American authoritarianism update

TNR published a long interview with Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, the Harvard scholars who were co-authors of the 2018 bestseller How Democracies Die. Here are two small parts of the interview:

Dire Days: What if Trump Does Everything He’s 

Promised and People Don’t Care?

INTERVIEWER: Can we talk for a minute about Project 2025? We have now Russ Vought, who’s going to run the Office of Management and Budget, assuming he’s confirmed by the Senate, and he was a key author of Project 2025. What parts of that should be most concerning to people, Steven?

LEVITSKY: There are many, many, many policies in there that I dislike and fear. But I think the core problem is the Project 2025 initiative reflects a much broader thinking in the Republican Party, and among the right, which is that not only state institutions, but a number of private institutions like universities, have been penetrated by pernicious forces of the left and need to be purged and packed for the good of society. And again, that’s just classic authoritarian thinking, right? There’s no liberal democratic way to respond to this problem. If you believe that the state is packed by your enemies, there’s no liberal democratic way of resolving that. It is a fundamentally authoritarian attitude that you saw, for example, in right-wing militaries in Latin America in the 1970s. The idea was that the left was kind of a cancer, that it pervaded the state and society and needed to be rooted out. This is a less violent variant of that.

ZIBLATT: Project 2025 includes these proposals to essentially circumvent the Senate confirmation process for Cabinet secretaries and to have acting officials and so on. And I think the most worrying thing is that we’re already seeing discussion of this within a week or two of the election victory. So we’ve seen the first steps already being discussed. Also, this idea that the Insurrection Act can be used on day one certainly is also worrying. Equally distressing is the plan to reimpose the Schedule F to allow for the manning of the state with loyalists. What’s worrying overall is that parts of Project 2025 lay out in very concrete steps exactly all the things we’ve been talking about for years.

INTERVIEWER: [Asks about why the election turned out as it did]

LEVITSKY: I think it’s a combination of a couple of things. I don’t think you can ever depend on voters to vote for democracy. ....

ZIBLATT: A second issue, though, is that one can imagine a scenario in which voters might have understood the risk a little bit more. But I don’t blame voters here. I blame elites again—in particular, social elites. I have in mind the relative silence over the past year of too many business leaders, too many religious leaders, and too many important labor unions—in particular, the Teamsters. When discussions were made public of the plans to round up migrants in an undifferentiated way that doesn’t distinguish between legal and illegal migrants, the failure of so many religious leaders, for example, to publicly and loudly condemn this and raise the stakes of what was involved, meant that many voters didn’t fully understand the stakes of these plans.

You can never depend on voters to vote for democracy. That is a very interesting assertion. The 2024 elections is evidence it is mostly true, even though many MAGA voters claim they voted to protect democracy. In one large poll, about one-third of Trump supporters identified democracy as the most important factor in their voting choice. Apparently, their irrational fears mostly centered on illegal immigration and alleged Democratic Party authoritarianism. 

But what about not blaming rank and file voters who didn’t see the risk, and instead blaming elites for failure to warn them? That absolves American adults of all responsibility their failure to see reality and authoritarian threat for what it is. Instead of reality they relied on a dark free speech illusion to vote against democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law. I’m not that forgiving. In my assessment, all of the adult American public eligible to vote who did not vote for Harris gets ~45% of the blame, maybe ~50%. They were warned over, and over and over. 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

A lot of other news today is worse than just plain nuts. Well-known crackpot and blithering weirdo Marianne Williamson is making a bid for Democratic National Committee chair. I’m getting palpitations just thinking about it.

MAGA freak Laura Loomer is causing mayhem in MAGAland after insulting and attacking Elon Musk over alleged corruption and supporting more immigration of foreign engineers and scientists. Musk says that Americans are too lazy and too chill. Another MAGA elite joined the worker-bashing fun: Vivek Ramaswamy got criticized after posting a wild rant about how bad American workers suck. 

And then there’s some Christians in a snit: 15,000 people signed a petition accusing DJT of violating Christian values. Quick! Somebody tell Merrick Garland to prosecute DJT for violating Christian values! That will put the fear of God in him! 🤪

We’re is sooo much trouble. Or, are we just having fun?

WTF??

Wheee!