#American Authoritarianism

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Adam Zyglis, Buffalo News

* * * *

Susan B Glasser: In the hours after Johnson’s unexpected ascension on Wednesday, the press and the political commentariat feasted on examples of the previously little-known congressman’s ideological extremism: his calling gay people “dangerous” and “deviant” threats to the American way of life; his sponsorship of a national abortion ban and warning that those who performed an abortion would, at least in Louisiana, end up doing hard labor; his insistence that, if only women would bear more “able-bodied workers,” there would be no need to cut back Medicare and Social Security. His climate-change denialism, his belief in creationism over evolution, and his promotion of “covenant marriage” were all examined. It was pointed out that Johnson, after only six years in Congress, was the least experienced Speaker in a hundred and forty years, and the most hard-right House leader anyone could remember.

But none of those were the reasons for his rise, which had less to do with his stealth brand of political extremism than with his stellar record of support for Trump’s unprecedented effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Many members of the House Republican Conference—two-thirds of them, in fact—had voted to back Trump’s lies about the election. But few had worked as actively to foist bogus conspiracy theories about 2020 on the American public as did Johnson, a constitutional lawyer who enlisted dozens of fellow-members to support a Texas court case seeking to cancel the election results in battleground states. Johnson even promoted the bizarre falsehood, also amplified by Trump, that Dominion voting machines had been rigged because they came from “Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela.” (One thing that always bothered me about this: Didn’t anyone ever point out to them that Chávez died in 2013, seven years before the election that he somehow stole?) Johnson’s role, little noted at the time, was such that the Times later called him “the most important architect” of the campaign to block congressional certification of the Electoral College results and thus overturn Trump’s defeat.

On Tuesday, it had looked like the Speakership might go to Minnesota’s Tom Emmer, but the Republican whip turned out to have a fatal black mark on his résumé, at least as far as House Republicans were concerned: his vote on January 6, 2021, to certify President Joe Biden’s election. After five rounds of voting in the Republican Conference on Tuesday, Emmer defeated Johnson, a hundred and nineteen votes to ninety-seven votes. But then Trump weighed in. No way he wanted an election enabler as House Speaker. In a Truth Social post, Trump warned against the “tragic mistake” of choosing a “globalist rino” like Emmer. Enough Republicans then refused to go along with Emmer in a prospective House floor vote—where the Republican majority is so slim that a Speaker candidate can lose no more than four members of his own party—that he was soon forced to give up his bid. (“It’s done. It’s over. I killed him,” Trump reportedly bragged in a phone call with members.) It says everything about today’s House G.O.P. that Johnson lost the race against Emmer but then won the job anyway.

[The New Yorker]

[hussyknee]

[sher-ee]

The Heritage Foundation is the sponsor of Project 2025.

We have been screaming about this.

VOTE BLUE.

[my-midlife-crisis]

[creature-wizard]

For scholars of authoritarianism, the success of “weird” is no surprise. That’s because humor has long been one of the most effective weapons of anti-authoritarian politics. Behind the facade of their omnipotence, most strongmen are brittle and insecure personalities. They don’t mind being called evil, but being ridiculed is a different matter.

...

Humor can have a crucial role in the work of mobilization and civic education to keep those democratic rights. “Laughtivism,” as Serbian democracy activist Srdja Popovic has called it, views humor as more effective than anger in highly polarized situations. When we laugh together, fear and distrust lessen, which is the opposite of what authoritarians want. That, too, is why such leaders can’t take a joke.

[tenisperfection]

You can feel how you feel about this but do not give way for cynicism or hopelessness. That’s how the fascists win. You have to fight and you have to organize and you have to do everything you’re able to so Harris can win in November. The people of this country depend on that win and the entire world depends on it as well. If you are eligible to vote you need to vote blue and you need to tell everyone you know to vote blue. There is no other option that will not in calamity.

[alwaysbewoke]

x

[yangscowlick]

It really is so remarkable that a western cartoon was brave enough to frame desertion as the moral and heroic thing to do.

