Emerging authoritarianism doesn’t look like an ideology

[SeaMajor7]

Another DELUSIONAL thread from the 60's.
"Take our EXPERIMENTAL INJECTIONS or ELSE"
"WEAR A MASK" on fucking highway signs!!!!
"Close your small businesses because you're not ESSENTIAL"
On and on and fucking ON!!! THAT'S AUTH0RITARIAN!!!!!

 

[pknopp]

I would like your point of view on it, as it was your statement.

It's been done and covered extensively. Move on.

 

[Dogmaphobe]

I set out to research the story of Graham’s relationship with Trump because I wanted to understand how authoritarianism arose in the United States. I wanted to see how the poison worked: the corruption, the rationalizations, the vulnerabilities in the system. I wanted to learn how democracies could detect such threats and counteract them.

Here are some of the lessons I learned.

1. Emerging authoritarianism doesn’t look like an ideology. It appears in the form of a demagogue. It’s easy to support him while laughing off the idea that you’re embracing authoritarianism.
2. Celebration of fear is a warning sign. When a demagogue brags about intimidating his enemies, and when voters and politicians flock to him for that reason, look out. Maybe he knows who the real villains are. Or maybe he’s the sort of person who attacks anyone in his way.
3. Authoritarian voters are the underlying threat. In every country, there are people who want a leader to break institutions and rule with an iron fist. These voters form a constituency that can lure politicians to embrace such a leader. At a minimum, they can deter politicians from opposing that leader. And if he loses power, the next authoritarian can exploit the same constituency.
4. Political parties are footholds for authoritarians. An aspiring strongman doesn’t have to gain power all at once. He can start by capturing a party and becoming its flagship candidate. This gives everyone in the party a reason to help him.
5. Politicians are blinded by their arrogance. They think they can manipulate an emerging authoritarian by collaborating with him. They underestimate the extent to which what they see as an alliance—but is really subservience—will corrupt and constrain them.
6. Politicians are misled by personal contact with the authoritarian. He may seem charming or manageable, but that’s because he’s among friends and flatterers. These situations don’t reflect how he’ll treat people who get in his way.
7. Cowardice is enough to empower an authoritarian. He doesn’t need a phalanx of wicked accomplices. He just needs weak-willed politicians and aides who will go along with whatever he does. Every country has plenty of those.
8. Authoritarianism is a trait. Politicians can always find reasons why this or that corrupt act by an authoritarian isn’t prosecutable or impeachable. These excuses gloss over the underlying problem: his personality. If he gets away with one abuse of power, he’ll move on to the next.
9. Democracy becomes a rationale to serve the authoritarian. Once he wins a nomination or an election, politicians can exalt him as the people’s choice. They can use this mandate to dismiss criticism of his conduct and to reject any attempt to remove him from office.
10. Power becomes a rationale to serve the authoritarian. Once he’s in office, politicians can tell themselves that by defending him, they’re earning his trust, gaining influence over him, and steering him away from his worst impulses.
11. Rationalization becomes a skill and a habit. The first time you excuse an authoritarian act, it feels like a one-time concession. But each time you bend, you become more flexible. The authoritarian keeps pushing, and you keep adjusting.
12. Ad hoc legal defenses become authoritarianism. Each time the leader abuses his power, apologists claim he has the authority to do so. Over time, as he commits more abuses, these piecemeal assertions of authority add up to a defense of anything the leader chooses to do.
13. Normalization and polarization are enough to create a mass authoritarian movement. People get used to a strong-willed leader, and their partisan reflexes kick in. If the leader is in your party, you may feel an urge to attack anyone who goes after him. You become part of his political army.
14. Exposure of the authoritarian’s crimes galvanizes his base. His supporters turn against the media, the legislature, law enforcement, and any other institution that investigates him. They view his accumulating scandals as more evidence that the true villains are out to get him.
15. Demonization of the opposition paves the way to tyranny. It lowers the moral threshold for supporting the leader. You must defend him, no matter what he does, because his enemies are worse.
16. A party detached from its principles becomes a cult. Once the party begins to shed prior beliefs in deference to a leader, it loses independent standards by which to judge him. The party becomes the man, and dissent from him becomes heresy.
17. Democracy’s culture of compromise is a weakness. Over time, an authoritarian’s will to gain and wield power grinds down politicians who are content to negotiate among competing interests. As he relentlessly imposes his will, they find reasons and ways to accommodate him.
18. Civil servants are easily smeared and purged. Some of them might investigate, expose, or refuse the leader’s corrupt orders, since they weren’t appointed by him or elected on his ticket. But that independence makes them easy to attack as “Deep State” conspirators who are subverting the people’s will.
19. It’s easy to provoke and exploit violence without endorsing it. You just say the election was stolen, and the president’s followers take it from there. Then, after their rampage, you warn that any punishment of him might drive them to violence again.
20. It’s easy to rationalize ethnic or religious persecution. Demagogues tend to use any division in society—ethnic, sexual, religious—as a wedge against their enemies. A skilled politician can excuse this behavior on the grounds that bigotry is only the method, not the motive.

