Last week Trump expressed solidarity with the insurrectionists and had dinner with two fans of Adolph Hitler. On Sunday, December 4, he announced that the constitution should be “terminated” so that he can be reinstated as president. On Tuesday, the Trump Organization was convicted on all counts of tax fraud.
The Republican leadership remained largely silent.
One reader on Post.news asked:
I want to understand how these voters rationalize this. Is it simply pure greed? How is dismantling the very foundation that helped make them “wealthy and powerful” a smart idea? I wonder it would take to get this “powerful” club to take a step back, and try to be grateful for what they do have, rather than wanting more “greatness.” Would they then maybe reevaluate their voting choices?
Answer: They are mostly in agreement with Trump’s goals and they don’t care if he breaks laws. They don’t think democracy is working any longer, so they reject the laws and norms that underlie our democracy.
(A good definition of democracy comes from sociologist Max Weber, who says there are three sources of authority for a government: Rule of law, the authority that underlies democracy. Traditional, the authority that underlies monarchies, and personal rule, the authority that underlies fascism. If you don’t like democracy, there are not many alternatives.)
Political scientist Karen Stenner explains it this way: As liberal democracy expands and includes more people, it becomes more diverse and complicated. The growing diversity and complexity trigger authoritarian reactions in people who are averse to complexity and cannot tolerate diversity
This is particularly true when an increasingly diverse electorate threatens the power and status of the ethnic majority. Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky, Harvard political scientists, put it this way:
“It is difficult to find examples of societies in which shrinking ethnic majorities gave up their dominant status without a fight.” (How Democracies Die, p. 207.)
Members of the Republican Party who reject democracy are part of a movement that has been springing up worldwide, which we can call the “New Radical Right.” This movement has much in common with the fascist regimes of the 1930s. Hitler’s regime, recall, was partly a reaction to the growing diversity in cities like Berlin.
How the American “New Radical Right” Explains Its Goals
In April 2009 billionaire Peter Thiel announced that he “no longer believes that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Specifically, he said:
To recap familiar territory: The 1920s did, indeed, mark the end of an era. Before Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s, the United States was in what Heather Cox Richardson calls our second oligarchy (the first was the era of slavery). All wealth and power were concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy and powerful white men.
The New Deal—intended to curb the worst impulses of capitalism and lift large segments of the population from an unbreakable poverty cycle—got us out of the second oligarchy by reducing the levels of income inequality. The New deal gave us worker protections, minimum wage, social security, and regulations outlawing things like fixing prices and manipulating markets. The idea was to make it harder to get rich by cheating. The Civil Rights movement further expanded our government with new legislation and agencies designed to promote racial equality.
The era that Peter Thiel wants to return to has been called a “patriarchy”: a social hierarchy or order with white men at the top and Black women at the bottom.
Here is the logic behind Thiel’s statement that democracy and freedom are incompatible: Suppose you have five people. One is competent and does all the work and the other four are lazy. In a democracy (as Thiel understands democracy) the four can vote to seize and redistribute the property of the competent person. The racist implication of course is that white men are the competent ones.
One of many points that Thiel is missing is that in a functioning democracy, “the majority is held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations.” (Quoting Abraham Lincoln) Another is that in unregulated capitalism, the person who gets the richest isn’t necessarily the most competent. He may just be the best cheater.
In 2016, Thiel was one of Trump’s biggest donors. In October 2020, Thiel spoke about the “deranged society” that “a completely deranged government” had created.
It seems obvious to me that if you think the society and its government are “deranged,” you would want to dismantle the government, and this would include the Constitution, the document enabling the development of a “deranged” government.
If you think laws shouldn’t be there (like the laws requiring wealthy people to pay taxes) you don’t mind if someone breaks those laws. That’s why the Republicans won’t care that Trump committed tax fraud.
If you want to dismantle the government, you can do it slowly, as the Republicans have been trying to do for decades with systematic deregulation, or you can bring in a wrecking ball. Trump was a wrecking ball. (Actually, so were the insurrectionists.)
In September 2021, J.D. Vance, who is now the Senator-elect from Ohio, appeared on a podcast and suggested that Donald Trump, if he wins another term, should “seize the institutions of the left,” fire “every single midlevel bureaucrat” in the US government, and “replace them with our people.” Moreover, he should “defy the Supreme Court if it tries to stop him.”
See how they cheer a rule breaker? They want their leaders to break laws. (Obviously “institutions of the left” include the regulations and regulatory agencies put in place since the New Deal and Civil Rights movement.)
One of Vance’s influences is a programmer named Curtis Yarvin, who also thinks American democracy is a failure. Specifically, he said:
Sometimes he denounces democracy in general. Other times he says:
“Democracy doesn’t even practically exist in the US, because voters don’t have true power over the government as compared to those other interests, which function as an oligarchy.”
If you think something just sucks, you naturally want to dismantle it and replace it with something else. The problem Yarvin sees is that it’s too hard to get anything done, so his idea is that a would-be autocrat needs to come to power who can sweep aside the constraints and make real changes. He has a plan for how to do that:
“Campaign on it and win. First off, the would-be dictator should seek a mandate from the people, by running for president and openly campaigning on the platform of, “If I’m elected, I’m gonna assume absolute power in Washington and rebuild the government.”
