An essay about American authoritarianism

The Atlantic published this essay recently:

Representative Paul Gosar’s murderous and misogynistic video takes a page—albeit an extreme one—straight out of the authoritarian playbook.

Authoritarianism has evolved over the past century, and old-school dictatorships are now joined by electoral autocracies. Yet at least one constant remains: Illiberal political solutions tend to take hold when increased gender equity and emancipation spark anxieties about male authority and status. A conquest-without-consequences masculinity, posing as a “return to traditional values,” tracks with authoritarianism’s rise and parallels the discarding of the rule of law and accountability in politics. We commonly associate autocracy with state restrictions on behavior, but the removal of checks on actions deemed unethical in democratic contexts (lying, thievery, even rape and murder) is equally important to its operation and appeal.

That’s why it’s unsurprising to see a culture of lawless masculinity developing within the GOP, which adopted an authoritarian political culture during the Trump years. Renouncing democratic norms, the Republicans have normalized disinformation, election subversion, and violence as a means of governance, as expressed in their support for the January 6 coup attempt and the fiction that Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, won the 2020 election.

It’s symptomatic that a recent Fox News chyron trumpeted the need to “embrace masculinity,” and that Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri now styles himself the defender of “traditional masculine virtues—things like courage and independence and assertiveness” against a left trying to “feminize” men. The fist pump Hawley gave to the insurgents who had gathered to assault the Capitol hints at the real political agenda behind such calls for renewed male strength.

Whether or not Trump returns to office, the GOP has made his brand of outlaw glamour its own. A real man takes what he wants, when he wants it, whether in the bedroom, the workplace, or politics, and pays no penalty. As the Republican quest to destroy democracy intensifies, so will abusive, predatory, and criminal behavior be further enabled and justified. For a century, “getting away with it” has been central to authoritarianism’s allure, and it will be no different as the American version of illiberal rule unfolds.

This is just another voice that sees the obvious danger that tens of millions of adult Americans cannot see.

One can wonder whether authoritarian Republicans like Hawley really believe that they are defending traditional masculine virtues, or are just cynical opportunists seeking power and wealth.

What is in the BBB the House passed a couple of days ago

These images are from a New York Times article that breaks the spending and taxes down for the Build Back Better Bill (BBB) the House passed a few days ago. Only some of it is shown because the images cannot be put on single screens.

How BBB money will be spent

Taxes to pay for BBB

Not shown in the revenue to pay for BBB is $127 billion the CBO estimated for increased IRS enforcement of tax law to recover some of the trillions in unpaid taxes that tax cheats do not pay. Congressional Republicans hate this. They are hell-bent on protecting tax cheats to starve the beast, i.e., the federal government, of revenue to do most domestic spending, including this bill. 

The White House disputes The CBO estimate and claims that the added $80 billion to the IRS for tax compliance and enforcement funding will raise ~$400 billion. Over a 10 year period, about $12 trillion will be lost to the tax cheats that congressional Republicans want left untouched.

Republicans have criticized this bill as evil socialist or communist tyranny. As usual from that crowd, that's a lie. Note that some of the provisions affect all people, not just Democrats as some conservatives like to falsely claim. 

BBB includes $24 billion to fund worker retraining when jobs are lost. For years, congressional Republicans have opposed and cut spending programs to protect workers who lose their jobs. That reflects of their blind ideological hate of most domestic spending. BBB also provides for health care protections for consumers, paid family leave and government power to negotiate Medicare drug prices, thereby reducing government spending by $76 billion. 

Kyrsten Sinema will probably required removal of the drug price negotiation provision to protect drug companies. Drug companies are major donors to Sinema, so she owes them payback for the hundreds of thousands they have given her. $76 billion seems a fair ROI (return on investment).

Questions: 

1. Is this evil Democratic Party socialist or communist tyranny, something worse, or something that looks reasonably good, despite Republican criticisms?

 

2. Based on the BBB bill and other policies, does the Democratic or Republican Party show more concern for average people, including workers?

3. Is  American two-party pay-to-play politics mostly corrupt and damaging to the public interest, mostly honest and beneficial to the public interest, or mostly something else? 

Fiscal responsibility and starving the beast: The sacred tax gap rears its head once again

America has two parties that hold power in Washington. One, the Democratic Party, is fiscally responsible and conservative, while the other is mostly fiscally irresponsible and spendthrift. For example, the opposite party passed a tax cut for rich people and corporations law in December of 2017 and that fiscally irresponsible beast is projected to add about $0.9 trillion to federal debt each year, with ~75% of the benefits flowing to the top ~20% of earners and foreigners. Most everyone else got a small to tiny tax cut. A few households, like mine, experienced a tax hike, running at about $9,000 this year. Big corporations also saw significant tax cut benefits.

To be clear, opposite party policy reflects its decades-ling strategy known as Starve the Beast. The starvation strategy is to limit government, something the Republican Party hates with a vengeance and constantly lies about. Accompanying the Starve the Beast strategy as a "rationale" is economic crackpottery called things like supply side economics, trickle down economics or, my favorite, horse and sparrow economics. The horse and sparrow theory holds that if you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through and some stuff will fall on the ground, which the sparrows can pick through and find a few oats to eat. I suppose one could also call that the pass-through economic theory. Trickle down or whatever one wants to call it, works like about this in practice:

At present, the Democratic Party is trying to find ways to pay for the second infrastructure bill called Build Back Better (BBB). Not surprisingly, Republicans hate it with a vengeance because it involves government spending money for things other than rich people and big corporations. The situation looks not so good for finding ways to pay for BBB. The New York Times reports:

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Thursday that President Biden’s sprawling climate change and social policy package would increase the federal budget deficit by $160 billion over the next 10 years.

