated from above. Theoretically there are civil rights enshrined in the constitution; in practice you are not able to exercise some of these rights.If it sounds a bit hysterical to compare what’s happening in Trump’s America to Putin’s Russia..."
Yes it certainly does... this is "the resistance" gaining momentum again to shoot themselves in the foot. The Leftist Elite seem to be completely blind to their cognitive dissonance, which can become problematic if it leads, as it has done here, to this authors getting caught up in trying to rationalize his dissonance to the point of stressing himself out. The Left seem to have learnt nothing as to what happened in the past election, and the mood of America to democratically elect the present POTUS.
As I commented in Persuasion's other good recent piece along this this line
(https://www.persuasion.community/p/how-to-know-when-the-frog-has-boiled/comment/133322895), my experience has been that Trump supporters tend to cry TDS when they want to avoid the substance of an argument.
If you have a substantive counter to San's argument above, I'd be interested in reading it. Would also be interested to know what you think WOULD be sign we're sliding into authoritarianism. Presumably if Trump critics started being jailed or assassinated that would convince you. Is there anything short of that which would worry you?
It sounds like you think Sam is blowing things out of proportion, and you don't think the section he included blaming previous presidents (since 2001) was sufficient to fix this. How are Sam's examples dishonest or incorrect?
For folks like Nickerus, who have been persuaded that the legacy media is corrupt and set on "destroying America" (for reasons never fully explained), their news and information environment requires them to see any true criticism of Trump or his posse as TDS. Nickerus and millions like him are the nightmare of James Madison, "An ill-informed electorate". I'll bet that Nickerus will troll this post with the usual equivalency argument so dear to those who really believe that Fox, et al is real journalism.
Hmm. I'd rather hear Nickerus's answer than jump to any potentially-hasty conclusions as long as I'm in the Persuasion comments section.
It would seem that my comment has drawn out some further expressions of opinion, which is all that comments are intended to be. Life teaches us that those on the opposite side of the dividing line between Republican and Democrat in America are never going to convert those in opposition to change their minds on political topics. All that one can say is that opinions presented are just that, opinions. No one is right and no one is wrong. But what most of us would agree is that it is wrong, to use pejorative language in an attempt to shame and denigrate those of a different opinion.
You mean like accusing someone as having TDS? It’s clearly a pejorative taken in context and you used it freely. As one who has frequently been the target of TDS insults, your attempt to now appear above such tactics as “denigration” seems a stretch too far.
Nickerus: I would agree that minds are unlikely to be changed. Despite many people's best efforts, I'm not sure in the entire history of the internet whether anyone has actually changed their mind because of a comment disagreeing with them. To use Jonathan Haidt's brilliant "elephant and its rider" metaphor, we intuitively decide what we believe and then use logic to justify that decision (not the other way around). The upshot is you're never going to change someone's mind through logic; we're all always able to come up with some 'logical" rationalization for why what we want to believe is correct.
But while I don't think minds can be changed through online comments, I do think folks who haven't made up their mind already can find these discussions useful. So I think it would be useful to hear your reasons for why you believe Sam is getting it wrong.
Thank you for this. The last paragraph says it all IMHO. History tells us that the thin of the wedge towards authoritarianism does sometime happens surreptitiously, but always in stages. The claim that Trump has in anyway impugned the Constitution, is all scaremongering of the highest order and not to be believed. The Courts seem to be agin him and the SCOTUS with him - for reasons we both know why. America can’t fall victim to authoritarian rule in four years – with the mid terms as a blocker as well - IMHO this as far as from being possible as pigs can fly. That is my opinion and my reasoning. There must be a coup by the armed forces and or a civil war and there is no evidence of troop movements and concentrations let alone armed militia on the city streets. There is no underling evidence except “hearsay” of those opposing Trump, that he, being the POTUS is in anyway accelerating the slide into authoritarian rule over taking America, IMHO. Just an opinion of course. The Constitution is there to protect Americans, and it has up to now. IMHO it will continue to do so, in the next four years and many years after. If Americans are worried that their Constitution can no longer protect them, then change it. Yes.... I hear you "impossible you say"... and you are correct in that, in the light of the deep schism in American politics.
Is that an argument ? Sorry no it's just a comment.
This is the third or fourth post about Trump's authoritarianism. And every time I leave the same comment. Which is more or less this: I voted for Trump but I don't like everything he does or has done. I particularly don't like the censorship and persecution of students criticizing Israel. Nor did I like Canada as a new state or Gulf of America. BUT most of the laments by the democrat aligned writers are so hypocritical.
Have you forgotten the Biden Covid regime? Have you forgotten that Meta, Twitter and others were pressured to censor dissent including by leading scientists like Jay Bhattacharya? Meta had a case in front of the Justice department at that time. So they had to listen.
Do you remember Elizabeth Warren telling Amazon to take Robert F Kennedy's books off their site? Amazon, like all the big tech companies, has massive government contracts for the cloud services. Do you remember the Fauci lab leak coverup, aided and abetted by the government? And what about the constant lawfare against Trump?
C'mon! ( as Joe Biden would say). Trump was prosecuted for overstating the value of a property when his company took out a loan like 20 years ago which they paid back in full.
