31
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The path to autocracy; A second Trump term will leave America’s political system and culture looking even more like Orbán’s Hungary
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- Title
- The Path to Autocracy
- Authors
- Ben Rhodes
- Published
- Jun 15 2020
- Word count
- 2317 words
A lot of Americans have had their eyes open for a while, we just can’t do more within our power. I’m from Massachusetts, and other than elect progressive representatives to congress (like Elizabeth Warren, Ayanna Pressley, Barney Frank, Joe Kennedy III, etc.) what can we do? We can’t force regressive people in other states to turn around and vote in their best interests. Due to the nature of our government, short of a constitutional convention, Congress is basically stalemated, and the executive is running amok without the checks that ought to reign it in. And we have idiotic rulings from the SC like Citizens United. Basically, short of some sort of massive mobilization (think an order of magnitude larger than the BLM movement), I don’t see what could affect real systemic change.
Violence won't help anything. If you have the numbers to violently overthrow the US government with the weapons available to us, you have the numbers to do it without violence. Of all the successful revolutions post-WWII with well-equipped, modern industrialized armies, all (or almost all, depending on interpretation) have been more or less nonviolent. You'll be horribly outgunned and at best can only engage in a war of attrition, unless you can get a significant portion of the military to defect, which is highly unlikely and might as well just be a coup.
Our options, if voting him out proves impossible, are either a general strike or hope for principled military leaders to enact a coup. Bringing guns into it isn't going to help anything.
I don’t believe that my voice has no impact, I just realize that my voice isn’t the only one that counts and that there is a lot of money to be made in the business of keeping the electorate uninformed and even actively self-harmful. I think Biden has a real chance to win, but that is just one battle in a highly multifaceted war that most refuse to acknowledge is being waged, and even fewer have the appropriate weapons and wherewithal to participate.
America is pretty young as far as nations go, and we’ve had some violent upheavals (including our birth), so I’m not sure what we need to learn from the French as far as revolutions go. The trouble with violent upheaval is that you can’t be sure the things that fill the power vacuum will be any better. While we still have a system that has a possibility of functioning I think it’s worth holding out hope that it can work again via normal transition of power.
While I agree the rest of your comment, I very strongly disagree with that assessment of cultural differences within America. For the size of the country, the place is remarkably culturally homogenous. It's strongly polarized along a rural-urban divide, but that's a divide that exists everywhere in the country. A rural reactionary in California is going to have much more in common with one in Texas than they are with a progressive Californian, and you could probably drop people from southern urban areas right in to California without them missing a beat.
I partially agree with this, partially disagree. I'd say rural areas do have sort of homogeneity to them (with some striking exceptions), but cities definitely do not. From my experiences living in both NYC and Columbus, the culture between the two is night and day, even if the politics end up being pretty similar. There's an extreme unease and unfriendliness in New York. People don't talk to each other without purpose, and the mays, pleases and thank yous are largely absent. The unwritten rules about what you don't or shouldn't say are very different there too, as well as the general attitudes towards authority, and common responsibility.
Personally, I didn't get that vibe from NYC, but I've only visited, never lived there. It's of course possible that I'm just too socially oblivious to notice that sort of thing, or haven't spent enough time there to get an accurate read on it. I will say though that older cities, especially pre-car ones, and particularly NYC, definitely do have more distinct character than postwar developments. Still, I don't think that constitutes a massive cultural difference. Certainly not on the scale of different countries within the EU, and not remotely enough to make governing challenging absent the urban-rural divide.
The more I think about it, the more I think I find a similar relationship in rural areas, actually. A frequent, and to my mind accurate comparison folks who study the history of Appalachia make, is comparing the relationship and cultural differences of Appalachia and South, to the Scottish lowlands and highlands. The geography even presents almost identical stratification both cultural and economic, in that in both the highlands and the Appalachian mountains, it's pretty damned hard to grow crops, develop property, and build vital infrastructure, versus the flatter, more temperate lowlands/American south. The cultural differences aren't as easy to point to with NYC versus a midwestern city, but they are certainly there.
Coming from a place where violence is quite a bit more culturally accepted than the rest of America, the fundamental problem with this mentality is that the most capable purveyors of violence by and large are the regressives that @onyxleopard references. I know a couple handfuls of IDPA and USPSA rated shooters in my state, including a couple of grand masters. Not a single person there that leans left among them.
Even the folks who are a natural fit, volunteers and school board chairs in liberal districts, have been inoculated by the one-two punch of toxic national Democrats and supportive local GOP politicians. It's a pretty sad state of affairs, but I don't see much change happening any time soon.
And even outside of traditional arms, the majority of folks with any combat experience end up leaning conservative or libertarian a super-majority of the time. Comparisons to the French revolution aren't quite accurate in that regard, you'd look to look at anti-Napoleonic rebellions for a more accurate comparison. The problem which that is that each such rebellion ended in total failure.