Is a single word of this actually your own?

 

[Moonglow]

Huh??? who is Lindsey Graham killing? names? date of death?

You have a hard time with comprehension.

 

[Sixties Fan]

It's been done and covered extensively. Move on.

I am just covering how the Republicans have allowed Authoritarianism to seep into their Party in order to stay in power.

This thread is not about what happened in the impeachments but the many things which ended leading not only the impeachments, 1/6, Roe vs Wade, etc.

 

[pknopp]

I am just covering how the Republicans have allowed Authoritarianism to seep into their Party in order to stay in power.

This thread is not about what happened in the impeachments but the many things which ended leading not only the impeachments, 1/6, Roe vs Wade, etc.

The government overall no matter who is in charge is authoritarian.

 

[Yarddog]

I set out to research the story of Graham’s relationship with Trump because I wanted to understand how authoritarianism arose in the United States. I wanted to see how the poison worked: the corruption, the rationalizations, the vulnerabilities in the system. I wanted to learn how democracies could detect such threats and counteract them.

Here are some of the lessons I learned.

1. Emerging authoritarianism doesn’t look like an ideology. It appears in the form of a demagogue. It’s easy to support him while laughing off the idea that you’re embracing authoritarianism.
2. Celebration of fear is a warning sign. When a demagogue brags about intimidating his enemies, and when voters and politicians flock to him for that reason, look out. Maybe he knows who the real villains are. Or maybe he’s the sort of person who attacks anyone in his way.
3. Authoritarian voters are the underlying threat. In every country, there are people who want a leader to break institutions and rule with an iron fist. These voters form a constituency that can lure politicians to embrace such a leader. At a minimum, they can deter politicians from opposing that leader. And if he loses power, the next authoritarian can exploit the same constituency.
4. Political parties are footholds for authoritarians. An aspiring strongman doesn’t have to gain power all at once. He can start by capturing a party and becoming its flagship candidate. This gives everyone in the party a reason to help him.
5. Politicians are blinded by their arrogance. They think they can manipulate an emerging authoritarian by collaborating with him. They underestimate the extent to which what they see as an alliance—but is really subservience—will corrupt and constrain them.
6. Politicians are misled by personal contact with the authoritarian. He may seem charming or manageable, but that’s because he’s among friends and flatterers. These situations don’t reflect how he’ll treat people who get in his way.
7. Cowardice is enough to empower an authoritarian. He doesn’t need a phalanx of wicked accomplices. He just needs weak-willed politicians and aides who will go along with whatever he does. Every country has plenty of those.
8. Authoritarianism is a trait. Politicians can always find reasons why this or that corrupt act by an authoritarian isn’t prosecutable or impeachable. These excuses gloss over the underlying problem: his personality. If he gets away with one abuse of power, he’ll move on to the next.
9. Democracy becomes a rationale to serve the authoritarian. Once he wins a nomination or an election, politicians can exalt him as the people’s choice. They can use this mandate to dismiss criticism of his conduct and to reject any attempt to remove him from office.
10. Power becomes a rationale to serve the authoritarian. Once he’s in office, politicians can tell themselves that by defending him, they’re earning his trust, gaining influence over him, and steering him away from his worst impulses.
11. Rationalization becomes a skill and a habit. The first time you excuse an authoritarian act, it feels like a one-time concession. But each time you bend, you become more flexible. The authoritarian keeps pushing, and you keep adjusting.
12. Ad hoc legal defenses become authoritarianism. Each time the leader abuses his power, apologists claim he has the authority to do so. Over time, as he commits more abuses, these piecemeal assertions of authority add up to a defense of anything the leader chooses to do.
13. Normalization and polarization are enough to create a mass authoritarian movement. People get used to a strong-willed leader, and their partisan reflexes kick in. If the leader is in your party, you may feel an urge to attack anyone who goes after him. You become part of his political army.
14. Exposure of the authoritarian’s crimes galvanizes his base. His supporters turn against the media, the legislature, law enforcement, and any other institution that investigates him. They view his accumulating scandals as more evidence that the true villains are out to get him.
15. Demonization of the opposition paves the way to tyranny. It lowers the moral threshold for supporting the leader. You must defend him, no matter what he does, because his enemies are worse.
16. A party detached from its principles becomes a cult. Once the party begins to shed prior beliefs in deference to a leader, it loses independent standards by which to judge him. The party becomes the man, and dissent from him becomes heresy.
17. Democracy’s culture of compromise is a weakness. Over time, an authoritarian’s will to gain and wield power grinds down politicians who are content to negotiate among competing interests. As he relentlessly imposes his will, they find reasons and ways to accommodate him.
18. Civil servants are easily smeared and purged. Some of them might investigate, expose, or refuse the leader’s corrupt orders, since they weren’t appointed by him or elected on his ticket. But that independence makes them easy to attack as “Deep State” conspirators who are subverting the people’s will.
19. It’s easy to provoke and exploit violence without endorsing it. You just say the election was stolen, and the president’s followers take it from there. Then, after their rampage, you warn that any punishment of him might drive them to violence again.
20. It’s easy to rationalize ethnic or religious persecution. Demagogues tend to use any division in society—ethnic, sexual, religious—as a wedge against their enemies. A skilled politician can excuse this behavior on the grounds that bigotry is only the method, not the motive.