Steven Levitsky similarly predicts that this is exactly what such an elected president would do:
Military coups are very 20th century. The 21st-century way is to get a would-be autocrat elected. Yarvin said, “That’s sort of what people already thought was happening with Trump.”
This is why the only complaint Trump supporters have about Trump is that he is losing elections. They are cool with lawbreaking and white supremacy. It’s the losing-elections part that bothers them.
Bill Barr said that even with everything he knows about Donald Trump, he would still vote for Trump over a Democratic candidate. For people like Barr, people choosing their pronouns represents a greater danger to the Republic than Trump inciting an insurrection and cheating on his taxes.
Moreover, as Steven Levitsky points out:
(Aside: Steven Levitsky habitually uses the term white Christians, which I take to refer to white Christian nationalism and the portion of the Republican base that wants America to be a “Christian” country.)
Yes, I know: The New Radical Right is not fueled by middle and lower-class economic grievances. The truest believers include billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. But lower and middle-class white men have also lost a lot in the past 100 years. Consider, for example, how easy it used to be for them to get a woman. Women had no way of earning a living. To quote Susan B. Anthony, “Women’s subsistence is in the hands of men, and most arbitrarily and unjustly does he exercise his consequent power.”
Men could grab what they wanted. Rape was seen as a natural result of “human” nature. Men were aggressors, so a woman was responsible for guarding her chastity. Even after the Civil War, rape of a Black woman wasn’t seen as a crime. “Incel” wasn’t a thing.
To put it in Archie Bunker terms, the Republican constituency pines for the good old days when “guys like me, we had it made”:
What went “wrong” was the modern Civil Rights and women’s rights movements.
The Dangers of Disillusionment
Levitsky is clear about the problem:
However, he says this:
“Although the threat of democratic breakdown in the United States is real, the likelihood of a descent into stable autocracy, as has occurred, for example, in Hungary and Russia, remains low. The United States possesses several obstacles to stable authoritarianism that are not found in other backsliding cases.”
And what are these obstacles, according to Levitsky?
“The first is a powerful opposition in the Democratic Party. It is well-organized, well-financed, and electorally viable (it won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections).
Second:
Notice that Levitsky used the phrase “elected autocrat.” Levitsky’s piece dovetails with Curtis Yarvin’s: Yarvin pines for an elected autocrat. Levitsky sees an elected autocrat as the danger. Yarvin, like Levitsky, understands that a well-unified opposition would pose a threat to a duly-elected would-be-autocrat.
But Yarvin had a plan for how to get what he called “Blue America” to go along:
During the early Biden administration, Yarvin felt encouraged by what he saw as widespread disillusionment in Blue America. If you were on social media or watching certain TV pundits in 2021, you know what Yarvin was talking about. There was (and is) a chorus of anti-Trump voices insisting that:
- The “system” is hopelessly corrupt.
- The criminal justice system failed because it hasn’t stopped the New Radical Right.
- White men never face consequences (people were still saying this the day the Trump Org was convicted of fraud, but that didn’t count because yadda yadda.)
- Democrats are just as much at fault as the Republicans because they are not doing enough to stop the Republicans.
- Garland is doing nothing because he is weak or compromised.
- Lawbreakers are walking free, which shows that rule of law has failed (this is not what rule of law means. See, for example, the Exclusionary Rule.)
Some spent months heckling Garland and mocking his commitment to rule of law and insisting that he break rules to deliver the results they wanted. (I have written full blog posts addressing each of the above.)
“The whole system is corrupt, just look at X example,” isn’t that different from Curtis Yarvin. Right?
Steven Levitsky says this:
In other words, the only thing standing between an authoritarian takeover is the Democratic Party, with all of its flaws and frustration, which explains why all that disillusionment with rule of law and the Democratic Party gave Yarvin hope that a would-be dictator could come to power and Blue America would feel so disillusioned with the status quo that they wouldn’t try too hard to preserve it. Yarvin started worrying again about the viability of an elected autocrat when he saw the way the Dobbs v. Jackson decision fired up the left.
I have observed certain patterns in disillusioned lefties. Like their right-wing counterparts, they tend to engage in all-or-nothing thinking. When they see flaws, they think the system is broken. If something doesn’t happen exactly as they think it should in the timeframe they demand, they think “the whole system is corrupt.” If the explanation for what they are seeing is complicated, they reject the explanation in exchange for conspiracy theories (“Garland is in the pay of plutocrats”). They want fast, dramatic action.
In addition, the solutions they propose would generally make the system more autocratic. For example, one solution I’ve seen frequently offered to solve the “problem” of why Trump isn’t in prison is to change the laws to make it easier to put people in prison. I’ve also seen people who, when they feel frustrated by how many appeals Trump and his pals file, want to take away or reduce the right to appeal. Such changes would fall disproportionately on vulnerable communities.
One thing I frequently see repeated is “You don’t bring a knife to a gunfight,” or “they break the rules so the Democrats need to do the same.” This is literally advocating authoritarianism. If both sides adopt authoritarian methods, authoritarianism wins because nobody is defending democracy or upholding democratic ideals. The way to save democracy is with more democracy, not authoritarian tactics. (For more on that, see this post.)
I suspect that autocracy holds a certain appeal for all of us. We all have to beware of a tendency to want swift, dramatic action and the thrill of watching a strongman land devastating blows on the enemy.
