A train of thought about rising authoritarianism

CONTEXT

Nowadays, my thinking about politics tends to go back over events and trajectories I've considered multiple times before. Based on their track record, my level of trust in Trump and MAGA elites is nil. That makes sense. Evidence is abundant that they and their motives are morally rotted. That's obvious to almost everyone not trapped in MAGA's demagoguery, lies, slanders, cynical emotional manipulation, bigotry, racism, crackpottery, etc. To most of those trapped minds, MAGA's moral rot is inconceivable and simply not true.

COMMENTARY

A NYT article (not paywalled), How a Scholar Nudged the Supreme Court Toward Its Troop Deployment Ruling, triggered alarms. It instantly elicited a very bad smell, so to speak. The MSM reporting says, more or less, the USSC put the brakes on Trump's efforts to convert America into a military dictatorship. The MSM boobs framed the decision as slapping Trump down or something about like that. My intuition was that (1) the MSM's reporting was dreadfully misplaced, and (2) something really bad had happened in that shadow docket decision. 

Was my intuition right? Yes, it was mostly right. In a long Q&A session with Pxy, I analyzed my reflex assessment. It was basically right. The USSC shadow docket decision wasn't so bad for Trump or the continuing rise of corrupt authoritarianism. Trump is free to continue to build his dictatorship that includes a military police state. 

The MSM reports that the decision seriously limited Trump's power, but the MSM got that wrong. MAGA elites can use different paths to the same end. But why decide this at all? For political reasons, that's why. The three MAGA judges can use this decision to try to hide their pro-kleptocracy and pro-dictatorship sympathies. The decision is MAGA political theater in support of dictatorship and corruption. The three Democratic judges are trapped and powerless to do squat about it.

Pxy's analysis and commentary is TL/TC*/DR. So, I'll post just two of my 7-9 queries. You can probably guess the gist of Pxy's responses to these two.

* TC = too complicated

• This was the last query in the whole Q&A series -- it raises the matter of the one-way ratchet (and this) from democracy to dictatorship I have raised here before: Were the three Democratic judges in a lose-lose situation in this shadow docket decision?

• This query deals with the MSM's constant reporting failures: Your analysis asserts this: "The answer appears to be: treat mainstream media as compromised, seek alternative sources, read critically for structural distortions, and recognize that defending democracy requires building information infrastructure that corporate media can no longer provide." I deal with MAGA people online all of the time. They have been taught to deeply distrust the MSM. Now, with the MSM being compromised as you assert, and I believe to be true, there is no source of authority left to point to. Almost all political discourse has been corrupted into shouting matches over opinions, regardless of whether facts support or contradict those opinions. That is my current experience. Even when I cite rock solid facts that support my arguments, the facts are rejected out of hand by many MAGA people as lies, and I am insulted as a liar, stupid, a communist or something else bad. How the hell can anyone carry on a rational discussion any more? To me, this collapse of trust in facts, sound reasoning, experts and the MSM are harbingers of the failure of our democracy, rule of law and civil liberties. Am I over-reacting here?

Onesies for the little MAGAfers!