This is true in the USA as well. But....they already will use violence (or at least threats of it). Practicing non-violence while one side is violent doesn't exactly work when the president is on the side of the violent.
We've reached a point where it takes prolonged multi-city protests, including burning a police station to the ground to accomplish even modest proposals for police reform.
FWIW, I know several gun-toting liberals from the northeastern US. I know a local gun range has self-defense classes specially for LGBTQ+ persons and I’m aware that some gun rights activists actively promote concealed carry for such persons.
I'm aware, but the fundamental problem is that these folks just aren't shooting very much. I don't exactly live at the range myself, but I can take the dozens of folks I know with firearms, line their politics on the x axis, line time at range on the y axis, and I'd have an extremely strong positive correlation. I'm all for /r/socialistRA and similar movements, but at the end of the day if people aren't shooting with some regularity, they won't be reliable shots when they need to, especially when it comes to handguns, which are what most people actually have in the home and/or carry.
Oh, I don’t think you’d be able to stand up a militia with casual shooters. I’m just pointing out that even in gun-hating MA, there’s still plenty of people carrying. But, I also don’t think there’s nearly enough motivation in MA right now to stand up a militia, period. People who own guns here do so for recreation or ostensibly personal defense—not because they are forming militias. Maybe if some of these nazi groups show up in MA it’ll be a different story. Like when the Westboro Baptist Church assholes came to protest at my high school graduation in Lexington, plenty of folks came to counter-protest. I could imagine you’d get a similar reaction if some Proud Boys showed up.
The French Revolution didn't end well for a lot of people involved, and the instability ended with 15 years of another monarch. Any sort of civil war here that doesn't end with Biden "cleanly" and unambiguously installed as president followed by another Reconstruction is going to result in years of instability. I see a lot of people talk about getting guns but unless you're planning on going to protests I don't think it's going to help anything at all. The feds aren't going to disappear you unless you've been to a protest and at least so far the vigilantes aren't killing their neighbors, only people at protests. Carrying a gun on you everywhere you go isn't going to make a difference, they're not just going to randomly light up whatever store you're in and you shouldn't be thinking about playing good guy with a gun in that scenario anyway.
That's not to say that we should lay down and take it by any means, but having random people on our side start shooting isn't going to help anything. Instead you should organize - build relationships with friends and family who are on our side, look into local political organizations and see what you can do there, do what you can to prepare in case supply chains start falling apart, that sort of thing. The last thing we need in this country is even more guns.
I mean, even if he loses, not much is going to fundamentally change about the country. Trump supporters aren't going to just give up, and Trump himself is going to fight to find any reason to stay relevant. The federal government might take a step back from the brink, but state and local politics won't be affected. If the GOP maintains control of the Senate, they're going to obstruct anything and everything Dems try to do, like they did for Obama. Russia is still going to sow misinformation. It's been so successful, I doubt even sanctions will deter them at this point.
I used to be an optimist about the direction America was going, but now, I don't see any likely path that doesn't end up in some sort of cataclysm. I don't believe that there's going to be an outright civil war, but the state of affairs is already starting to look a lot like the Northern Ireland conflict.
If Biden wins it's nothing more than a 4 year lull. A brief period for anyone lucky enough to flee the country and re-settle elsewhere.
It gives us four more years to organize unhindered. Four more years for BLM and all the other movements out there to continue to gather momentum and build infrastructure and connections with people. That's valuable at the very least since that's not going to happen under Trump. Having Biden in office also makes for fairer elections which will help us.
In this case organize means building connections with people around you with similar goals to get people you like into office and get those already in office to do things you'd like them to do, and if there ends up being a civil war it's people you can rely on and work together with to get necessities to live and keep each other safe. I don't want a revolution, but we might need some form of one (preferably as non-violent as possible) if the regime and its backers continue to escalate what they're doing (like approving of armed vigilantes killing protestors). "Us" in this case means anyone who doesn't support the regime. Whether you like Biden or not, if you're against Trump you're on the same side. This is not to excuse Republicans who only don't like Trump because he's doing things in a way that they don't like, like the Lincoln Project.
There's going to be record numbers of mail-in votes this year, which means it will likely take weeks to count them all and get the final election results. But we're used to knowing the winner already on election night. Excluding the various combination of house/senate control, there are four realistic outcomes:
The mail-in votes will likely lean heavily towards Biden, meaning in-person votes will likely lean Trump, so I fear outcome 2 might be the most likely. If that happens, Trump will of course declare victory, citing widespread mail-in voter fraud. His heavily armed cultists are going to take him at his word. One America News will declare him the winner, and the Internet Research Agency will mobilise massively behind him on social media. The big wildcard here as I see it is Fox News; will they declare Trump the winner even though they know he's likely to lose when every vote is counted? If they declare him the winner prematurely, I think the entire Republican Party (more or less) will unite behind him and support him, leading to a highly uncertain situation in January. I think even the best case scenario 4 will get ugly, but scenario 2 might be disastrous, maybe even more so than scenario 1.