To quote Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, “Democracy is grinding work.” Change in a complex rule-of-law democracy happens slowly and with great effort. All those checks and balances slow things down. In a democracy, we don’t always get the results we want. It can be hard to pass legislation. Prosecutors make bad decisions. Juries can get it wrong. It’s frustrating. I know. I was in the trenches as a public appellate defender.
I understand how people get disillusioned and discouraged. Even people who are comfortable with complexity can feel overwhelmed by our government. Criminal procedure is a full-semester law school course. The DOJ is conducting, in Garland’s words, the investigation into the January 6 attack was “the most wide-ranging and most complex that this department has ever undertaken.” It makes sense that even well-educated consumers of the news have trouble following what is happening.
Sometimes when I try to explain what was happening with the DOJ investigations, disillusioned lefties say unkind things about me. Example:
A person who wants ‘heads to roll’ wants instant gratification and spectacle. A person who thinks that “countless investigations are being squashed and mysteriously abandoned” is trading in conspiracy theories. I am afraid the above person will never be happy in a rule-of-law democracy. The question is how many other people will that person convert to disillusionment. I know it has an effect on me. Every time I post something on social media about the latest in the DOJ investigations, I can expect a throng of people to come into my mentions telling me that it’s obvious the entire system is failing and corrupt.
I assume it must also have an effect on others.
Some people see flaws and throw up their hands in despair. Others see flaws and ask, “What can I do to help make things better?”
We need lots of the second kind because we have a long battle ahead if democracy is going to survive. Because the Republican Party has turned into an extremist, antidemocratic force that imperils the U.S. constitutional order,” here is what Levitsky predicts:
People tend to think of democracy and autocracy as binary: It is either one or the other. But Levitsky explains that there are hybrid governments that contain some democratic elements while embracing autocratic ones. Partly because the Democratic Party is so robust, he doesn’t think we are in danger of becoming like Russia or Hungary. Instead, he suggests we may become like Ukraine:
Here is why it seems to me that we are in a protracted fight to save American democracy: If the Democrats could keep the White House and gain large enough majorities in both houses of Congress, they could make rapid changes that would help secure democracy: They could reform the Supreme Court by adding justices, thereby unraveling decades of work the rightwing spent packing the court. They could add Washington D.C. as a state, securing two more Senators and offsetting the Republican’s Senate-rural-state advantage. They could pass legislation regulating national elections.
But they can’t do those things because they can’t get a large enough majority in Congress. The New Deal, which ushered in rapid and far-reaching changes (including allowing Roosevelt to appoint the Supreme Court justices that declared racial segregation unconstitutional) happened because Roosevelt won elections with large majorities.
But young people vote Democratic and changing demographics favor Democrats, which will make it increasingly difficult for the Republicans to win national elections while embracing the New Radical Right.
So we have a lot of work to do over the next several elections. Fortunately, we have lots of people who are up for the task. For example ↓
(Grab some tissues before you hit “play.”)
Teri, I’d like to thank you for all of your hard work. I absolutely appreciate your expertise and writings about current affairs. You are one of the very, very few that is willing to guide your readers through the difficult maze of events without charging $100 a year.
Wishing you the best for the holidays and for the coming 2023 year.
Thank you!
First, I just want to apologize for taking so long to approve this. I’ve been mostly traveling for the past few days.
You’re welcome. I feel fortunate that I can do it. I think of it as making my contribution. If I tried to collect money, it would be a business instead of a contribution. Make sense?
I feel fortunate that I can do it.
The problem that Peter Thiel is too stupid to realize isn’t new and his dumb politics doesn’t solve is called the Free Rider Problem.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/free_rider_problem.asp#:~:text=The%20free%20rider%20problem%20is%20an%20issue%20in%20economics.,fair%20share%20of%20the%20costs.
Libertarians always pretend like they’re the first to discover this, and those of us who actually read more than libertarian blogs are forced to educate them, although that’s virtually impossible.
This term by its label was unfamiliar to me, though the concept itself seems too-obvious to be overlooked by anyone other than a self-styled “Libertarian” or a contemporary self-styled “Conservative.”
In the above blog post, Teri Kanefield references Thiel as referring to “freedom and democracy,” but then include’s Thiel’s statement using the term, “capitalist democracy” as an oxymoron.
I’m confused by both of these writings.
Does Willis Warren imply that Libertarians have some grasp of how The Free Rider Problem can be reconciled with Thiel’s sense of “freedom” and “democracy”? I say that such absolutist views of “freedom” are proven unworkable within a developed, democratic society.
Is that “unworkable” sense what Thiel means: about capitalism being incompatible with democracy? If so, he needs to reread Adam Smith with greater care. Smith’s “capitalism” incorporates several societal needs that Conservatives would have us believe are not found in Smith.
____________________
I’m wary of taking Teri Kanefield’s blog down this economics rabbit hole, but thank you for sharing the link.
I just want to apologize for taking so long to approve this. I spent the weekend mostly traveling.
In local news, have you, Teri, any thoughts about your Board of Supervisors race?
https://www.sanluisobispo.com/opinion/editorials/article269907127.html
It would seem 13 votes should be close enough for an automatic recount,
The whole thing is weird enough to get into my feed. (I live a few miles north in Santa Cruz.)
I’d think it should trigger a recount, but I don’t know the local rules.
