New book by two Harvard poli sci profs. Have not read it. Have read Newsweek's article on it.
-4 signs that a candidate for president is authoritarian.
1. Rejecting or showing weak commitment to democratic rules.
2. Denying the legitimacy of political opponents.
3. Encouraging or tolerating violence.
4. A readiness to stifle or limit civil liberties of opponents, including media.
The book was written after the election, right? Typical poli sci book: Predict the past.
-No candidate for prez since Civil War ticked all four boxes before Trump.
No, FDR didn't tick all four boxes (See, they're linked pre-fabbed boxes and they all have to be checked. Says who? Say the authors, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. It's their book, they're their boxes. Cry if you want to.) but he blasted not just ticked rule #1: Broke the unwritten rule against more than one term, staying far longer than his health allowed; tried to pack the Supreme Court. But a blast is only a big tick, you don't get extra "credit."
In modern times, countries don’t typically collapse into authoritarian rule all at once. Countries like Venezuela and Turkey voted for rulers like Hugo Chavez and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, respectively. They then devolved, with the consent of their constituency, into authoritarianism.
The slow march toward dictatorship was also the case in Russia, the Philippines, Nicaragua, Ukraine and other countries around the world.
“The main responsibility lies with the candidate’s party. It’s up to that party, in this case the Republicans, to do everything possible to keep that candidate out. They faulted, and they abdicated their responsibility. You needed to make it clear to voters this was not an ordinary election, that one of the two candidates was a threat to our institutions, was a threat to the office."-Levitsky.
You get to teach political science at Harvard for that? Can I send you my resume? No, right?
The first three sentences have been repeated ad nauseum, continue to the present to be repeated.
"...do everything possible to keep that candidate out":
That is precisely backwards. How are you going to keep a candidate out once he starts winning, rewrite the rules? That's sorta undemocratic. You have to keep the Lowlifes who vote for such a candidate out of the party. That four box test should have been given to prospective voters. If you tick all four boxes you can't vote. Seriously, the problem with this analysis is the focus on Trump and not on the Lowlifes.
"You needed to make it clear to voters this was not an ordinary election, that one of the two candidates was a threat to our institutions, was a threat to the office.":
Dude-sky, who didn't make that clear? Jeb Bush made that clear. The Senator from Canada made it clear. Elder statesmen like Bush41 and Mitt Romney made it clear. Newspapers around the country, including many who had never before endorsed a Democrat, made that clear. Overwhelmingly, the nation's newspapers warned that Trump was a threat. The voters got the message loud and clear and 62,979,636 of them ignored it.
“To some extent, Trump is symptomatic rather than the cause of the weakening of our democratic norms,” Levitsky said.
That is closer to being accurate. It is "to a great extent," however, not just to some extent." Levitsky and Ziblatt are myopic as political scientists tend to be.
They are myopic in a typically other way. The focus cannot be on the Catastrophe as strictly a domestic event. The United States of America was attacked by a hostile foreign power. Russia's disinformation campaign worked so well in America because so many of the Lowlifes have plates in their heads or have had their frontal lobes removed, in short, Russia's disinformation campaign worked so well because the Lowlifes were American. Seriously, there is a reason why this happened in 2016 and that reason is Russia.
So is the U.S. on the path toward autocracy or a banana republic? Not according to Levitsky, despite having an authoritarian occupying the Oval Office.
“We’re very fortunate in this country to have a robust political institution, a strong and robust opposition party in the Democrats,” he said. “The damage Trump is likely to do is much, much more limited here than in countries like Turkey or Venezuela.”
Oh, I disagree. Paul Krugman would disagree, too. The damage is done, this cake is baked (Krugman would disagree with that.) America 2.0 will never gain the status that the former U.S.A. had. As Trump retreats from the world and casts allies adrift--exactly what his Kremlin masters wanted--the allies take their own step back. Who is to trust this entity in the future when they see treaties written just a few years ago torn up? Where the U.S.A. was in the view of many the one indispensable nation, America 2.0 has been dispensed with. There is no going back.
The Democrats are a formidable counter-balance but the rules of electoral politics as well as the historical racist center-right tilt of the electorate rig elections agin' 'em. The Electoral College is the constitutional reason Trump is president. Congressional district gerrymandering is a modern rigging. And Russia will continue to rig from the outside.
