Tuesday, September 12, 2023

Bits: Dissolution of the Union; Impeachment Kool-Aid update; Analysis of democracy rot

America's authoritarian radical right (ARR) continues to call for the dissolution of the Union if the ARR doesn't get everything it wants. What it wants is full legalization of all corruption, death of democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law, dictatorship, Christian Sharia theocracy and plutocracy. Rolling Stone writes
IN FEBRUARY, GEORGIA Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called for a “national divorce” between red and blue states. Now, she’s taking her call for a schism even further by encouraging states to outright “consider seceding from the union.”

On Monday, Greene (R-Ga.) wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that “if the Biden admin refuses to stop the invasion of cartel led human and drug trafficking into our country, states should consider seceding from the union.”  
The ARR continues to foment a bloody civil war.  
____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________

One of the far right House Freedom Caucus members, Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) said there's currently no evidence that Biden committed any impeachable offense.
Appearing on MSNBC's "Inside with Jen Psaki," Republican Rep. Ken Buck was asked about the constant push from political bomb-thrower Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to impeach the president. Buck noted the "time for impeachment is the time when there's evidence linking President Biden to a high crime or misdemeanor." "That doesn't exist right now," he said.
That's strange. The Freedom Caucus isn't known for being tied to actual facts. Besides not having committed any impeachable offense is grounds for impeachment in the demented minds of the ARR.
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________

A NYT opinion piece discusses the thinking of two experts about the recent rot of American democracy caused by America's ARR:
One of the most influential books of the Trump years was “How Democracies Die” by the Harvard government professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. Published in 2018, it served as a guide to our unfolding ordeal.

Because that volume was prescient about how Donald Trump would try to rule, I was surprised to learn, in Levitsky and Ziblatt’s new book, “Tyranny of the Minority,” that they were shocked by Jan. 6. Though they’ve studied violent insurrections all over the world, they write in this new book, “we never imagined we’d see them here. Nor did we ever imagine that one of America’s two major parties would turn away from democracy in the 21st century.”

What astonished them the most, Levitsky told me in an interview last week, “was the speed and the degree to which the Republican Party Trumpized.” In “How Democracies Die,” he and Ziblatt had reproved Republicans for failing to stop Trump’s rise to power. But at the time, he said, “we didn’t consider or call the Republican Party an authoritarian party. We did not expect it to transform so quickly and so thoroughly.”  
.... in recent years, only in America has a defeated leader attempted a coup. And only in America is the coup leader likely to once again be the nominee of a major party. “Why did America, alone among rich established democracies, come to the brink?” they ask.
So in 2018, two high 'n mighty academic poobahs did not consider the GOP to be authoritarian. I must be some sort of genius, maybe even a God! By 2018 it was obvious the GOP elites and leadership had become staunchly authoritarian. By then, ARR elites were busy getting the rank and file to drink the poisoned Kool-Aid with them.

Anyway, my alleged genius aside, Levitsky and Ziblatt point out the obvious for an explanation. They see part of the answer is in our Constitution. They figured out that the US Constitution allows partisan minorities to routinely dcefeate majorities, and sometimes govern. Well duh! They see an America that is locked into a minority rule crisis. Well duh!, again. Levitsky and Ziblatt don’t have any proposals to emerge from minority rule. Wonderful!

The Economist, a nest of feisty Brits on the other side of the pond, published this in July 2018, and I have cited it here probably a dozen times since then:

American democracy’s built-in bias towards rural Republicans 

Its elections no longer convert the popular will into control of government

“EVERY system for converting votes into power has its flaws. Britain suffers from an over-mighty executive; Italy from chronically weak government; Israel from small, domineering factions. America, however, is plagued by the only democratic vice more troubling than the tyranny of the majority: tyranny of the minority.

This has come about because of a growing division between rural and urban voters. The electoral system the Founders devised, and which their successors elaborated, gives rural voters more clout than urban ones. When the parties stood for both city and country that bias affected them both. But the Republican Party has become disproportionately rural and the Democratic Party disproportionately urban. That means a red vote is worth more than a blue one.

If Brett Kavanaugh, whom President Donald Trump nominated this week, joins the Supreme Court, a conservative court established by a president and Senate who were elected with less than half the two-party vote may end up litigating the fairness of the voting system. [Authoritarianism warning!]

This bias is a dangerous new twist in the tribalism and political dysfunction that is poisoning politics in Washington. Americans often say such partisanship is bad for their country (and that the other lot should mend their ways). The Founding Fathers would have agreed. George Washington warned that ‘the alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge…is itself a frightful despotism’.”


Guess Germaine wasn't so genius after all. 🤪 He just read a short thing some Brits wrote for The Economist and internalized it. Internalized it because the Brits' analysis made a hell of a lot of sense in July of 2018. It still makes a hell of a lot of sense in September 2023. Apparently, Levitsky and Ziblatt just figured that out. Guess they're not the grand poobahs the NYT makes 'em out to be. Sheesh!

No comments:

Post a Comment