I thought a recount appropriate, too. What gave me some pause, tho, was the rabid partisanship of the county leaders. It seemed, tho, that the SLO Tribute expects the losing party (Republicans) to pay for it. Especially because the campaign against the Dem was particularly vile. It all kind-of stuck out as something weird. 🙂
Longtime fan of your writing here, and someone who shares much of your “the system works! Just give it time and realize you’ve got to contribute too!” philosophy…
That said, I do believe those of us on that side of the aisle need to recognize how much energy the “the system sucks” people have.
I am reminded of something from the journalist/writer Matt Yglesias I saw a few years ago. (He is also what I would call an institutionalist.) He said something like “If your only experience of politics was the Iraq War, and then the Great Recession, and then Trump becomes president, you’d be a socialist too.” He was referring to other angry socialists at the time, not himself. I have always remembered that comment because it seems very insightful to me.
Think about it; if you were born in 1982 (and thus were first able to vote in 2000), this would very much be your experience of the American system. And, in my opinion, most people don’t attain any kind of mature political consciousness until they are 30 or so; thus, it’s really most people born after 1970 (and that’s a lot of people!) who perhaps justifiably feel that the political system doesn’t deliver good results.
I myself am an optimist for other reasons which I won’t go into in detail here (basically, I think our whole society has been built around racism for decades, and racism is slowly going away… which is not to say we aren’t hitting some pretty big roadbumps, like Trump) but I do think there is some understandable burden on us institutionalists to explain why democracy is a better system than the alternatives.
The best thing about the Right right now, is how completely clear they are about what the really really want.
P.S. Is this the Mastodon link you want up at the top of your blog post? —> https://mstdn.social/@Teri_Kanefield
NO. that’s the old one. Was that at the top?
People need to understand just how long and painstaking the process of writing our constitution was. The founders debated and looked at different possible pitfalls for each article they wrote. Taking time and working with care and insight made for an enduring document. Quick fixes always have unforseen and unintended consequences.
OMG, you’re right, I am in tears after watching Lizzo’s presentations. That was wonderful . And especially thanks to you for the excellent education I get you on a regular basis.
Hi Teri. Thanks for writing this. Curtis Yarvin is *not* a Stanford Law graduate. He is is very much a computer guy–worked on his PhD at Berkeley before dropping out and then starting a tech company. His political writings and rants are incoherent to most normal humans. Not surprised that Blake Master, Thiel, et. al. are on the same frequency. I defy anyone to read Yarvin’s oeuvre without help from some powerful beverages.
To get a sense of the kraziness—he’s the worlds’ smartest 16 year-old don’t you know—try to peruse, say. chapter 6 of his “Open Letter to Open Minded Progressives” (https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/05/ol6-lost-theory-of-government/). This is the part wherein Yarvin attempts to argue that Steve Jobs would make a great autocrat to run California because Jobs knows how to make an iPhone, and it’s better to run the government as a business.
You get something like the following:
“Steve, after all, is a turbulent fellow. He is moody at best. He could easily go around the bend. And he is already a notorious megalomaniac, a tendency that total imperium over the Golden State …”
snip
“Apple itself, like all public corporations in the modern system, has a two-level back-end: a board of directors, elected (in theory) by a body of shareholders. There is no reason to copy the details of this system. Corporate governance in the US today is nothing to write home about. It is the principles that matter.”
snip
“Call the back-end the controllers. The controllers have one job: deciding whether or not Steve is managing responsibly. If not, they need to fire Steve and hire a new Steve. (Marc Andreessen, perhaps.)”
snip
“As a progressive, you consider undivided government (“dictatorship”) the root of all evil”
snip
“Second, I suspect that your deepest fear about undivided government is that it will in some way prove sadistic. It will torment and abuse its residents for no reason at all. Perhaps, for example, Steve will decide to massacre the Jews. Why not? It’s been done before!”
And then argues that a profit-orient autocrat, like Jobs, wouldn’t massacre Jews because it’s bad for profits.
He’s incredibly naive and innocent and in Dunning-Kruger fashion, really stupid, , like a lot of the wunderkids who come out of Silicon Valley and make some money. Really believes there’s no way a for-profit company can do evil things or that profit and evil are mutually exclusive.
Thanks. I dont know much about him. I must have misread. When I’m back at my computer I’ll fix.
Thank you for clearly laying out what is happening and why those of us who believe in democracy, civil rights, a livable planet etc must stay the course, as messy as it is.
Another clear-eyed and excellent summary of where we are right now. Thanks. This view of the Republican Party as an institution committing itself to an informal rejection of democracy is a hard pill for many to swallow. I say informal because that has been the past model Republicans followed; vote suppression, propaganda, and gerrymandering are “legal” but give the same result more gradually. Trump has normalized the formal rejection of democracy by force, and most of the Party is ready to follow, vocally or silently. This is insane, and it scares the crap out of me, not just because of the nightmare of an authoritarian government led by a narcissist buffoon, but what comes after. Your mention of the 20’s as the end of an Era is my point. The 20’s ended with the Great Depression, a total economic collapse caused by institutionalized greed and (mostly) unregulated capitalism given free reign from the 1860’s through 1929. I don’t underestimate the sincere commitment to white supremacy as the desired foundation for culture, but the business culture is what Theil and many others are aiming at, with white supremacy as the lever to get it. If that happens, we are guaranteed another collapse that will be a Greater Depression that a theocratic authoritarian state will be wildly unequipped to handle. And yeah, plus widespread misery and deprivation.