-4 signs that a candidate for president is authoritarian.
1. Rejecting or showing weak commitment to democratic rules.
2. Denying the legitimacy of political opponents.
3. Encouraging or tolerating violence.
4. A readiness to stifle or limit civil liberties of opponents, including media.
The book was written after the election, right? Typical poli sci book: Predict the past.
-No candidate for prez since Civil War ticked all four boxes before Trump.
No, FDR didn't tick all four boxes (See, they're linked pre-fabbed boxes and they all have to be checked. Says who? Say the authors, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. It's their book, they're their boxes. Cry if you want to.) but he blasted not just ticked rule #1: Broke the unwritten rule against more than one term, staying far longer than his health allowed; tried to pack the Supreme Court. But a blast is only a big tick, you don't get extra "credit."
In modern times, countries don’t typically collapse into authoritarian rule all at once. Countries like Venezuela and Turkey voted for rulers like Hugo Chavez and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, respectively. They then devolved, with the consent of their constituency, into authoritarianism.
The slow march toward dictatorship was also the case in Russia, the Philippines, Nicaragua, Ukraine and other countries around the world.
“The main responsibility lies with the candidate’s party. It’s up to that party, in this case the Republicans, to do everything possible to keep that candidate out. They faulted, and they abdicated their responsibility. You needed to make it clear to voters this was not an ordinary election, that one of the two candidates was a threat to our institutions, was a threat to the office."-Levitsky.
You get to teach political science at Harvard for that? Can I send you my resume? No, right?
The first three sentences have been repeated ad nauseum, continue to the present to be repeated.
"...do everything possible to keep that candidate out":
That is precisely backwards. How are you going to keep a candidate out once he starts winning, rewrite the rules? That's sorta undemocratic. You have to keep the Lowlifes who vote for such a candidate out of the party. That four box test should have been given to prospective voters. If you tick all four boxes you can't vote. Seriously, the problem with this analysis is the focus on Trump and not on the Lowlifes.
"You needed to make it clear to voters this was not an ordinary election, that one of the two candidates was a threat to our institutions, was a threat to the office.":
Dude-sky, who didn't make that clear? Jeb Bush made that clear. The Senator from Canada made it clear. Elder statesmen like Bush41 and Mitt Romney made it clear. Newspapers around the country, including many who had never before endorsed a Democrat, made that clear. Overwhelmingly, the nation's newspapers warned that Trump was a threat. The voters got the message loud and clear and 62,979,636 of them ignored it.
“To some extent, Trump is symptomatic rather than the cause of the weakening of our democratic norms,” Levitsky said.
That is closer to being accurate. It is "to a great extent," however, not just to some extent." Levitsky and Ziblatt are myopic as political scientists tend to be.
They are myopic in a typically other way. The focus cannot be on the Catastrophe as strictly a domestic event. The United States of America was attacked by a hostile foreign power. Russia's disinformation campaign worked so well in America because so many of the Lowlifes have plates in their heads or have had their frontal lobes removed, in short, Russia's disinformation campaign worked so well because the Lowlifes were American. Seriously, there is a reason why this happened in 2016 and that reason is Russia.
So is the U.S. on the path toward autocracy or a banana republic? Not according to Levitsky, despite having an authoritarian occupying the Oval Office.
“We’re very fortunate in this country to have a robust political institution, a strong and robust opposition party in the Democrats,” he said. “The damage Trump is likely to do is much, much more limited here than in countries like Turkey or Venezuela.”
Oh, I disagree. Paul Krugman would disagree, too. The damage is done, this cake is baked (Krugman would disagree with that.) America 2.0 will never gain the status that the former U.S.A. had. As Trump retreats from the world and casts allies adrift--exactly what his Kremlin masters wanted--the allies take their own step back. Who is to trust this entity in the future when they see treaties written just a few years ago torn up? Where the U.S.A. was in the view of many the one indispensable nation, America 2.0 has been dispensed with. There is no going back.
The Democrats are a formidable counter-balance but the rules of electoral politics as well as the historical racist center-right tilt of the electorate rig elections agin' 'em. The Electoral College is the constitutional reason Trump is president. Congressional district gerrymandering is a modern rigging. And Russia will continue to rig from the outside.
