The era of kleptocratic authoritarianism/dictatorship reignites

Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, American government was rather authoritarian, kleptocratic and plutocratic. That era was characterized by stark disparities in wealth, with most people living in poverty. Political leaders and business tycoons often engaged in corrupt practices to enrich themselves at the expense of the public good. It was close to being a kleptocratic plutocracy.

The NYT reports about some of the new regime activity:

He pardoned nearly all the traitors who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. DJT issued a grant of clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the 1/6 attack on the Capitol. He issued pardons to most of the defendants and commuting the sentences of 14 members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militia, most of whom were convicted of seditious conspiracy. The pardon order also directed the Justice Department to dismiss any pending indictments against people facing charges for DJT's coup attempt.

He withdrew from the World Health Organization. Public health experts say the withdrawal will undermine America’s standing as a global health leader and make it harder to fight the next pandemic.

He began his immigration crackdown. A series of orders Mr. Trump signed set off a policy barrage aimed at sealing the nation’s borders to migrants and cracking down on immigrants already in the country. Those orders included a declaration of a national emergency to deploy the military to the border and a bid to cut off birthright citizenship for the children of noncitizens. Many of the orders test the legal limits of his authority, and birthright citizenship in particular is protected by the Constitution.

He tries to put off a ban on TikTok. Mr. Trump signed an executive order aimed at delaying a federal ban of TikTok. It is unclear if that order could override the law that banned the social media app, but the measure instructs the attorney general not to take any action to enforce the ban for 75 days. Mr. Trump also told reporters that “the U.S. should be entitled to get half of TikTok” if a deal for the app is reached.

He withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. That makes the US one of four nations — along with Iran, Libya and Yemen — not party to the agreement. The US has gone full blown insane rogue on climate change and environmental protections.

DJT enacted a federal hiring freeze. He ordered a hiring freeze across the federal government that would remain in place pending the completion of a broader plan for reducing the federal work force. His order singled out the Internal Revenue Service, which received a large financial boost from President Biden and Democrats in Congress, calling for the freeze to stay in place longer for that agency. This is a really huge deal. To build his kleptocracy, DJT will need to gut the ability of government to collect taxes. That requires gutting the IRS and honest bureaucrats generally.

He gutted racial equity policies and protections for transgender people. DJT ordered his administration to dismantle federal programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion, and to gut Biden administration policies that protect transgender Americans.

He again promised tariffs against Canada and Mexico. He plans to impose a 25 percent tariff on products from Canada and Mexico starting on Feb. 1 because those nations were allowing “mass numbers of people to come in and fentanyl to come in.” He also said that he “may” impose a universal tariff on all imports, adding that “essentially all countries take advantage of the U.S.”

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Meanwhile, maybe Musk was fill-blown Nazi and now feels free to express his true authoritarian feelings. The NYT writes about a speech he made yesterday at the inauguration:

Mr. Musk, who leads Tesla, SpaceX and the social media platform X, and who backed Mr. Trump last year during his presidential campaign, added, “I just want to say thank you for making it happen — thank you.”

The billionaire then grunted and placed his hand to his heart before extending his arm out above his head with his palm facing down. After he turned around, he repeated the motion to those behind him.

He did that twice during his blither

about a “fork in the road of human civilization”

I think he probably is a vicious Nazi, 

or is that idiotic, over the top, alarmism?

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Reporting from various sources are pointing to the lawlessness or near-lawlessness of DJT's executive orders. All are predicting an avalanche of lawsuits.

A WaPo opinion (not paywalled) comments on one aspect of the rise of American kleptocracy: 

Trump finds a new way for foreign governments to pay him off: Crypto 

Trump’s crypto coin is little more than a whizbang Ponzi scheme

The era of the Shakedown Economy has officially begun — and it started with something called a presidential “shitcoin.” No, I am not making this up.

Two days before his inauguration, Donald Trump abruptly launched a new cryptocurrency, traded as “$TRUMP.” For those unfamiliar, this kind of crypto token or “memecoin” is released and traded on public markets, sort of like a stock. Unlike stocks, however, memecoins have no cash flow, no fundamental value. There’s no claim to a business’s future profits, nor even the pretense of a business model. There’s no clear use case; no one is pretending $TRUMP will be used in real-world transactions to pay for groceries or a haircut, or to send remittances.

Rather, people buy memecoins such as $TRUMP solely because they think someone else might be willing to pay more for them someday. It’s basically a whizbang-sounding Ponzi scheme.

It's not just foreign governments who can pay DJT off. All people and corporations on Earth with enough wealth can bribe him. Putin can bribe him.

DJT is open for business!

NOTE: As  of June 26, 2024, the USSC legalized the 

illegal part on the left, provided that the bribe is

an after-the-fact gratuity or reward

That reward-winning decision came at us in the 

case called Snyder v. US[1]

Footnote:

1. Snyder v. US lawsuit summary: James Snyder, the former mayor of Portage, Indiana, was convicted of accepting a $13,000 check from a state contractor after awarding the contractor a $1.1 million contract to provide trucks to the city. This conviction was initially upheld by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. On June 26, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 straight party line vote, reversed Snyder's conviction. The Court held that 18 U.S.C. § 666, a federal statute criminalizing certain payments to state and local officials, applies only to bribes and not to gratuities or rewards for a good job well done.