I can’t imagine that Norman Lear is happy about the theme song from All in the Family is being used as a template by the right!
Don’t you think he knew he was satirizing the right wing?
Remarkable essay – frightening but uplifting. And, those incredibly courageous women ….. ‘walking the talk’. They are my heroes as you are. Thank you for what you do. ‘Re-energized’ indeed!
Thank you!
Ma Joad: “Why, Tom – us people will go on livin’ when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we’re the people that live. They ain’t gonna wipe us out. Why, we’re the people – we go on.’
Tom: “We take a beating all the time.”
‘I know.’ Ma chuckled. ‘Maybe that makes us tough. Rich fellas come up an’ they die, an’ their kids ain’t no good, an’ they die out. But, Tom, we keep a-comin’. Don’ you fret none, Tom. A different time’s comin’.”
That ending struck me as odd when I watched it on Bill Kennedy Showtime on channel 9 in Detroit when I was a kid. Bill (the host of the show) was a small-time actor in Hollywood in the 40’s, and he noted that the original ending from the novel tested horribly with preview audiences, so they tacked on a phony upbeat ending. Not all “we the people” are down with democracy.
Wonderful essay. I know a lot about history; but not enough of the parts that are important now. Nor how to put those together to derive relevant meaning, as you do. Thanks so much for helping us to see the picture.
Is it just White Protestant men that want to control? Isn’t there a strong contingent of Catholics, such as Bannon, Barr, etc?
Yes. Steven Levitsky often refers to white protestants as the ethnic majority that is trying to hold on to power. I’m not sure I fully understand his use of “white Christians.” He has probable explained.
As always, your well researched, thorough explanations are a balm to the sound-bite-addled screech of media alarmism.
It is indisputable that many right wing spokespeople are now comfortable mouthing authoritarian platitudes against democracy, but I don’t think it is clearly a love for authoritarian systems that motivates the conservative base. For the most part, I don’t think they’ve thought it through that far as to which system of governance they’d prefer. The true source of their soft embrace of authoritarian values is their disillusion with specifically “federal” powers, which has been accomplished through a now 40-year campaign of Republican disinformation and grievance-stoking. The base’s apparent lust for authoritarian governance is really just the result of regular folks coming to see their government as a joke, useless, corrupt, immoral, thieving, already authoritarian but imposing a leftist agenda… from a carousel of grievances promoted by Republican leaders for decades.
But the central theme that animates all their complaints is that government is a joke, not to be taken seriously. This is how you get legislators who ignore serious issues affecting their voters, refuse to pass serious legislation for fear of making government look useful, who refuse to speak truthfully, in good faith debate over empirically sound factual notions. This is how you get a candidate like Herschel Walker running for Senate. He is not a joke candidate, his candidacy is the clearest synthesis to date of the very serious Republican message that government is a joke. The very same message that makes Mr. Trump’s ongoing intentional dereliction of his presidential duties so appealing to his base. This is precisely what Joe Biden’s agenda seeks to counter, by showing that government is useful, moral, reasonable, effective, and providing opportunity for all citizens.
There was a turning point in Republican thinking forty years ago when the leader of the party at the pinnacle of federal power, President Reagan made a little joke. “The nine most dangerous words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the federal government and I’m here to help.’” That joke has inspired generations of Republican political thought (or more accurately, their lack of thought and generally non-serious, non-truthful approach to governance). That joke opened the door to the Trumps and Walkers bedeviling our democracy. That joke was the first salvo in the authoritarian onslaught against our democracy.
Some characterized Reagan as the Cheshire Cat – grinning, glad handling, disarming you to inject the first mean-spirited “joke”, really a virus intended to open the door into the mass consciousness for it to surrender to the self-interested power behind Reagan. Jokes can be debasing, dulling your consciousness, rendering it less sensitive, less aware. “The Great Communicator” indeed. Like most viruses it made me sick at the time, but it was nothing compared to what was to follow.
The “9 most dangerous words” joke made me sick at the time, and the Welfare Queen joke made me sicker at the time, and Iran-Contra, no joke, made me sick at the time, it’s a wonder I didn’t die.
But it’s so weird now forty years and the other side of my lifetime later to see these same sick themes still playing so strong among voters and politicians, with an occasional new melody here and there, but pretty much the same song and dance: Government is a joke, hatred of Blacks (and any other disgraced group) is encouraged, and cavalier disregard for the rule of law is a sign of strength. Everything Trump did and said echoed Reagan’s themes, just louder and more transgressively.
The real message of all this “autocracy-love” is demonstrative disregard for the rule of law, not preference for some new form of governance. They could care less about governance. They’re just competing to see how loud they can sing Reagan’s song. Great way to run a country! (into the ground)
In law school, I took a course called Feminist Jurisprudence, and wrote a paper on the Welfare Queens thing. yes, it still boils my blood, and I remain amazed that people didn’t see it at the time.
I think that the answer to the question is power dynamics. People vote for the person they perceive will give them power. I think people who feel powerless voted for Trump, and will again, no matter how many laws he breaks.
https://demos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Science-of-Power-in-the-Body_final.pdf
Here is another insight into the minds of MAGA voters.
A view from the trenches is different from just reporting on a war from a safe place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr4STVbpo38
Thanks again for your clear analysis which helps me “stay the course”. Here in NC Republicans won a Senate seat and took over our Supreme Court. I was feeling down and wondering if all the hours I worked were in vain, then I read your post and many of the responses and I feel re-energized and determined to continue the work. Thanks so much.