All intended to attack voters who didn't vote for who you wanted.

 

[Sixties Fan]

The government overall no matter who is in charge is authoritarian.

There are too many like you who cannot differentiate between a Democracy and an Authoritarian wanna be government.

 

[Yarddog]

The government overall no matter who is in charge is authoritarian.

that sounds closer to the truth

 

[pknopp]

There are too many like you who cannot differentiate between a Democracy and an Authoritarian wanna be government.

 

[Sixties Fan]

All intended to attack voters who didn't vote for who you wanted.

Not my article. Not my words. Read, do not read, your thinking is going to remain the same.

 

[1srelluc]

LOL

 

[Yarddog]

There are too many like you who cannot differentiate between a Democracy and an Authoritarian wanna be government.

No. actually he's right, you're wrong. You want to blame it all on one party and TRUMP... but you're not admitting the wrongs of the pack of jackals you have running around as Democrat senators who colluded with the FBI and news media to take out a president they didnt like.

 

[Sixties Fan]

No. actually he's right, you're wrong. You want to blame it all on one party and TRUMP... but you're not admitting the wrongs of the pack of jackals you have running around as Democrat senators who colluded with the FBI and news media to take out a president they didnt like.

Start a thread about it. All too many of you do is dismiss what the threads are about and endlessly cry about what the thread is NOT about.

Start your threads, show the evidence. Discuss it.

None of you discuss what you allege and endlessly attack the other side.

ALL OF YOU are on the wrong thread if that is all you are capable of doing.

Discuss the topic of the thread or move on and start your own threads with the allegations you have put on.

 

[22lcidw]

The right along with Lindsey is intent on who is allowed to live in our society and if they must they will kill those they see as malignant to their standards.

I want to believe this. Somehow there are drag queens in schools with toddlers.

 

[Oddball]

I set out to research the story of Graham’s relationship with Trump because I wanted to understand how authoritarianism arose in the United States. I wanted to see how the poison worked: the corruption, the rationalizations, the vulnerabilities in the system. I wanted to learn how democracies could detect such threats and counteract them.

Here are some of the lessons I learned.

