The fascist propaganda machine remains unfazed by, and unashamed of, contrary reality

The New York Times writes: 

In the hours and days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, rattled Republican lawmakers knew exactly who was to blame: Donald J. Trump. Loyal allies began turning on him. Top Republicans vowed to make a full break from his divisive tactics and dishonesties. Some even discussed removing him from office.

By spring, however, after nearly 200 congressional Republicans had voted to clear Mr. Trump during a second impeachment proceeding, the conservative fringes of the party had already begun to rewrite history, describing the Capitol riot as a peaceful protest and comparing the invading mob to a “normal tourist visit,” as one congressman put it.

This past week, amid the emotional testimony of police officers at the first hearing of a House select committee, Republicans completed their journey through the looking-glass, spinning a new counternarrative of that deadly day. No longer content to absolve Mr. Trump, they concocted a version of events in which those accused of rioting were patriotic political prisoners and Speaker Nancy Pelosi was to blame for the violence.

Their new claims, some voiced from the highest levels of House Republican leadership, amount to a disinformation campaign being promulgated from the steps of the Capitol, aimed at giving cover to their party and intensifying the threats to political accountability.

This rendering of events — together with new evidence that Mr. Trump had counted on allies in Congress to help him use a baseless allegation of corruption to overturn the election — pointed to what some democracy experts see as a dangerous new sign in American politics: Even with Mr. Trump gone from the White House, many Republicans have little intention of abandoning the prevarication that was a hallmark of his presidency.

Rather, as the country struggles with the consequences of Mr. Trump’s assault on the legitimacy of the nation’s elections, leaders of his party — who, unlike the former president, have not lost their political or rhetorical platforms — are signaling their willingness to continue, look past or even expand his assault on the facts for political gain.

The NYT quoted one expert, Laura Thornton, director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, as saying “this is happening all over the place — it is so much linked to the democratic backsliding and rising of authoritarian movements. It’s about the same sort of post-truth world. You can just repeat a lie over and over and, because there’s so little trust, people will believe it.”

Not surprisingly, the fascist ex-president blames Pelosi for his coup attempt. He asserts that Pelosi should “investigate herself.” The fascist liar and traitor continues to insinuate that (i) BLM and antifa extremists caused the 1/6 coup attempt, and (ii) corrupt Democrats stole the 2020 election from him. Fascist GOP leadership supports the lies. Although Mitch McConnell once condemned the riot and the ex-president's role in it, he has made no effort to contradict or reduce the lies. 

Other Republican fascists pretend that the propaganda will have no effect on public opinion. For example, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) said “I don’t think anybody’s going to be successful erasing what happened. Everybody saw it with their own eyes and the nation saw it on television.” If that is true then why is the fascist Republican Party's propaganda machine all in on repeating whoppers over and over and over? Obviously someone influential in the FGOP must believe that repeating lies, e.g., BLM and antifa did it, is an effective propaganda tactic when applied to at least some people.

In view of the evidence in the public record so far, it seems reasonable to estimate that the chance that American democracy and the rule of law will fall to some form of plutocratic or autocratic-kleptocratic fascism in the next 5 years is about 42%. In view of how high the states are, that estimate ought to be terrifying to most people who accept it as a reasonable threat estimate. For most people who don't see that level of threat, the estimate is just not believable and thus not as concerning.

Question: How likely is it that American democracy and the rule of law will fall in the next 5 years to some form of autocratic-fascist dictatorship-kleptocracy, optionally tinged with bigoted Christian nationalist theocracy, ~0%, ~5%, ~25%, ~50%, ~70%, etc.?

POSTULATE

 Postulate:

There are those who predict doom and gloom for the U.S.

Everything from Fascism to a complete societal breakdown, while others believe it will be less severe, more a return to an era of Jim Crow, banned abortions, rightwing policies.

Others, and I include myself in this, think this is all overblown. I grant you, it looks bad right now, but we did un-elect the One and Done, even in Red states electric charging stations are popping up, solar farms popping up, Confederate statues being taken down, etc.

BUT it is also what we don't see, at least in the Media that likes to spread Angst.

I have posted this on previous threads, but let me try again:

Black and white kids playing together.

Gay couples opening walking down the street.

Prior to Covid, violent crime DOWN across the nation, it really was, but you wouldn't know it from the day to day bombardment of violence in the news.

Growing up all I saw were white faces, now almost all neighborhoods have Hispanic, Muslim, Asian faces. 

OUR YOUNG PEOPLE are overwhelmingly progressive, except of course, they don't vote in large numbers, but one day they will and we will see a swing back to Liberalism in this country.

However, there is no denying, that with the Right becoming more engaged and dangerous, with new Covid variants likely to grow in number, not diminish, with more extremists taking up arms, there is good cause for SOME Angst.

Now for the rub:

The biggest threat to our existence is INTOLERANCE OF SOMEONE'S ELSE'S VIEWS.

We have devolved into a nation of name-callers, labelers, and hatred towards any group that doesn't side with us.

So going back to my opening line: Postulate

Not just for this year or next year, but further down the road, where are we heading?

Are we really heading for Fascism, or just a rollback to the 1950s before there is another correction and we move again towards Progressiveness?

Postulate.

Vaccine regret stories

Some stories are coming out about people who did not get vaccinated and then got infected and became sick. Ones who did not get sick probably don't regret their decisions. Others who are sick now continue to deny they are infected with COVID and firmly believe they have the flu. The New York Times writes:

Some people hospitalized with the virus still vow not to get vaccinated, and surveys suggest that a majority of unvaccinated Americans are not budging. Doctors in Covid units say some patients still refuse to believe they are infected with anything beyond the flu.