Please...
But most importantly REMEMBER COVID! The world shut down, schools closed for two years in Dem states. Florida accused of being a death trap when it re opened earlier. Total unwilingness of the elites to open their eyes and admit that covid was a bad flu, masks didnt work, and the vaccine didn't stop transmission.. Biden MANDATED vaccines for millions, including pregnant women! A brand new, untested, mrna vaccine mandated for student to stay in college.
Cry me a river. I dont like everything Trump does, but the Biden years were a nightmare and I havent even talked about the transgender craziness in this comment.
Isabelle— What exactly do you think was missing from Sam's section on the failings of all the administrations since 2001? Specific reference to Covid?
Yes! I would like to see him address Covid and to the extensive censorship of dissenting voices, including those discussing covid origins. Thomas Massie has just sponsored a bill to repeal the nefarious PREP act which gave the vaccine makers and other corporation total liability protection.
I'm worried about lot of those too. Do you think the paragraph here failed to address the censorship of dissentong voices?
> The accusatory finger rests heavy on actions taken under the Biden administration to curtail voices skeptical of accepted narratives on the pandemic—with Biden himself accusing Facebook of “killing people” by failing to enact desired content moderation regimes and with Biden officials regularly browbeating executives at tech companies to more stringently monitor their platforms.
Well yes okay, he did touch on it briefly. But the covid regime was a big big deal. Lives were upended, some ruined. Inflation got started during covid. The deficit soared. It wasn't just a footnote. I dont think this writer gives the authoritarianism of the Biden admin enough weight. Thats my feelling. I dont like much of what Trump is doing, but what other choice do I have but to support him given the alternative? The democrats have yet to apologize for the covid tyranny. In fact I believe they will do it again when the next "pandemic" gets cooked up.
Trump was in power for the first year of covid and responsible for many of the restrictions.
Lots of claims and counterclaims were made during the pandemic, some helpful and some not. We were in a situation that was very new, most countries weren't prepared (also now made worse in the US by cuts and interference at the CDC) and policy was made somewhat on the hoof.
Schools, especially in the US, were closed for far too long, probably doing long term damage to many children.
Lives were upended by some of the restrictions and lives were upended by having friends and family dying from the disease or suffering long term consequences.
The vaccine was tested but, like all vaccines, has some side-effects that have, in some cases caused deaths.
The vaccine, by independent measures, saved millions of lives.
None of those pandemic-related measures have remained in place.
The changes currently being wrought by the Trump administration (corruption of the justice system, shutting down aid programs, destroying US research, ideological interference in the regulation of medicines, suppression of freedom of speech across many areas of life and work etc) are likely to remain in place for years to come, partly because the damage caused is permanent but also because it's shifting the needle to what is acceptable.
Well we don't agree about covid and the vaccines- which is fine, that's diversity of thought. But citizens like me were forced to be vaccinated with a new product, multiple times. Pregnant women included! This was unjustifed, as it was rapidly apparent that the vaccine did not prevent transmission or infection ( there was a lancet article about this quite early). But the mandates continued for several years. That's wrong....and authoritarian. ( and btw, very profitable for Moderna and Pfizer).
And a related point is this: Sure, in the beginning no one knew what was going on. And yes, Trump went along with the first lockdown and gave the go ahead to operation warp speed which he ( typically) bragged about. But a year later, there were lessons to be learned. Florida re opened early, Sweden never locked down, most European countries never made children wear masks in schools, vaccines weren't preventing transmission.
But the democrats stuck with ideological fervor to their positions. They wouldn't revise, wouldn't admit they were wrong. Not only that but at the time they labelled any dissenters as far right extremists and racists. ( I am not kidding, this really happened, to me as well as others).
If anything, it's a soft move to soft authoritarianism, but more than likely just a soft argument.
No sympathy whatsoever for the judge, and the perp walk seems like a small deal. If you believe in what you've done, then a perpwalk is a walk of honor.
As far as the ambitious falling in to line, we've had that for years as a result of left wing identitarianism. Don't believe it's systemic?You're cancelled. Don't believe patriarchy is still holding people back?You're cancelled. Don't believe in gender affirming care for minors or self-selection?You're cancelled. How about Merrick Garland's DOJ issuing a memorandum instructing law enforcement to treat the protesting of school boards' onboarding of woke progressive policies as potential domestic terrorist threats? Or the fake misinformation infrastructure (malinformation anyone?) created and employed by the last adminstration? Or the forced acceptance of millions of illegal migrants.
Those soft authoritarian episodes had broad acceptance from the left especially the media and academia so we never heard loud protests even if there were any.
There are still plenty of people on the right, in academia and in law firms and other professions, as well as in government, who have their lips buttoned for fear of reprisals or cancellation for their views.
I see no difference in substance or degree with what is happening now, other than Trump's personal loyalty fetish, and I'm not sure that part matters.
I would like to see a Peruasion writer do a mea culpa for the covid tyranny years. Is that possible? There is a good book out by a Princeton professor and a liberal: In Covids Wake by Macedo and Lee.
I think this piece by Bethany McLean in Persuasion is very strong on the subject:
https://www.persuasion.community/p/how-covid-broke-our-trust-in-government