What are the odds of this congress fixing this and making after the fact payments illegal? Close to 0%. What are the odds of DJT signing it if it did pass. Closer to 0%. What are the odds of congress overriding a DJT veto? Literally 0%.

News bits: Cannon blast of executive orders; Biden's pardons; Fiddly bits

The NYT writes:

President-elect Donald J. Trump is expected to sign as many as 100 executive orders within hours of taking office Monday afternoon, a flurry of activity that will begin near where he is set to be sworn in at the Capitol. The orders are set to address a broad swath of American life, touching on immigration, climate and energy policy, and diversity initiatives in the federal government.

Among the orders he is expected to sign, according to incoming White House officials, are a national emergency declaration at the border, allowing the deployment of troops, and a natural energy emergency, enabling the country to generate more energy to power artificial intelligence. Mr. Trump is also expected to sign orders designating cartel organizations as “global terrorists” and ending asylum and birthright citizenship, despite the Constitution’s guarantee of citizenship for those born in the United States.

See, DJT ain't gonna let that pesky US Constitution get in the way of what needs to be done. The authoritarian kleptocrat shitstorm starts today. DJT and his Project 2025 are dead serious and acting urgently to get set up.

The MAGA poopstorm is here

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President Biden on Monday morning, just hours before President-elect Trump’s inauguration, granted pardons to Anthony Fauci, Gen. Mark Milley, and former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and other members of the House panel that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Biden said he was doing so to protect the public servants, who have all faced attacks from the man about to replace Biden in the White House.

Biden issued pardons for Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who led the nation’s COVID-19 pandemic response, and Milley, the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Biden pardons people for upholding the law. 

By contrast, DJT pardons criminals and lawbreakers. That's authoritarianism

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President-elect Trump told NBC it was disgraceful President Biden issued pardons to Anthony Fauci, Gen. Mark Milley, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), and other members of the House panel that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. “It is disgraceful. Many are guilty of MAJOR CRIMES! DJT” Trump texted NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker.

Again, blatant authoritarianism.

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FIDDLY BITS

AOC to Skip Trump’s Inauguration: ‘I Don’t Celebrate Rapists’ -- Ooh, she's feisty today!

Elon Musk’s DOGE to be sued within minutes of Trump inauguration -- There's gonna be a shitstorm of lawsuits in the coming months.

Mark Zuckerberg says corporate America needs more ‘masculine energy,’ even though men run 89% of Fortune 500 companies -- What a total wuss. He need much more moral energy.

Trump will announce end of birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants, officials say -- See, DJT ain't gionna let no stinkin' US Constitution get in the way of what needs to be done. MORE LAWSUITS -- YAY LAWYERS!!

Trump Inauguration Official’s “Phony Charity” Allegedly Pocketed East Palestine Train Disaster Funds -- MAGA isn't just authoritarian. It's also kleptocratic.

MIT Shuts Down Internal Grant Database After It Was Used to Research School’s Israel Ties -- 
A new report from MIT Coalition for Palestine details Israeli-funded research into everything from drone swarms to underwater surveillance -- An important trait of authoritarianism is blocking access to inconvenient truth and lying about what does manage to become public. That MIT is engaging in this is kind of dirty business is troubling to say the least.

MAGA elites' authoritarian sentiment about the US political system

The NYT writes (not paywalled) about how an obscure, pro-dictatorship computer programmer sees the situation and what he recommends for our political system:

The Interview: Curtis Yarvin Says Democracy Is Done. 

Powerful Conservatives[1] Are Listening.

For a long time, Curtis Yarvin, a 51-year-old computer engineer, has written online about political theory in relative obscurity. His ideas were pretty extreme: that institutions at the heart of American intellectual life, like the mainstream media and academia, have been overrun by progressive groupthink and need to be dissolved. He believes that government bureaucracy should be radically gutted, and perhaps most provocative, he argues that American democracy should be replaced by what he calls a “monarchy” run by what he has called a “C.E.O.” — basically his friendlier term for a dictator. To support his arguments, Yarvin relies on what those sympathetic to his views might see as a helpful serving of historical references — and what others see as a highly distorting mix of gross oversimplification, cherry-picking and personal interpretation presented as fact.

But while Yarvin himself may still be obscure, his ideas are not. Vice President-elect JD Vance has alluded to Yarvin’s notions of forcibly ridding American institutions of so-called wokeism. The incoming State Department official Michael Anton has spoken with Yarvin about how an “American Caesar” might be installed into power. And Yarvin also has fans in the powerful, and increasingly political, ranks of Silicon Valley. Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist turned informal adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, has approvingly cited Yarvin’s anti-democratic thinking. And Peter Thiel, a conservative[1] megadonor who invested in a tech start-up of Yarvin’s, has called him a “powerful” historian. Perhaps unsurprising given all this, Yarvin has become a fixture of the right-wing media universe: He has been a guest on the shows of Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk, among others.