1. Emerging authoritarianism doesn’t look like an ideology. It appears in the form of a demagogue. It’s easy to support him while laughing off the idea that you’re embracing authoritarianism.
2. Celebration of fear is a warning sign. When a demagogue brags about intimidating his enemies, and when voters and politicians flock to him for that reason, look out. Maybe he knows who the real villains are. Or maybe he’s the sort of person who attacks anyone in his way.
3. Authoritarian voters are the underlying threat. In every country, there are people who want a leader to break institutions and rule with an iron fist. These voters form a constituency that can lure politicians to embrace such a leader. At a minimum, they can deter politicians from opposing that leader. And if he loses power, the next authoritarian can exploit the same constituency.
4. Political parties are footholds for authoritarians. An aspiring strongman doesn’t have to gain power all at once. He can start by capturing a party and becoming its flagship candidate. This gives everyone in the party a reason to help him.
5. Politicians are blinded by their arrogance. They think they can manipulate an emerging authoritarian by collaborating with him. They underestimate the extent to which what they see as an alliance—but is really subservience—will corrupt and constrain them.
6. Politicians are misled by personal contact with the authoritarian. He may seem charming or manageable, but that’s because he’s among friends and flatterers. These situations don’t reflect how he’ll treat people who get in his way.
7. Cowardice is enough to empower an authoritarian. He doesn’t need a phalanx of wicked accomplices. He just needs weak-willed politicians and aides who will go along with whatever he does. Every country has plenty of those.
8. Authoritarianism is a trait. Politicians can always find reasons why this or that corrupt act by an authoritarian isn’t prosecutable or impeachable. These excuses gloss over the underlying problem: his personality. If he gets away with one abuse of power, he’ll move on to the next.
9. Democracy becomes a rationale to serve the authoritarian. Once he wins a nomination or an election, politicians can exalt him as the people’s choice. They can use this mandate to dismiss criticism of his conduct and to reject any attempt to remove him from office.
10. Power becomes a rationale to serve the authoritarian. Once he’s in office, politicians can tell themselves that by defending him, they’re earning his trust, gaining influence over him, and steering him away from his worst impulses.
11. Rationalization becomes a skill and a habit. The first time you excuse an authoritarian act, it feels like a one-time concession. But each time you bend, you become more flexible. The authoritarian keeps pushing, and you keep adjusting.
12. Ad hoc legal defenses become authoritarianism. Each time the leader abuses his power, apologists claim he has the authority to do so. Over time, as he commits more abuses, these piecemeal assertions of authority add up to a defense of anything the leader chooses to do.
13. Normalization and polarization are enough to create a mass authoritarian movement. People get used to a strong-willed leader, and their partisan reflexes kick in. If the leader is in your party, you may feel an urge to attack anyone who goes after him. You become part of his political army.
14. Exposure of the authoritarian’s crimes galvanizes his base. His supporters turn against the media, the legislature, law enforcement, and any other institution that investigates him. They view his accumulating scandals as more evidence that the true villains are out to get him.
15. Demonization of the opposition paves the way to tyranny. It lowers the moral threshold for supporting the leader. You must defend him, no matter what he does, because his enemies are worse.
16. A party detached from its principles becomes a cult. Once the party begins to shed prior beliefs in deference to a leader, it loses independent standards by which to judge him. The party becomes the man, and dissent from him becomes heresy.
17. Democracy’s culture of compromise is a weakness. Over time, an authoritarian’s will to gain and wield power grinds down politicians who are content to negotiate among competing interests. As he relentlessly imposes his will, they find reasons and ways to accommodate him.
18. Civil servants are easily smeared and purged. Some of them might investigate, expose, or refuse the leader’s corrupt orders, since they weren’t appointed by him or elected on his ticket. But that independence makes them easy to attack as “Deep State” conspirators who are subverting the people’s will.
19. It’s easy to provoke and exploit violence without endorsing it. You just say the election was stolen, and the president’s followers take it from there. Then, after their rampage, you warn that any punishment of him might drive them to violence again.
20. It’s easy to rationalize ethnic or religious persecution. Demagogues tend to use any division in society—ethnic, sexual, religious—as a wedge against their enemies. A skilled politician can excuse this behavior on the grounds that bigotry is only the method, not the motive.

Project much?

 

[pknopp]

Start a thread about it. All too many of you do is dismiss what the threads are about and endlessly cry about what the thread is NOT about.

Start your threads, show the evidence. Discuss it.

None of you discuss what you allege and endlessly attack the other side.

ALL OF YOU are on the wrong thread if that is all you are capable of doing.

Discuss the topic of the thread or move on and start your own threads with the allegations you have put on.

Obama’s Path From Critic to Overseer of Spying (Published 2014)

I've discussed this many times. Hence my position in your thread.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Chapter Two: A Trump’s Best Friend​

Part 1

ON NOVEMBER 17, 2016, A WEEK AFTER Trump’s election, Graham went on TV to start sucking up. He had congratulated the president-elect; now he wanted to build a relationship. “I’m in the book. Call me if you need me,” Graham told Trump through the CNN camera.