[lady-raziel]

Guys while I’m calmed down a little from yesterday I do realize I have the opportunity once again to do the funniest thing of all time at this point in my job search

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

By Thom Hartmann

Kevin Roberts, who heads the Heritage Foundation (largely responsible for Project 2025) just implicitly threatened Americans that if we don’t allow him and his hard-right movement to complete their transformation of America from a democratic republic into an authoritarian state, there will be blood in the streets.

“We’re in the process of taking this country back,” he told a TV audience, adding: “The reason that they are apoplectic right now, the reason that so many anchors on MSNBC, for example, are losing their minds daily is because our side is winning. And so I come full circle on this response and just want to encourage you with some substance that we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

He’s not wrong. America has been changed as a result of a series of corrupt rulings by Republicans (exclusively; not one of these rulings has been joined by a Democratic appointee) which have changed America’s legal and political systems themselves.

As Roberts notes, this is really the largest issue we all face, and our mainstream media are totally failing to either recognize or clearly articulate how radically different our country is now, how far the Republicans on the Court have dragged us away from both our Founder’s vision and the norms and standards of a functioning, modern democratic republic.

First, in a series of decisions — the first written by that notorious corporatist Lewis Powell (of “Powell Memo” fame) — Republicans on the Court have functionally legalized bribery of politicians and judges by both the morbidly rich and massive corporations.

This started with Powell’s 1978 Bellotti opinion, which opened the door (already cracked a bit) to the idea that corporations are not only “persons” under the Constitution, but, more radically, are entitled to the human rights the Framers wrote into the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments).

Using that rationale, Powell asserted that corporations, like rich people (from the Buckley decision that preceded Belotti by two years), are entitled to the First Amendment right of free speech. But he took it a radical step farther, ruling that because corporations don’t have mouths they can use to speak with, their use of money to spend supporting politicians or carpet-bombing advertising for a candidate or issue is free speech that can’t be tightly regulated.

Citizens United, another all-Republican decision with Clarence Thomas the deciding vote (after taking millions in bribes), expanded that doctrine for both corporations and rich people, creating new “dark money” systems that wealthy donors and companies can use to hide their involvement in their efforts to get the political/legal/legislative outcomes they seek.

Last week the Republicans on the Court took even that a huge step farther, declaring that when companies or wealthy people give money to politicians in exchange for contracts, legislation, or other favors, as long as the cash is paid out after the deed is done it’s not a bribe but a simple “gratuity.”

So, first off, they’ve overthrown over 240 years of American law and legalized bribery.

Last week they also gutted the ability of federal regulatory agencies to protect average people, voters, employees, and even the environment from corporations that seek to exploit, pollute, or even engage in wage theft. This shifted power across the economic spectrum from a government elected by we the people to the CEOs and boards of directors of some of America’s most predatory and poisonous companies.

Finally, in the Trump immunity case, the Court ruled that presidents are immune from prosecution under criminal law, regardless of the crimes they commit, so long as they assert those crimes are done as part of their “official” responsibilities. And who decides what’s “official”? The six Republicans on the Supreme Court.

These actions — corporate personhood, money as speech, ending the Chevron deference to regulatory agencies, and giving the president life-and-death powers that historically have only been held by kings, shahs, mullahs, dictators, and popes — have fundamentally altered the nature of our nation.

It’s almost impossible to overstate the significance of this, or its consequences. We no longer live in America 1.0; this is a new America, one more closely resembling the old Confederacy, where wealthy families and giant companies make the rules, enforce the rules, and punish those who irritate or try to obstruct them.

In America 2.0, there is no right to vote; governors and secretaries of state can take away your vote without even telling you (although they still must go to court to take away your gun).

They can destroy any politician they choose by simply pouring enough cash into the campaign system (including dark, untraceable cash).

The president can now go much farther than Bush’s torturing and imprisoning innocent people in Gitmo without legal process: he can now shoot a person on Fifth Avenue in plain sight of the world and simply call it a necessary part of his job. Or impoverish or imprison you or me with the thinnest of legal “official” rationales.

America 2.0 is not a democracy; it’s an oligarchy, as I wrote about in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy. The South has finally — nearly — won the Civil War.

