Comparing the kleptocratic authoritarian threat of MAGA with the Democratic Party threat

I have been sharply criticized for criticizing MAGA and its authoritarianism while ignoring rising authoritarianism in among Democratic Party elites, their tactics and their policies. The opposing point of view strikes me as coming close to seeing near-equivalence between the two kinds of threat. It is true that special interest money as significantly corrupted both parties. Nonetheless, I do not yet see near-equivalence in terms of democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties, tactics or long-term goals. 

Am I wrong? Maybe so. It is time to check it out. 

1. After receiving the criticisms, I started to look specifically for evidence of Dem Party authoritarianism and corruption being reported in the MSM. I don't find much, but that has been criticized as the MSM being mollycoddling and complicit with the Dems. I have not turned to MAGA media because it is so fracking vulgar, offensive and packed with lies and slanders. So me on my own has not come up with much, but I'll keep looking because I am a realist. I may have a major blind spot for rising centrist-liberal kleptocratic authoritarianism. 

2. Is there another way to try to get at the issue of who is worse and by how much are the two different, if any at all? Sure, Perplexity. For context, I think that, given its power and express intent, I believe that the threat of kleptocratic authoritarianism from MAGA is about 20-fold worse and far more urgent. 

Q1: I am getting some criticism of my focus on the rise of radical right authoritarianism and MAGA, while ignoring rising authoritarianism in the Democratic Party, e.g., related to infringing civil liberties related to pro-Palestine protests. Can you assess the lines of evidence that support concern for Dem Party authoritarianism and does that approximately equal the breadth and depth of MAGA authoritarianism?

A1: The concern over authoritarian tendencies within the Democratic Party, particularly in relation to pro-Palestine protests, has been highlighted by several recent events and policies: .... (long answer) .... While there are valid concerns about authoritarian tendencies within the Democratic Party, particularly in how it handles dissent and free speech related to pro-Palestine protests, these actions do not appear to match the breadth and depth of MAGA's authoritarian strategies. MAGA's approach is more comprehensive, aiming at a fundamental restructuring of government to favor a particular ideology, whereas the Democratic Party's actions, while concerning, seem more ad hoc and less about systemic change.

Q2: If one tried to quantify and qualify MAGA authoritarian threat as a hypothetical value called X, would the quality and quality of Dem Party threat be about 0.1 X, or more or less than that?

A2: .... (long answer) .... 
Breadth and Depth: MAGA's authoritarianism is characterized by a comprehensive, proactive strategy aimed at long-term power consolidation across all branches of government. The Democratic Party's actions, while concerning, appear more ad hoc and less systematic, focusing on specific issues like speech control and support for Israel.

Quantification: Given the systematic nature of MAGA's strategy and the breadth of their actions, if we assign MAGA's authoritarian threat a value of X, the Democratic Party's authoritarian tendencies might be quantified as approximately 0.1X to 0.2X. This estimation accounts for the reactive nature of Democratic actions, their focus on specific issues rather than a broad systemic overhaul, and the lack of a comprehensive, long-term strategy akin to MAGA's.

So, my personal estimate that MAGA is ~20X more a kleptocratic authoritarian threat that the Dem Party is. That's in the ballpark of what passes for "judgment" by Perplexity. Perplexity sees MAGA as ~5X to ~10X a bigger threat. 

Of course, AI does not have human judgment as we know it. AI is limited to data. By contrast humans have data, ignorance, biases, judgment, context assessment, tribe loyalty, self-esteem, variable cognitive ability, and all the other cognitive, social and moral baggage that makes humans human. 

Humans and their big piles of baggage

3. Is there another way to assess the threat? Maybe. A contender that comes to mind is to look at some crude, objective measure or another. What crude objective measure? Body count? Sure, why not. Let's do body count on a few prominent events. What prominent events? How about war? Wars can reflect some or a lot of nationalist kleptocratic authoritarianism.