“We have people in the I.C.U. with Covid who are denying they have Covid,” said Dr. Matthew Sperry, a pulmonary critical care physician who has been treating Mr. Greene. “It doesn’t matter what we say.”

Still, some hospitals swamped with patients in largely conservative, unvaccinated swaths of the country have begun to recruit Covid survivors as public health messengers of last resort.  

Theirs are Scared Straight stories for a pandemic that has thrived on misinformation, fear and hardened partisan divisions over whether or not to get vaccinated.

One woman in Utah who regretted not getting vaccinated now worries that her hospitalized husband will die from his COVID infection. She wrote on her Facebook page: “We did not get the vaccine. I read all kinds of things about the vaccine and it scared me. So I made the decision and prayed about it and got the impression that we would be ok. If I had the information I have today, we would have gotten vaccinated.”

The woman in Utah with her family at home 

while dad is in the hospital critically ill

She told the NYT, “I have such incredible guilt. I blame myself still. Every day. I will always regret that I listened to the misinformation being put out there. They’re creating fear.” In that, one can clearly see the destructive power of dark free speech and disinformation about COVID. Some people believe it. Some who are infected refuse to believe the literal reality of their situation.

This again shows that dark free speech leads some people to firmly believe things that are clearly false. The NYT described people's fear as coming from “a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories touted by anti-vaccine lawyers and YouTubers, and videos in which anti-vaccine doctors and nurses decried the Covid-19 shots as bioweapons.” 

Questions: What responsibility, if any, do people and groups, e.g., Fox News, the Republican Party, etc., that spread lies about COVID bear for the suffering and deaths their deceit has caused, even if they themselves were deceived? Do people who fall for the lies and emotional manipulation bear full responsibility? Does it matter for those who now express regret are honest and public about their mistake? 

Fox News doing its best to keep 

the pandemic alive and growing

Go Laura! Keep on lying to the public!

Keep on killing people!!

Politifact has a huge list of COVID

lies

On the fragility of democracy

Fareed Zakaria writes in a Washington Post opinion piece:

The news this week that democracy is imperiled in Tunisia — the only success story of the Arab Spring — comes just three weeks after we heard that Haiti’s president had been assassinated. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the government seems unable to establish authority across the country. It got me thinking about one of the fundamental questions of politics: Why is it so difficult to develop and sustain liberal democracy?

The best recent work on this subject comes from a remarkable pair of scholars, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. In their latest book, “The Narrow Corridor,” they have answered this question with great insight. In every society, they note, the first step is simply achieving some measure of order and stability. History is littered with places where gangs, warlords and tribes rule and the state is never able to effectively consolidate power and govern. That was Afghanistan’s past and might be its future.

If political order is rare, liberal political order is rarer still. Liberal democracy is the Goldilocks form of government. It needs a state that is strong enough to govern effectively but not so strong that it crushes the liberties and rights of its people. The authors call this “the shackled Leviathan.” (Thomas Hobbes used the biblical monster Leviathan to describe a powerful state.) Getting to liberal democracy requires that societies travel through a “narrow corridor,” one that allows the state to build power while allowing for the growth of a civil society that asserts itself and fights for rights. Together, they create the delicate balance between stability and freedom. Countries in the West have succeeded because they have managed to build up both strong states and strong societies.

In Afghanistan, despite two decades of efforts, the state has failed to gain control over much of the country, creating what the authors call the “absent Leviathan.” In Egypt, the state is too strong. After a brief flirtation with democracy after the Arab Spring, the country reverted to dictatorship. Other parts of the world have “paper Leviathans” — governments that exercise power mostly to enrich a small elite at the top. Think of Nigeria or Venezuela.

How did the West get Goldilocks politics? The authors cite two opposing forces. First, there was the legacy of the Roman Empire, which provided institutions, laws and traditions that made it possible to create order. Second, the northern European tribes, rooted in egalitarian assemblies, had a tradition of challenging powerful leaders. The contest between nobles and kings — and later, I would add, between church and state, and among the hundreds of states, duchies and principalities of medieval Europe — all helped individual liberty grow and flourish.

Zakaria goes on to argue that liberal democracy in the West is a matter of an unusual history, not cultural superiority. Although a few countries such as India and South Korea had a similar balance, but it is hard to maintain it. Liberal democracy really is fragile and rare. The phenomenon of “illiberal democracy” began to arise in the 1990s when democratically elected leaders started systematically abusing power and depriving people of democratic rights. They attacked and weakened liberal, constitutional government and supporting institutions. Established democracies such as India are moving into anti-democratic authoritarianism. 

Zakaria asserts that Russia lost its democracy and has reverted to dictatorship, apparently the normal human condition. Countries such as the US that have the right state-society balance are in a good situation. The US is in an era of democratic dysfunction, with populism threatening political institutions and norms that used to be taken as neutral. He argues that this anti-democratic mindset is the most dangerous in the Republican Party with its successful push to politicize vote counting and access to voting in red states.

Where does the main threat lie?

Based on poll data, most Republicans, conservatives and a significant number of independents see radical Democrats, socialism and government tyranny as the main threat to democracy and the rule of law. Others see the radical right Republican Party and radical fundamentalist Christianity as the grave and imminent threat, especially in view of the progress that movement has made in the last ~5 years. Where does the most urgent threat lie? 

Is the American liberal democracy a Goldilocks form of government that is inherently too unstable to last much longer? If it is unstable and on the verge of collapse, what is most likely to replace it, e.g., fascist tyranny, socialist tyranny, kleptocratic plutocracy, endless social instability and violence, maybe driven by two flavors (left and right) of autocratic tyranny, Christian theocratic autocracy, etc.? Or, is American democracy just fine and not under any serious imminent threat?