While it will be months or more likely years before all of these new powers the Republicans on the Court have given the president, rich people, and corporations begin to dawn on most Americans, they will, step-by-step transform this country into something more closely resembling Hungary or Russia than the democracies of Europe and Southeast Asia.

The only remedy at this late stage in this 50+ yearlong campaign to remake America is a massive revolt this fall at the ballot box, turning Congress — by huge majorities — over to Democrats while holding the White House.

If we fail at this, while there will be scattered pockets of resistance for years, it’ll be nearly impossible to reverse the course that America’s rightwing billionaires have set us on.

There has never been a more critical time in the history of our nation outside of the last time rich oligarchs tried to overthrow our democracy, the Civil War. Like then, the stakes are nothing less than the survival of a nation of, by, and for we the people.

[troythecatfish]

[ohyeslawd]

Google Project 25

What is Project 2025?

The Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project is a well-funded (eight-figure) effort of the Heritage Foundation and more than 100 organizations to enable a future anti-democratic presidential administration to take swift, far-right action that would cut wages for working people, dismantle social safety net programs, reverse decades of progress for civil rights, redefine the way our society operates, and undermine our economy.

A central pillar of Project 2025 is the “Mandate for Leadership,” a 900+ page policy playbook authored by former Trump administration officials and other extremists that provides a radical vision for our nation and a roadmap to implement it.

Project 2025 Snapshot

Proposals from Project 2025, discussed in detail throughout this guide, that they claim could be implemented through executive branch action alone — so without new legislation — include:

Cut overtime protections for 4.3 million workers

Stop efforts to lower prescription drug prices

Limit access to food assistance, which an average of more than 40 million people in 21.6 million households rely on monthly

Eliminate the Head Start early education program, which serves over 1 million children annually

Cut American Rescue Plan (ARP) programs that have created or saved 220,000 jobs

Restrict access to medication abortion

Push more of the 33 million people enrolled in Medicare towards Medicare Advantage and other worse, private options

Expose the 368,000 children in foster care to risk of increased discrimination

Deny students in 25 states and Washington, D.C. access to student loans because their state provides in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants

Roll back civil rights protections across multiple fronts, including cutting diversity, equity, and inclusion-related (DEI) programs and LGBTQ+ rights in health care, education, and workplaces

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 14, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 15, 2024

Five years ago, on September 15, 2019, after about a six-week hiatus during the summer, I wrote a Facebook post that started:

“Many thanks to all of you who have reached out to see if I'm okay. I am, indeed (aside from having been on the losing end of an encounter with a yellow jacket this afternoon!). I've been moving, setting up house, and finishing the new book. Am back and ready to write, but now everything seems like such a dumpster fire it's very hard to know where to start. So how about a general overview of how things at the White House look to me, today....” 

I wrote a review of Trump’s apparent mental decline amidst his faltering presidency, stonewalling of investigations of potential criminal activity by him or his associates, stacking of the courts, and attempting to use the power of the government to help his 2020 reelection. 

Then I noted that the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA), had written a letter to the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, on Friday, September 13, telling Maguire he knew that a whistleblower had filed a complaint with the inspector general of the intelligence community, who had deemed the complaint “credible” and "urgent.” This meant that the complaint was supposed to be sent on to the House Intelligence Committee. But, rather than sending it to the House as the law required, Maguire had withheld it. Schiff’s letter told Maguire that he’d better hand it over. Schiff speculated that Maguire was covering up evidence of crimes by the president or his closest advisors.

And I added: “None of this would fly in America if the Senate, controlled by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, were not aiding and abetting him.”

“This is the story of a dictator on the rise,” I wrote, “taking control of formerly independent branches of government, and using the power of his office to amass power.”

Readers swamped me with questions. So I wrote another post answering them and trying to explain the news, which began breaking at a breathtaking pace. 

And so these Letters from an American were born.

In the five years since then, the details of the Ukraine scandal—the secret behind the whistleblower complaint in Schiff’s letter—revealed that then-president Trump was running his own private foreign policy to strong-arm Ukraine into helping his reelection campaign. That effort brought to light more of the story of Russian support for Trump’s 2016 campaign, which until Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine seemed to be in exchange for lifting sanctions the Obama administration imposed against Russia after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. 