Sucking up to a new president was normal. But sucking up to this president would be different. Already, Trump had indicated that he would make his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a power broker in the government. It was the kind of thing monarchs and dictators did. But Graham, when he was asked about it, chose not to quibble. “I am all for it,” the senator told CNN. “I’m all for him [Kushner] being able to help President Trump in any fashion the president deems appropriate.”

Any fashion the president deems appropriate. Graham wasn’t just endorsing the arrangement. He was signaling that Trump could do as he pleased.

---

But Graham wasn’t offering his fealty for nothing. He had a worthy purpose in mind.

When critics write about the GOP’s capitulation to Trump, they tend to dismiss the capitulators as hollow careerists. In some cases, that’s true. But even people with strong commitments and good intentions can end up collaborating with an authoritarian.

Graham, for instance, cared intensely about national security and foreign policy. That gave Trump enormous leverage over him, because on those subjects, the president had almost total control.

Trump was an isolationist. Graham was an internationalist. He hoped to persuade Trump to keep troops in Syria, support NATO, and stand up to Russia. It would be a huge undertaking and a constant struggle.

In studying Graham’s transformation, this was one of the most striking things I found: In moments when Graham was most fiercely defending Trump’s abuses of power, he was simultaneously lobbying Trump to adopt, or at least not to abandon, hawkish foreign policies. At times, the senator all but admitted that he viewed this as a transaction.

Graham wanted the United States to stand up to tyrants abroad. And to achieve that, he was willing to compromise the rule of law at home.

The other thing you have to understand about Graham—and about many other Republicans who initially seemed too sensible to yield to Trump—is that they fell for the president-elect’s buffoonery.

Cynics sometimes say that American democracy survived Trump’s presidency because unlike successful autocrats in other countries, he was too stupid and self-absorbed to gain absolute power. That might be true. But in seducing Republican elders, Trump’s stupidity was an asset.

Graham and many of his colleagues knew Trump was a brute. But they also knew he was an idiot, and this gave them a false sense of security. They thought he was too inept to endanger the republic.

The Republicans who made pilgrimages to Trump Tower after the 2016 election, and who later paid their respects at the White House, didn’t see themselves as Trump’s pawns. They thought they were manipulating him. And this illusion of control blinded them to the force he gradually exerted over them.

Graham, without realizing it, had a useful term for this Trumpian force. The term was “orbit.”

To Graham, being in Trump’s orbit meant access. In a 2019 interview with New York Times Magazine reporter Mark Leibovich, the senator would use this term to describe how he had plotted his approach to Trump. “I went from, ‘OK, he’s president’ to ‘How can I get to be in his orbit?’” Graham explained. Then, over time, Graham had worked his way into Trump’s “smaller orbit.”

Graham described this process as though he were maneuvering a spacecraft. But orbits are tricky. Once you’re in orbit, you no longer control your trajectory. You’re in the grip of the object you’re orbiting. And it can be hard to escape.

Chapter Two: A Trump’s Best Friend

A WEEK AFTER Trump’s election, Graham went on TV to start sucking up. He had congratulated the president-elect; now he wanted to build a relationship.

specialto.thebulwark.com

 

[Yarddog]

Start a thread about it. All too many of you do is dismiss what the threads are about and endlessly cry about what the thread is NOT about.

Start your threads, show the evidence. Discuss it.

None of you discuss what you allege and endlessly attack the other side.

ALL OF YOU are on the wrong thread if that is all you are capable of doing.

Discuss the topic of the thread or move on and start your own threads with the allegations you have put on.

Ahhh so your thread requires that we only discuss one party. break down the wrongs of one political party. So is this an authoritarian thread?, a thread by the way which endlessly attacks only one side?

 

[22lcidw]

I am just covering how the Republicans have allowed Authoritarianism to seep into their Party in order to stay in power.

This thread is not about what happened in the impeachments but the many things which ended leading not only the impeachments, 1/6, Roe vs Wade, etc.

The Republican Party is of interferinism with each other. Designed that way in recent decades as to give the Democratic Party the realism as the Progressive Socialist Party. Republican voters get levels of people they vote for. With many of them activated for federal agendas pushed by the elites as we move further left in legislation votes. I understand it. One party is everything is free and do what you want. The other officially says we are going too far and is accused of pure hate.