The Transition Integrity Project simulated various scenarios and here is their report.
Tristan Wont Shut Up on youtube made a video about it as well.
It'll suck no matter what, but for a Biden win scenario 4 is far better than scenario 2. That's why I'm encouraging anyone who can to vote in person. People have risked their lives and died for democracy- the miniscule risk involved in going to the polls wearing a mask, keeping distanced, and washing hands immediately afterward is really the least we can do.
Everyone definitely doesn't seem to know that, at least not yet. Axios did a poll related to it recently - 36% of the people surveyed expect to know the result on election night, with the majority (60%) thinking it will be no more than a couple of days. There wasn't a large difference between Democrats and Republicans in this belief.
Because of Fox News.
It seems like Trump will always have some fans but he’s pretty much toast if he loses (in a clear way everyone accepts), and that would result in major upheaval in the Republican party as people look for a new leader. Of course Trump supporters are still going to be watching Fox News and sharing memes owning the libs, but whether they stay unified and which politician(s) benefit most from this seems difficult to predict.
One of his children or Kushner is going to run, mark my words.
Okay, but name recognition only gets you so far. They will have to compete with a bunch of other people.
Listened to the NYT Daily Podcast last week on how Donald Jr has suddenly found himself a purpose in life being a part of his father's political career (also on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc). After listening to that, I would bet hard money on him running in 2024. If he wins is entirely up to how the next 4 years go, who else is running, etc. Trump Sr is still trying to seek his own father's validation, and he's already dead. Imagine that effect magnified by Sr goading Jr into running. And Jr actually has some PR savvy to him.
Tell that to Trump.
Who predicted Trump? It seems like predicting the next big populist candidate might be hard as well.
My whole point is that who the candidate is doesn't really matter. Trump supporters aren't going to wake up after a Biden win and think, "Oh, I was completely wrong about everything." or even, "Well, Trump is gone so I just don't care about politics anymore." Besides the "ideology" they're going to continue to fight for, they're going to fight to keep Trumpism relevant because they're invested beyond their ears in it. They're not going to view a Trump loss as a failure of their movement or a sign to reevaluate their approach to politics, and I say that with confidence because nothing that has happened in the past four years has affected Trump's base. They're already seeding conspiracies about voter fraud to justify him losing. Trump literally said outright, if he loses, it's only because the other side cheated.
If Trump himself is no longer viable, for whatever reason, I think they're more than likely going to shift to someone closely within his orbit, of which is constituted mostly by his family, because that's who they trust the most and who has the most incentive to keep the Trump train going. The GOP establishment has no control over the situation -- they're not even relevant.
It’s plausible, but it’s only one scenario, and things are pretty weird so I think a lot of other things could happen.
I’m sympathetic to the notion that a small but increasing percentage of the electorate are basically trolls and conspiracy theorists. But trolls are kind of whimsical in what memes catch their fancy, and there are many possible conspiracy theories, so I think that makes fringe candidates a bit more likely and results less predictable.
Here’s a weird scenario for you: what if someone like Joe Rogan runs?
Elections aren’t predictable far in advance, neither the candidates nor the winner, so this doesn’t seem like the sort of thing it makes sense to talk confidently about. Though many will anyway.
Ooooh a mail order husband! If I wasn't married already :)
Sidenote about Sweden: Learn Qt and QML - apply for work with Volvo in Gothenburg. They have sucked the world dry of Qt and QML people and are still looking for more. Since its a "unique skill needed" its easy for them to move through immigration.
Not joking. If you have some programming skills ask Volvo and check up their vacancies and needs. A lot of other people have done already (there are quite a lot of folks from the US too)
Edit, upshot with the EU countries is that passports for one, is a passport for all.
Edit 2, for those thinking about it Qt has its Qt convention during KDE Akademy right now so it might be worth checking that out too.
A very similar take to this article/op-ed posted there on how the creeping authoritarianism in the US will creep much further if Trump's reelected, but the way this post warns you about it is quite different, and perhaps less emotional.
I think both are important in different ways. While intellectual pieces are important, so are emotional ones. If 100's of people are desperately crying out at every chance to get anybody to listen....that holds a bit more weight for some than a (relatively dry) article.
And in the end, I think the conclusion of both is the same:
Everyone should be very, very worried. The rest of the world needs to be contemplating how to handle Nazi USA, especially given the military superiority of it.
If Trump has a second term, I'm not convinced there's even going to be a 2024 election.
Why do you say that? Lots of authoritarian countries have elections. How fair they are is another story.