The February 2022 invasion brought renewed attention to the Mariupol Plan, confirmed by Trump’s 2016 campaign advisor Paul Manafort, that Russia expected a Trump administration to permit Russian president Vladimir Putin to take over eastern Ukraine. 

The Ukraine scandal of 2019 led to Trump’s first impeachment trial for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, then his acquittal on those charges and his subsequent purge of career government officials, whom he replaced with Trump loyalists. 

Then, on February 7, just two days after Senate Republicans acquitted him, Trump picked up the phone and called veteran journalist Bob Woodward to tell him there was a deadly new virus spreading around the world. It was airborne, he explained, and was five times “more deadly than even your strenuous flus.” “This is deadly stuff,” he said. He would not share that information with other Americans, though, continuing to play down the virus in hopes of protecting the economy.

More than a million of us did not live through the ensuing pandemic.

We have, though, lived through the attempts of the former president to rig the 2020 election, the determination of American voters to make their voices heard, the Black Lives Matter protests after the murder of George Floyd, the election of Democrat Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, and the subsequent refusal of Trump and his loyalists to accept Biden’s win. 

And we have lived through the unthinkable: an attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob determined to overrule the results of an election and install their own candidate in the White House. For the first time in our history, the peaceful transfer of power was broken. Republican senators saved Trump again in his second impeachment trial, and rather than disappearing after the inauguration of President Biden, Trump doubled down on the Big Lie that he had been the true winner of the 2020 presidential election. 

We have seen the attempts of Biden and the Democratic-controlled Congress to move America past this dark moment by making coronavirus vaccines widely available and passing landmark legislation to rebuild the economy. The American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act spurred the economy to become the strongest in the world, proving that the tested policy of investing in ordinary Americans worked far better than post-1980 neoliberalism ever did. After Republicans took control of the House in 2023, we saw them paralyze Congress with infighting that led them, for the first time in history, to throw out their own speaker, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). 

We have watched as the Supreme Court, stacked by Trump with religious extremists, has worked to undermine the proven system in place before 1981. It took away the doctrine that required courts to defer to government agencies’ reasonable regulations and opened the way for big business to challenge those regulations before right-wing judges. It ended affirmative action in colleges and universities, and it overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the constitutional right to abortion. 

And then we watched the Supreme Court hand down the stunning decision of July 1, 2024, that overturned the fundamental principle of the United States of America that no one is above the law. In Donald J. Trump v. U.S., the Supreme Court ruled that a president could not be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of his official duties.

We saw the reactionary authoritarianism of the former president’s supporters grow stronger. In Republican-dominated states across the country, legislatures passed laws to suppress Democratic voting and to put the counting of votes into partisan hands. Trump solidified control over the Republican Party and tightened his ties to far-right authoritarians and white supremacists. Republicans nominated him to be their presidential candidate in 2024 to advance policies outlined in Project 2025 that would concentrate power in the president and impose religious nationalism on the country. Trump chose as his running mate religious extremist Ohio senator J.D. Vance, putting in line for the presidency a man whose entire career in elected office consisted of the eighteen months he had served in the Senate.

In that first letter five years ago, I wrote: “So what do those of us who love American democracy do? Make noise. Take up oxygen…. Defend what is great about this nation: its people, and their willingness to innovate, work, and protect each other. Making America great has never been about hatred or destruction or the aggregation of wealth at the very top; it has always been about building good lives for everyone on the principle of self-determination. While we have never been perfect, our democracy is a far better option than the autocratic oligarchy Trump is imposing on us.” 

And we have made noise, and we have taken up oxygen. All across the country, people have stepped up to defend our democracy from those who are open about their plans to destroy it and install a dictator. Democrats and Republicans as well as people previously unaligned, we have reiterated why democracy matters, and in this election where the issue is not policy differences but the very survival of our democracy, we are working to elect Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz.

If you are tired from the last five years, you have earned the right to be.

And yet, you are still here, reading. 