A. Vietnam was an unprovoked, unnecessary war. Americans were lied to about a false need to attack Vietnam to prevent the Commie dominoes from falling or other related dark free speech bullshit from our government. It was entered into conducted with majority bipartisan support. According to Google AI, American deaths were about 58,000 US military and ~2 million Vietnamese military and civilian. However, estimates seem to be all over the place. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties

We can say the body count was high. Can we attribute it at least partly to kleptocratic authoritarianism? Maybe. Perplexity indicates it is a possible factor. Since that war was mostly bipartisan, it seems to be a wash on whether The Dem or Repub Party was more kleptocratic authoritarian.

B. Iraq, was an unprovoked, unnecessary war. Americans were lied to about a false need to attack Iraq to punish Al Qaeda, to keep WMD from being used and other related dark free speech bullshit. That war was entered into conducted with majority bipartisan support. Since that war was mostly bipartisan, it seems to be a wash on whether The Dem or Repub Party was more kleptocratic authoritarian. Again, there is an argument to be made for American authoritarianism driving the war. There were lots of deaths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

C. Israel's war in Gaza has been bloody. That bloodfest is cited by my critics as an example of horrific authoritarianism by the Dem Party and Joe Biden in particular. At the start of that war, support for American military aid to Israel was overwhelmingly bipartisan. Now, the bipartisanship has eroded some, with some Dems opposing more military aid without a ceasefire. Since there is no realistic prospect of a ceasefire, that opposition is meaningless in terms of political impact. The war there fits the legal definition of Genocide, but most Americans seem to reject that, arguing Israel is just acting in justifiable self defense. Perplexity comments on the body count:

As of December 3, 2024, over 44,502 Palestinians have been reported killed in the Gaza Strip, with an additional 737 Palestinian deaths in the West Bank 1 4. The Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) has confirmed the identities of 34,344 individual Palestinians, with 60% of these not being men of fighting age 1. The majority of casualties in Gaza are civilians, with 70% of the verified fatalities being women and children 1. The total number of Palestinian deaths, including those from indirect causes like starvation and lack of medical care, is estimated to be much higher, with a conservative estimate suggesting at least 62,413 deaths in Gaza from starvation alone. .... Combining the figures, the total number of deaths in the conflict stands at over 46,000, with 44,502 Palestinian and 1,706 Israeli fatalities.

If DJT was president when Hamas attacked Israel, it is very likely his policy would have been at least as bad as Biden and Dem policy has been. In my opinion, it would have been significantly worse.

In the US, Biden and local law enforcement, with bipartisan support from congress and the GOP generally has violated the civil liberties of pro-Palestine protesters. This is the basis my critics argue use to attack Dem elites and Biden as authoritarian more or less on a par with The Repubs. 

I do not see it that way. I see MAGA, which is now the face of the Republican Party, as a far greater and more urgent authoritarian threat than the Dems. In all the Dem acts of authoritarianism, the Repubs have been fully complicit. Worse for Palestine, DJT indicates that he wants Israel to do what it needs to do to deal with the Palestinian threat. If Biden is X bad for innocent Palestinians, including letting them starve to death, DJT will be at least as bad, probably worse. So once again, it looks like a wash when it comes to this particular body count analysis. 

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So, is it unreasonable to attack mostly MAGA authoritarianism while letting Dems off the hook for their transgressions? Some posts here have extensively criticized Biden and the Dems for their blind, brutal pro-Israel policy and trampling of American protesters' civil liberties. What is being left out of content posted here that is authoritarian and/or kleptocratic that (i) the Dems are responsible for, and (ii) amounts to a threat more or less on a par with the MAGA threat, e.g., maybe about half or one-fourth as bad? 

So, who rules the world?