I’ve been aware of Yarvin, who mostly makes his living on Substack, for years and was mostly interested in his work as a prime example of growing antidemocratic sentiment in particular corners of the internet. Until recently, those ideas felt fringe. But given that they are now finding an audience with some of the most powerful people in the country, Yarvin can’t be so easily dismissed anymore.

Interviewer: One of your central arguments is that America needs to, as you’ve put it in the past, get over our dictator-phobia — that American democracy is a sham, beyond fixing, and having a monarch-style leader is the way to go. So why is democracy so bad, and why would having a dictator solve the problem? Let me answer that in a way that would be relatively accessible to readers of The New York Times. You’ve probably heard of a man named Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Yarvin: Yes. I do a speech sometimes where I’ll just read the last 10 paragraphs of F.D.R.’s first inaugural address, in which he essentially says, Hey, Congress, give me absolute power, or I’ll take it anyway. So did F.D.R. actually take that level of power? Yeah, he did. There’s a great piece that I’ve sent to some of the people that I know that are involved in the transition —

Interviewer: The point you’re trying to make is that we have had something like a dictator in the past, and therefore it’s not something to be afraid of now. Is that right? 

Yarvin: Yeah. To look at the objective reality of power in the U.S. since the Revolution. You’ll talk to people about the Articles of Confederation, and you’re just like, Name one thing that happened in America under the Articles of Confederation, and they can’t unless they’re a professional historian. Next you have the first constitutional period under George Washington. If you look at the administration of Washington, what is established looks a lot like a start-up. It looks so much like a start-up that this guy Alexander Hamilton, who was recognizably a start-up bro, is running the whole government — he is basically the Larry Page of this republic.

Is it just me, or does anyone else see a gigantic disconnect between the clearly authoritarian vision of MAGA elites and the vision of the MAGA rank and file? The elites like the non-expert Yarvin because he feeds them non-expert justifications for establishing a corrupt American dictatorship.

We just need to get over our dictator-phobia because American democracy is a sham and beyond fixing. So suck it up and get ready for what's coming.

This is what's coming,

like it or not

Footnote:

1. As usual the MSM, the NYT here, refuses to call authoritarians authoritarian. Instead they get normalized into mere "conservatives." The MSM has been subverted and neutered.

Public sentiment on the status of the US political system

The NYT writes (not paywalled):

Support for Trump’s Policies Exceeds Support for Trump

A new poll found the public is sympathetic to the president-elect’s plans to deport migrants and reduce America’s presence overseas.

Many Americans who otherwise dislike President-elect Donald J. Trump share his bleak assessment of the country’s problems and support some of his most contentious prescriptions to fix them, according to a new poll from The New York Times and Ipsos.

A little more than half of the country expresses some desire to see Mr. Trump follow through with his harshest threat to deal with illegal immigration: deporting everyone living in the United States without authorization.

And a large majority is sympathetic to efforts to strictly limit how doctors can treat children struggling with their gender identity — an issue Mr. Trump and other Republicans made central to their campaigns for office. Seventy-one percent said that no one under 18 should be prescribed puberty-blocking drugs or hormones. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision on the matter later this year.

The poll tells the story of a country turning inward, where people are more aligned with Mr. Trump’s “America First” agenda than they were during his first term in office.

For a political figure so divisive — Americans view him more negatively than any other president about to take office in the last 70 years — the level of support for his ideas is striking. Most Americans say the United States has ignored serious problems at home while entangling itself in costly conflicts abroad, the poll found. A majority believe the government is sending too much money to Ukraine. And many are expressing less tolerance of immigrants overall.

Overall, 73 percent of Americans say they oppose the idea of Mr. Trump pursuing legal charges against his adversaries — with 49 percent saying they are strongly opposed.

The poll also revealed that Americans hold their government in exceedingly low esteem — far lower than during the Watergate era. Majorities across races, genders and partisan stripe say the political system is broken and that the economy works against them — a pessimism that tracks with some of Mr. Trump’s grimmer rhetoric.

There is a widespread belief, across parties, that Washington is corrupt, with two-thirds of Democrats and 80 percent of Republicans saying the government serves itself and the powerful over ordinary people. Two-thirds of Americans say the economic system unfairly favors the wealthy.

It is ironic that so many Americans correctly think the system is corrupt and rigged, but in their anger, frustration and resentments, they voted for the most corrupt candidate by far. Apparently, most DJT voters don't realize that he wants to neuter or completely get rid of the CFPB (consumer finance protections) and the NLRB (labor protections). Either that, or they want to get rid of labor and consumer finance protections. Project 2025 and DJT are all about rigging the system against average people even more than it is now and giving the elites even more wealth and power. 

We live in such strange days.