Maintaining a democracy is a lot like tending a garden–it is a constant process. You don’t just throw some plants or seeds in the ground, only weed once, and walk away. It requires persistent diligence. You must water, weed, prune, and even replant periodically. You must always be watchful for various organic problems like harmful insects, invasive plants, and disease.
One thing I have seen frequently in younger people, especially Millennials, is the ideology of wanting to “burn it all down.” Most of the time this type of thinking is a result of not understanding how the U.S. government is designed to work. I’m no great scholar, nor am I all that smart really, but I do know the basics of how our government is structured and designed to function. It’s somewhat exhausting to have to repeat over and over again how things work and why “burning it all down” is not an effective rationale or method for achieving the results desired.
I appreciate the knowledge you share in clear language and in an understandable way. Please keep up the great work, as I believe your work is a bright beacon lighting the way for the rest of us.
Thanks for reading mind! The cynicism which has grown in the ‘instant gratification’ cluster of generations that are fueled by Fast Food, Google/Wikipedia info, computer games (“Bang you’re dead! PLAY AGAIN?”) has removed any tolerance for deliberation, process and even proof-reading.
I completely agree with your analogy regarding democracy being like gardening- or farming. it’s constant stewardship that brings success.
But as to the comment about Millennials, I recall hearing, and somewhat/sometimes buying into, that “burn it all down” stance when I was in my late teens adn early twenties. I’m >70 now. Then is seemed that sending us to die in Vietnam, denying the vote and a host of other rights was reason enough to conclude that. Now young people see little or no hope of surviving the trajectory of climate change and ever having a stable home, income, family life. In other words, inter-generational conflict has been with us before. What helps is listening to legit complaints and working together to solve issues.
Thanks, Teri, as always. I think one idea you come back to time and again is summed up in this quote from above: “Some people see flaws and throw up their hands in despair. Others see flaws and ask, ‘What can I do to help make things better?'” Thanks for always challenging your readers to be constructive and thoughtful.
Tears indeed! Amazing women, thank you for posting this.
“Political scientist Karen Stenner explains it this way: As liberal democracy expands and includes more people, it becomes more diverse and complicated. The growing diversity and complexity trigger authoritarian reactions in people who are averse to diversity and cannot tolerate complexity.”
Bingo. Your post today is stellar in its clarity. Thanks Teri.
This is as clear eyed as anything I have read about America’s current situation. I am sending this to all my friends. I will strive to be as articulate as you, but for now, I will disseminate this at every available opportunity.
Wow, Teri. You out did yourself with this post. Thanks.
Thank you Teri
Your blog is the best!
‘The idea was to make it harder to get rich by cheating.’ That sure says a great deal! If democracy is powered by rule of law, of course they don’t like it. Rule of law can restrain them from doing anything and everything they want.
Somewhat analogously, though not quite:
My own daughter, well to the left of most Democrats, is about to turn 35. When TFG was elected– certainly not her choice– she felt that things wouldn’t be all that bad because the broken system needed to fall apart and the sooner the better. When she saw what actually happened in that administration, she realized she had been wrong and it really was that bad and then some.
Last I heard she was harshly criticizing Biden, and I’m not sure where she’s at with regard to him now.
(This was intended as a reply to Patricia but ended up somewhere else.)
Well that’s depressing. I’m a far lefty, about twice your daughter’s age. I don’t agree with everything Biden does–I wish he’d clamp down on the border and reduce legal immigration, in order to stabilize the population, because we are several times the population that would be sustainable in our country, and global warming is making us less sustainable .But I think Biden has done a damn good job.
Democracy was ingrained in my family of origin. I can remember, as a kid, accompanying my mother to vote. And when I was 7 and my brother 10, on election night my parents went out, and told us we could watch the TV until the election was decided. (I trundled off to bed at 10, my brother was still in front of the TV at 3AM (6AM eastern), the outcome still up in the air.
Democracy is the most important issue. No question. And we need the Fairness Doctrine reinstated, which Reagan, a horrible president, removed. (That requires TV stations to air both sides of political issues, and enabled Fox to become the propaganda machine that it is.)
The guy you got into it with today on one of the alternate platforms… I was trying to understand the disconnect there. I think you say the left is more likely to win long term if people are willing to do the work. Therefore the left giving up is the most concerning issue today. He had a visceral reaction to an assertion that the left is the greatest concern and things devolved from there. It seems the disconnect was ultimately his interpretation of the notion of “greatest concern”. Your position is clearly that the right is the worse side but it’s not going away and the best way to deal with it is for the left to unite against it consistently (plus do the work) and so that’s why the left giving up is your greater concern. That nuance was lost since he was only getting a snip and not the entirety of your position(s).
I explained all of that actually. He wasn’t reading well. When I suggested he wait and read the blog post, he said, “I read both of your posts.” He thought blog post meant Mastodon post.
He was rude and spoke to me unacceptably. He never read the blog post and is still defending his “criticism” of me, which was all silly.
I finally blocked him and any of his friends who joined the pile-on.
Reading this article, I couldn’t help but think about a few people who taught me a lot about democracy in action.
One was a Vietnam veteran who incessantly mobilized support for a combined Korean/Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the grounds of the Hawaii State Capitol in Honolulu. The final result was magnificent, but hard-won. From start to finish: 7 years.