 Adult content warning, so you have been warned. But if you want to know who rules the world, click on this link:

https://www.straight.com/music/trumps-election-win-living-rent-free-in-your-head-even-though-youre-canadian-you-are-not-alone#

Just the same, here are a few snippets to wet your curiosity:

by Mike Usinger

I’m not an American. But I might as well be, because the fact that Donald Trump will be America’s president for the next four years is currently all-consuming. By that, we’re not talking mildly troubling, genuinely concerning, or low-key awful—but instead fucking traumatizingly horrific. It’s been a steady diet of Zoloft and Jack Daniel’s ever since all the colour drained from Rachel Maddow’s face on MSNBC on election night.

First, there are upsides to his victory.

All of us on the planet are going to be guaranteed four years of outright hilarity from the man dubbed America’s Hitler. Thanks to both his electoral college and popular vote wins, he’s again been given the green light to act batshit crazy on every level: staring at the sun during solar eclipses; calling homegrown Nazis “good people”; pushing bleach injections as a pandemic cure; and allowing his grimacing “foook Chreeesmass” mail-order wife to turn the White House into a Halloween-like nightmare.

But what if you actually believe the world should be a decent place for everyone—instead of just Republicans, who wants to sit there with a bowl of popcorn while Trump and his red-hat brigade harass and deport thousands of immigrants, most of whom’s crime will be that they aren’t white?

Seriously: who wants to watch reproductive rights continue to vanish across US states, giving celebrated couchfucker JD Vance a raging erection as America starts to look like The Handmaid’s Tale?

Ultimately, this election ended up being about the economy—the fact that a carton of eggs costs more today than it did five years ago. And that was enough to reinstall America’s Hitler. MAGA is one hell of a drug. 

The States we once knew has disappeared, the red MAGA-cap hordes too blind to understand that the Mango Messiah and his me-first-and-the-gimme-gimmes crew doesn’t give a shit, and never has, about the people it pretends to be fighting for.

Ok ok, so, where is the punchline you might be asking. It's this................. Trump's victory proves something:

Let’s start with a song. 

While the charts and record sales might suggest otherwise, “Common People” isn’t Pulp and singer Jarvis Cocker's greatest song, even though it’s certainly the best known. Superior in every way is the rarities and B-sides track known as “(Cunts Are Still) Running the World”, the title of which is pretty much self-explanatory.

And that’s what’s so upsetting about Trump’s runaway win. To watch him and his shit-eating-grin crime family trot onto the stage in Florida in the early hours of Tuesday morning sent a clear-cut message that cunts are indeed still ruling the world.

The alt-reality of American radical right authoritarianism and its baseless outrage

MAGA is all in on believing in alt-realities, alt-facts and alt-anything inconvenient or annoying. MAGA hates the MSM.

A NYT reporter did a deep dive into Rumble, MAGA's fave alt-reality source, to see and hear what MAGA sees, hears and believes. It's a lot of crackpottery, insane conspiracy theories and seething outrage over mostly lies, slanders and mirages. Examples (not paywalled):

Just a few hours into the experiment, it was clear that I was falling into an alternate reality fueled almost entirely by outrage. Among the claims I heard:

Some people at think tanks in Washington were “morons” and “crazier than any schizophrenic.”

The Department of Homeland Security was running a “sex-trafficking operation,” a claim apparently based on a misreading of a government report.

Progressives were trying to get Republicans killed — a claim based on death threats that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said she received.

On the second night, while catching up on the show “Redacted,” I heard that World War III was more or less imminent because of rising tensions with Russia but that most Americans were unaware of it. 

Other shows referenced clips directly from Russian state television or the Russian government. During “The Roseanne Barr Show,” a segment about nuclear war bled into an ad for an emergency health kit.

Misinformation science; Global warming; Government transparency; Israel policy

The American Marketing Association reports about one aspect of partisan asymmetry:

Study: Republicans Respond to Political Polarization by 

Spreading Misinformation, Democrats Don't

In a new Journal of Marketing study, we explain what underlies these Republicans’ thought processes and behaviors [among Repub elites who still claim the 2020 election was stolen] and how the majority of news media and social media contribute to this problem.