I write these letters because I love America. I am staunchly committed to the principle of human self-determination for people of all races, genders, abilities, and ethnicities, and I believe that American democracy could be the form of government that comes closest to bringing that principle to reality. And I know that achieving that equality depends on a government shaped by fact-based debate rather than by extremist ideology and false narratives. 

And so I write.

But I have come to understand that I am simply the translator for the sentiments shared by millions of people who are finding each other and giving voice to the principles of democracy. Your steadfast interest, curiosity, critical thinking, and especially your kindness—to me and to one another—illustrate that we have not only the power, but also the passion, to reinvent our nation.

To those who read these letters, send tips, proofread, criticize, comment, argue, worry, cheer, award medals (!), and support me and one another: I thank you for bringing me along on this wild, unexpected, exhausting, and exhilarating journey.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[charlesoberonn]

Tennessee Republicans passed a bill to arm teachers while refusing to even consider any gun safety measures.

When a black Democratic representative, Justin Jones, spoke in opposition to the bill the speaker silenced his mic. He later banned him from speaking for 2 days because he recorded the session, even though a white Republican representative did the exact same thing and didn't get punished.

I really like Jones' statement before the speaker silenced him "I do not yield my time. You have a gavel, you don't have a whip."

[readingsquotes]

"

The negligible acts of property damage were not, of course, what was being policed. Nor was the holding of campus space; students have done this before in recent decades without their university administrators inviting the force of militarized police.

Instead, it was the protesters’ message that was being handcuffed — the condemnation of Israel and the calls for a free Palestine — and young peoples’ commitment to it.

I have been reporting on political dissent and violent policing for 15 years, particularly in New York City. Compared to Tuesday night, I have never witnessed, at the scene of a protest, the use of police power so disproportionate to the type of demonstration taking place.

Make no mistake: This is an authoritarian escalation."

....

The “Outside Agitator” Myth

The crackdown on campuses offered a grim continuity: Police and other officials churned out all the same old excuses for quashing resistance. Most notably, their rhetoric relied on the predictable canard of the “outside agitator.”

New York Mayor Eric Adams trotted it out as grounds for sending in an army of baton-wielding cops against the city’s students. And Deputy Police Commissioner Tarik Sheppard went even further on MSNBC Wednesday morning, brandishing an unremarkable chain lock — the sort of which I’ve seen on bikes everywhere — as proof that “professionals,” not students themselves, had carried out the takeover of the Columbia building.

The bike-lock business quickly came in for rightly deserved mockery, but the “outside agitator” myth is no joking matter.

In this current moment, the “outside agitators” conjured are both the perennial anarchist bogeymen or Islamist terror groups sending funds to keep student encampments flush with the cheapest tents available online.

The “outside agitator” trope has a long, racist legacy, including use by the Ku Klux Klan. In the 1930s, the Klan issued flyers in Alabama claiming that “paid organizers for the communists are only trying” to get Black people “in trouble.” The allegation does double rhetorical harm by denying the agency and commitment of organizers themselves and suggesting that “outside” support from beyond a given locale or institution is somehow a bad thing.

More recently, the canard has been hauled out in defense of movement repression in Atlanta, against Stop Cop City protesters who had made a national call for backup. And it was a common refrain for politicians nationwide during the 2020 uprising, as well as discourse around the earlier Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson after police killed Mike Brown.

Blaming outside agitators or interests always was a propaganda ploy and remains so now. The idea that Palestinian liberation struggle is a mere proxy for Iranian interests repeats the delegitimizing logic of the past.

In fact, the Gaza solidarity encampments on campuses are student-organized and led, with Palestinian students at front and center, and a disproportionately large presence of Jewish students too. It is students, over 1,000 of them, who have faced arrest.

[half-life-crisis]

Most #gullible people are too gullible to realize that they are indeed gullible – and that is #awesome #news for #authoritarian #propagandists.  Are YOU naïve? Find out.

https://halflifecrisis.com/hlc-articles/exploiting-naivete-are-you-gullible…

Yes, many confused #people are convinced EVERYBODY ELSE is #wrong except themselves.