Another was a geo-hydrologist who organized community-based farm/ranch/nursery support for the rebuilding and restoration of the 14.5-mile Kohala Ditch irrigation aqueduct. From start to finish: 5 years.
Another was a municipal water system for two adjoining subdivisions requiring passage of improvement district legislation ratified by a vote of some 437 homeowners. From start to finish: 4 years.
I could go on and cite other examples. The point is that actual ground truth projects invariably require time, patience, constancy and dedication. Also, some compromise. But, most of all, engagement. Not strident advocacy, but knowledge-based conviction, grit and temperament to see things through to a proper conclusion. These traits are not nourished by populism. Nor a thoughtless drift toward authoritarianism.
Democracy is hard work. It can’t be done sitting at a computer and shouting out opinions online. You have to go outdoors. You have to talk to neighbors and fellow citizens. You have to listen. Seriously listen. You have to build coalitions and seek out mentors, supporters and funders.
Over a century, people worried about the vigor of American democracy mourned the closing of the western frontier. They thought the frontier was essential to the American democratic experience because it spawned community agency, self-help, and pragmatic problem-solving. A friend of mine suggests that we have to learn to turn our covered wagons east and revisit–and rebuild–the nation anew.
Extremism born of boredom won’t secure our republic. We have to get interested again in democratic perseverence.
I appreciate this particular piece very much. Very interesting and it has given me a slightly different perspective than I had before I read it. It’s very helpful. Thanks.
Hi Teri, I’m new to your blog and really appreciate what you do to keep us up to date. I’ve looked over past posts and have not seen anyone ask about Moore v. Harper. Earlier today I watched an interview on MSNBC of Judge Michael Luttig discussing case before our highest court of law, and frankly it scares the heck out of me what it might mean. Would appreciate your thoughts. Thank you again.
When I landed on the left in college during Viet Nam, I made a point of studying various political and economic systems. It didn’t take long to realize that our leftist positions, if taken to their logical conclusion, would require a major revolution to accomplish. I’d also studied enough history to feel revolution was not a step I was prepared to advocate.
So from then I became willing to compromise. And with the big swing right when Reagan was elected, I also realized not enough people in the country were into even what we’d now call progressive policies to expect to win elections with them. My vote has always been more about stopping the Rs than loving “my” candidate.
But my impression then and now about most people who move left or progressive is that they don’t really study the alternatives and think it through that far, they’re just radicalized and caught up in rigid positions. I’m still pretty hopeful about the young progressives; the first time since my hippie friends and I marched for peace, environmental, women, etc. long ago that i have felt like another generation gets it — and gets it better than we did.
I think this is related: I like to say that we won’t have the right answers until we have enough people asking the questions. We get out ahead of ourselves and the public.
me too Leigh 🙂 ~ hopeful 🙂
“Some spent months heckling Garland and mocking his commitment to rule of law and insisting that he break rules to deliver the results they wanted”
Unfortunately Anand Giridharadas’ latest Shouts and Murmurs piece in this week’s New Yorker, although a humor piece, is all about mocking Garland. Not funny at all.
You are absolutely correct. He wanted attention? Well, he got it. I’ve had middle schoolers turn in funnier and more cogent pieces.
Competitive authoritarianism is a persisting threat—a threat which is too little acknowledged.
In American politics money is speech and obscene amounts of money are spent during our protracted, virtually never ending political campaigns.
According to OpenSecrets, a project of the Center for Responsive Politics, the costs of American election campaigns continue to increase at an alarming rate. In 2000, the total cost for presidential and congressional campaigns was $3.1 billion; in 2016, $6.5 billion; in 2020, nearly $14 billion, almost equally split between presidential and congressional campaigns.
Haven’t Republican-Libertarian politicians, their mega-donors and their media propagandists already ensured that we are in a persisting state of competitive authoritarianism?
In America, competitive authoritarianism is both fostered by and promotes the interests of Republican-Libertarians, but Democrats cannot help but be caught up in this regressive game. In our nation competitive authoritarianism is very deeply entrenched as:
~a polarized system within which the major parties compete for donor dollars and base support, and, when in power, impose the policies favored by donors and base on the citizenry as a whole;
~a system wherein the trappings of democracy remain in place, but within which democratic norms are undermined and democratic institutions are severely weakened, primarily through the outsized influence of money in politics;
~a system wherein government officials, in unprecedented ways, abuse state power in order to aid their allies and disadvantage their adversaries;
~a system within which the considered preferences of the majority of citizens are ignored and abuses of power go well beyond those associated with traditional patronage.
If we fail to check the outsized role of money-speech in our politics, is it likely that, election cycle after election cycle, competitive authoritarianism will become more deeply entrenched? What are the chances that the outsized role of money-speech can be checked?
You’ve described this problem extremely well. Great clarity.
We need to End Citizens United!
Thanks, Teri. This is an excellent piece.
It’s been hard watching things degrade over the last several decades starting with Reagan. Like you, my first presidential election was voting against Reagan, and it’s been hard watching the GOP’s assault on democracy harden. The long term assault on public education has resulted in fewer people having an understanding of how our government is supposed to work with history and civics no longer being required courses. With the advent of the internet and social media, far more people have become susceptible to dangerous misinformation and outright propaganda. In order for democracy to survive, we need an educated and engaged electorate. And yes, people need to understand that for progress and democracy to really work, it can’t be based on instant gratification. It takes time and effort, but it’s worth it.