The Lethal Combination: Polarization and Misinformation

Our team finds that political polarization triggers Republicans, but not Democrats, to spread misinformation that is objectively false. Although Republicans may understand the content is very likely false, they are willing to spread it. We also discover the reason why Republicans respond to political polarization by conveying misinformation, while Democrats do not: Republicans strongly value their party winning over the competition. Democrats do not value winning nearly as strongly; they place more value on equity and inclusion, seeing the world in a fundamentally different way than Republicans.

In other words, whenever there is political polarization—that is, fierce competition between political parties—Republicans feel their backs are against the wall and come out swinging.

What should be done to reduce the harmful effects of misinformation? We offer some ideas that could have a positive effect:

• Dampen political polarization in news media and social media. We find numerous instances when the same news story had a polarizing or less polarizing headline depending on the news outlet; for example, the Wall Street Journal said “tense vote” while the Guardian said “bipartisan vote.” [Huh?]

• However, marketplace incentives may be insurmountable because polarization increases audience size, engagement, and political donations. [Well, duh!]

• Invest more money in fact checking, which is now a task performed by volunteer organizations on shoestring budgets. [Snowball's chance]

• There are 18 U.S. states that mandate media literacy education to teach students how to detect misinformation in the media. We recommend that the remaining U.S. states follow their lead. [Snowball's chance]

The journal's status in its field, marketing, indicates it is a top tier journal, not a crackpot science source. Its metrics include a 5% manuscript acceptance rate and 2-year and 5-year impact factors, 11.5 and 15 respectively. That indicates it is a top tier journal in marketing science. Marketing science is heavily grounded in cognitive biology and social behavior. Deep, cutting edge knowledge in those two areas are essential to maximize business sales and profits.

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A NYT article discusses a really sad aspect (not paywalled) of global warming, ocean warming that stops deep ocean currents that bring chemical nutrients to surface waters. Those nutrients feed plankton growth. Plankton feed fish, which feed bigger fish and other animals that feed on fish of various sizes. 

Ocean Heat Wiped Out Half These Seabirds Around Alaska

About four million common murres were killed by a domino effect of ecosystem changes, and the population is showing no signs of recovery, according to new research.

The first evidence was the feathered bodies washing up on Alaskan beaches. They were common murres, sleek black-and-white seabirds that typically spend months at a time away from land. But in 2015 and 2016, officials tallied 62,000 emaciated corpses from California to Alaska.

Since then, scientists have been piecing together what happened to the birds, along with other species in the northeast Pacific that suddenly died or disappeared. It became clear that the culprit was an record-breaking marine heat wave, a mass of warm water that would come to be known as the Blob. New findings on its effect on murres, published on Thursday in the journal Science, are a stark sign of the perils facing ecosystems in a warming world.

About half of Alaska’s common murres, some four million birds, died as a result of the marine heat wave, the scientists found. They believe it is the largest documented die-off of a single species of wild birds or mammals. The state is home to about a quarter of the world’s common murres, scientists say.

Murres were the victims of a domino effect of oceanic changes tied to the warm water, according to a growing body of research. It affected marine life from plankton to humpback whales. Critically for the murres, it led to a collapse in the fish they depend on.

A murre colony in the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife 

Refuge, before and after the 2015-16 marine heat wave

For decades, the world’s oceans have absorbed more than 90 percent of the excess heat produced as humans burn fossil fuels and destroy ecosystems like forests. That heat has taken a severe toll on coral reefs, kelp forests and other marine ecosystems. Last year and into this year, the ocean’s surface temperature shattered records.

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The DOJ's (Department of Justice) OIG (Office of Inspector General) released its review of how the FBI handled DJT's 1/6 coup attempt. Note the mention of the OIG, that is critically important (see below). The report is generally positive about what the FBI did, with at least one significant exception. The FBI failed to canvass field offices for information from confidential informants from FBI field offices across the US. That is normally done for major events and the 1/6 event was seen as major. 

One needs to know that the FBI was not primarily responsible for capitol security. That responsibility was on the DC Police Dept., US Capitol Police and US Park Police. The FBI's role was to help coordinate law enforcement and information flows, not to fight off the insurrectionists.

