About the blatant authoritarianism of JD Vance and America's radical right

An NYT analysis article comments (not paywalled) about power and what America's radical right thinks about the political left:

How JD Vance Thinks About Power

Mr. Vance has been blunt about wanting to break norms and test constitutional limits to execute his ideas: “We have to get pretty wild, pretty far out there”

In September 2021, JD Vance offered two predictions about former President Donald J. Trump and one piece of advice.

Mr. Trump would run again in 2024, Mr. Vance said. He would win.

And when he did, Mr. Vance counseled, he needed the right people around him this time.

“Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people,” Mr. Vance said on a podcast. “Then when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did,” Mr. Vance said, citing a (possibly apocryphal) quotation long attributed to America’s seventh president, “and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”

He has urged Republicans to “seize the endowments” of left-leaning universities, punishing nominal ideological foes through dramatic changes to the tax code, and warmly quotes Richard Nixon’s observation about higher education: “The professors are the enemy.”

He has suggested that parents should receive extra votes in elections — one for each child in their care — to dilute the electoral power of the left.

“We’re still terrified of wielding power,” Mr. Vance complained of his party last year.

Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist and an ally of Mr. Vance’s who helped catalyze campaigns on the right against critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion programs, said the move from a traditionalist like Mr. Pence to Mr. Vance exemplified “how the Republican Party is going to think about power moving forward.”

People whom Mr. Vance has cited to explain his worldview or detail who helped shape his thinking include Patrick Deneen, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame who has suggested that conservatives must harness the power of the state to counter “liberal totalitarianism”; Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist for whom Mr. Vance worked; and Curtis Yarvin, a prominent voice on the New Right who has argued that American democracy has devolved to the point that the country needs a monarchical leader.  

He has said that Alex Jones, the Infowars conspiracy theorist, is a more reputable source of information than Rachel Maddow — in part to get a rise out of Democrats, he has allowed, but also because he recognized key truths in Mr. Jones’s animating arguments, according to 2021 remarks from Mr. Vance reported by ProPublica: “that a transnational financial elite controls things in our country,” Mr. Vance said, “that they hate our society, and oh, by the way, a lot of them are probably sex perverts, too.”

The article is long and detailed. It makes clear that Vance and America's authoritarian radical right wealth and power movement sees the situation as fighting against “liberal totalitarianism”, “sex perverts”, “professors” and a country in need of a dictator in the form of a “monarchical leader” like DJT. What is truly terrifying here is Vance's deranged, incoherent assertion that radical right authoritarians are “terrified of wielding power.” That is beyond insane. Their lust for unrestrained power (and wealth) cannot be clearer. Their contempt for the Constitution and rule of law are just as clear.

The cruelty, viciousness, mendacity, moral rot and intolerance of the Republican authoritarian wealth and power movement is undeniable. All of it is now explicit.

Yabbut, waddabout Hillary,

Hunter's laptop, Joe's crimes . . . .