Thank you
Change is slow but that adds value to the shift. I’ve lived in Georgia since 1969. I worked and lived close to the city center. In 1993 I moved to cobb county which politically was red as opposed to to Atlanta and Decatur where I lived. The count board of commissioners in ‘93 was composed of r white men. Now in 2022, five women, four of them Black now make up the board. Citizens in four parts of Cobb voted down Republican efforts to create new cities throughout the county. The county isn’t blue yet, but over the next decade it will be. There is a growing alliance among brown and black citizens and white progressives and that is why Rafael Warnock beat Hershel Walker, the authoritarian’s puppet. Who would have thought that Georgia would have Jewish and Black senators elected at the same time last year. And them\n on Tuesday Rafael Warnock won and he flipped many rural counties in the process. Things are changing. Your blog is at the vanguard of this movement.
Thanks, Teri. This oscillation theory makes lots of sense to me. Seems we are in it now. I so appreciate your take. It’s one of the things that keeps me going as a person who embraces complexity. I so appreciate all you do.
Very interesting. I actually have some hope of survival of democracy. (Ultra podcast did a lot for me)
I’m beginning to see there are more people out there who want it more than don’t.
It is unnerving just how many “horrible” people who have slithered out from underneath their rocks and proudly announce their arrival.
It is so hard to break through with other progressives who complain about the speed of investigations and prosecutions. It is similarly hard to get them to understand incremental progress. They want revolutionary change and don’t understand how long it has taken us to get where we are, and why we must work within the system. (I am 65; my 31 year old daughter doesn’t have the patience that I do and she believes that without rapid progress to the left, the young will abandon the fight). How do we get them to understand what you are saying?
See if she’ll read my blog post.
I have already forwarded it to her!
Thank you for your always excellent work. Your blog posts and analysis are a beacon of calm clarity in the crazy world we find ourselves in.
Hi Teri, great post. I have an unrelated question. For some reason I haven’t been able to acquire a Mastodon account. (Still trying). I do have a Post account and follow you there. I really want to leave Twitter. With that said I haven’t been able to set up notifications from Post. Is there a way? I generally only open Twitter when I get notifications from the few people I follow. So if I leave Twitter I will have no way of knowing when you post something.
Try one of these servers and see if that works. There is a huge demand. Pretty soon some groups you know and trust will be operating their own servers.https://joinmastodon.org/servers
My daughter had just begun her first year in college when Trump was elected. She was angry when Bernie Sanders was not the Democratic nominee, but voted for Hillary. She called me on election night, crying about the election results. She went to Boston on busses sent from Smith College for the Women’s March. She was “upset” because she was in a Blue state and couldn’t call up her representatives and yell at them for enacting horrible legislation. She also demanded instant change and we had many discussions about how that would be great, but that change didn’t happen fast. She’s now older, and understands more about the nature of change, and she’s still working on making social change happen. This is called maturity and we should all note that age does not equal maturity. Those who are disenchanted at the constant fight and slowness of change need to gain some maturity. I’m a 70 year old professional woman who has fought discrimination and misogyny my entire life. Change has happened, it’s somewhat better now, but the fight goes on.
I’ll go out on a limb here and say the biggest whiners out there have had privilege all their lives and are horrified that they might lose it. People who have been fighting the fight for decades know to just keep fighting.
You are exactly correct, Teri. The whiners on the left are precisely those people: privileged, mostly males. They are the loudest voices in the burn-it-all-down faction.
Interestingly the nihilist set has lost a lot of power since 2016 especially in the West. When was the last time anyone heard from the Medicare for All and Green New Deal crowd?
This mid-term has given me cause for hope. The Dem party is stronger and more savvy than it has been in some time. I think we are up to the task of preserving American Democracy over the long haul.
Yes. The midterm was definitely encouraging, but the majorities are still too close. One good FDR win would do it, but unless the GOP runs someone like Kari Lake, it’s hard to see that happening.
There are a number of prominent women as well. One monetizes her feed and spends most of her time with self-promotion, but she is smart and persuasive. (I also think she comes from privilege. I can tell you that she never got in the trenches and worked to save democracy. She has a few women friends as well who are similar.
I was typing my comment while you were posting yours. How I see similarities between them! I hear you and know exactly what you are saying.
My daughter does understand the points of privilege that she has, and she wants to use whatever power she has to help others to change the system. But she doesn’t get how this is a *forever* fight.
Thank you for your willingness to fight against discrimination and misogyny, and I’m glad we have your daughter on our side.
Somewhat analogously, though not quite:
My own daughter, well to the left of most Democrats, is about to turn 35. When TFG was elected– certainly not her choice– she felt that things wouldn’t be all that bad because the broken system needed to fall apart and the sooner the better. When she saw what actually happened in that administration, she realized she had been wrong and it really was that bad and then some.
Teri, you are my hero. You explain the problem and how to solve it. It won’t be easy, but it is doable. Thank you!
Very meaningful… and boosts energy to keep activating!
I’m hoping you had time to listen to Rachel Maddo’s podcast called ULTRA… sort of goes along with what you’re saying here….thank you Teri for all you are doing
Meg
I haven’t yet! It is on my list, though. Thanks for the reminder.