• While the FBI undertook significant efforts to identify domestic terrorism subjects who planned to travel to the Capital region on January 6 and to prepare to support its law enforcement partners on January 6 if needed, we also determined that the FBI did not take a step that could have helped the FBI and its law enforcement partners with their preparations in advance of January 6. Specifically, the FBI did not canvass its field offices in advance of January 6, 2021, to identify any intelligence, including CHS reporting, about potential threats to the January 6 Electoral Certification.

• We found no evidence in the materials we reviewed or the testimony we received showing or suggesting that the FBI had undercover employees in the various protest crowds, or at the Capitol, on January 6.

I have no opinion about whether the FBI did a good, mediocre or bad job in the roles it had responsibility for on 1/6. 

I post about this to rise the issue of dying transparency in government. I believe that if one can assign a value of X for credibility and honesty in this report, subsequent reporting under authoritarian DJT and MAGA, reporting like this will either be (i) non-existent and maintained in secrecy, or (ii) have a credibility of about 0.2 or less, and (iii) under DJT, analogous reporting from other federal agencies will be either kept secret or have a credibility of about 0.2 or less. Why do I argue that? Because of this in Project 2025:

Q: What does Project 2025 say about plans for Inspector Generals, transparency in government and what are the implications for subversion and corruption of the federal government?

Plans for Inspectors General

Project 2025 proposes that the President should summarily fire the 74 independent Inspectors General currently overseeing federal operations. These IGs are responsible for detecting and preventing fraud, waste, abuse, and misconduct across federal programs. The plan suggests replacing these independent investigators with loyalists, thereby undermining the independence and objectivity of these watchdog roles. 

The project advocates for placing the FBI under a politically accountable leader, moving it out from under the direct supervision of the Deputy Attorney General. This shift could lead to the misuse of the FBI for partisan political agendas.

Transparency in Government

Project 2025 calls for changes to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that would weaken its enforcement capabilities. It suggests raising contribution limits, which would give big donors more influence in politics, and limiting the prosecution of campaign finance violations, potentially leading to less transparency and more corruption.

The project opposes reforms aimed at strengthening the FEC, such as those included in the For the People Act, which would modernize the agency and enhance enforcement. This opposition could perpetuate the current state of the FEC, known for its inaction and partisan obstruction.

Etc.

MAGA wanting to obliterate Inspector Generals in OIGs throughout government is why I posted about this report. We will probably never see another report like this once DJT and MAGA control the federal government.

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By his silence, DJT implies that he is OK with Israel annexing the West Bank. If that happens, it would end practical possibilities for a separate Palestinian state based on contiguous land occupied and controlled by Palestinians.  

[DJT] was asked directly by the Time staff, “Do you want to get a two-state deal done, outlined in your Peace to Prosperity deal that you put forward, or are you willing to let Israel annex the West Bank?”

“So what I want is a deal where there’s going to be peace and where the killing stops,” Trump replied vaguely.

The Time staff doubled down, reminding Trump that he had stopped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from annexing the West Bank in 2020. Again, he refused to answer directly:

“I’ll say it again, I want a long lasting peace. I’m not saying that’s a very likely scenario, but I want a long lasting peace, a peace where we don’t have an October 7 in another three years. And there are numerous ways you can do it. You can do it two state, but there are numerous ways it can be done. ....”

The West Bank has been under Israeli occupation since 1967. Despite a blatant violation of international law, the West Bank saw 33,000 new Israeli housing units in Trump’s first term, nearly three times as many as in Obama’s second term. His murky foreign policy plans and right-wing Cabinet likely mean that trend will continue.

As of June 2024, 146 out of the 193 United Nations member states recognize the State of Palestine as a sovereign nation. This is about 75% of all UN member states. Countries that do not recognize a Palestinian state include the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea and most Western European countries (with some exceptions, e.g., Norway, Spain, Ireland, Sweden).