That determination was at odds with Mr. Biden’s pledge to fully pay for the $1.85 trillion legislation but was unlikely to stop House Democrats from approving the bill.

Plans to do so Thursday evening, however, were derailed when a marathon speech by Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, prompted Democratic leaders to send members home with plans to reconvene at 8 a.m. on Friday.

The budget office’s analysis found that the bill’s tax cuts and spending programs were almost — but not entirely — offset by new revenue and spending cuts. The package would be largely paid for with tax increases on high earners and corporations, which were estimated to bring in nearly $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Savings in government spending on prescription drugs were estimated to bring in another $260 billion.

The NYT goes on to report that House Democrats are disputing the CBO about how much the Internal Revenue Service would collect by cracking down on people and companies that cheat on their taxes. The difference between what is owed and paid is the tax gap. It is running at about $1.2 trillion/year at present. In my opinion, that's a lot of tax cheating. The CBO rejects the White House assertion that the IRS would collect about $207 billion from tax cheats over ten years. 

Say what??

Think about that a moment. Over 10 years, tax cheats will make off with about $12 trillion in unpaid taxes if the tax gap stays the same as it is now. And Democrats, in the face of Republican opposition to going after tax cheats have to struggle to just claw back a piddly ~$207 billion in the name of Starve the Beast ideology. For context, ~$207 billion amounts to 1.72% of $12 trillion.

Starve the Beast dogma is so powerful that it demands that tax cheats be protected in service to starving the government to death. And what would the evil Democrats and government do with the tax cheat money if only there was some way to get it? 

Horrible, horrible things like imposing environmental protection regulations, expanding health care, controlling drug prices, and adding education and child care support. Those things are so horrible that some polling indicates most Americans support it.[1] Presumably, the Republican Party hates BBB because it feeds the beast and shows that government can actually do some good and non-trivial things for average people.

Questions: 

1. Is it too much of a burden or otherwise bad to try to recover some revenue lost to tax cheats to pay for a part BBB spending?

2. Should the beast be starved as the Republican Party wants and domestic spending programs like social security, Medicare, food stamps and the like be eliminated?

3. Which party, Democratic or Republican, is more fiscally responsible and conservative? 

4. Is trickle down or horse and sparrow a better label for the supply side economic theory the Republicans rely heavily on?

Footnote:

1. Yes, this is a puzzle. Congressional Republicans paint BBB as socialist or communist tyranny, fiscal irresponsibility, the end of civilization as we know it, against God's will, deep state subversion and pedophilia, and/or whatever else they can think to smear and attack it with. Why most average people might support it is a real head scratcher. (sarcasm)

Global tyranny update: Russia transitions into full-blown dictatorship

A few weeks ago, I posted about Putin's crackdown on the internet, musing that "it is surprising that it took Putin this long to get serious about clamping down." Putin has finally started shutting down access to undesirable content in the form of politically, including personally, inconvenient facts, truths and logic. 

An article in the Economist explains why this is happening now. It includes an interesting description of the difference between an autocracy and dictatorship. The Economist writes in an article, Manacled in Moscow, that Russians are starting to distrust and oppose Putin's authoritarian kleptocracy. Russians were turning away from state TV, radio and print propaganda to online content that was still free and uncensored. In response, Putin is moving toward full blown police state dictatorship, including a crack down on the internet. 

The drop in Putin's trust has been significant, going from about 60% in 2015 to about 30% in 2020-2021.

Two points the Economist touches on merit mention, (i) autocracy vs dictatorship, and (ii) the enormous value to authoritarians of keeping a society ignorant, which amounts to lying by omission:

Vladimir Putin has shifted from autocracy to dictatorship. 

Grigory Okhotin of ovd-Info, a media and human-rights organisation that monitors political repression and provides legal help to its victims, notes a shift in the government’s tactics. Once it wanted to contain, and by doing so deter, political threats. Now it wants to eliminate them. Political power has shifted from civilian technocrats to militarised and often uniformed “securocrats” happier with violence. The regime has moved from being a consensual autocracy supported by co-option and propaganda to a dictatorship resting on repression and fear.

Though Mr Navalny had support in Moscow and some other places, only 20% of Russians approved of him. But 80% now knew who he was. One of the key assets of any autocracy—the apparent absence of any alternative—had been lost. The Russian elite started to talk about succession. So Mr Putin changed the constitution to let himself stay in power indefinitely and reinforced that change with repression.

In 2019 Mr Putin signed a “sovereign internet” law which forced internet providers to install special equipment that allows the state to block, filter and slow down websites. Gregory Asmolov, an expert on the internet at King’s College London, says the goal is not to build a Chinese-style firewall but to influence people’s choices. If people don’t know what they are missing, they will not look for it.

For now the Kremlin seems to have succeeded in applying enough repression, and thus generating enough fear of worse to come, to accomplish its needs. But the screw continues to be turned. .... And Russia’s securocrats are not going to pack their bags and go home when they control a significant and growing chunk of public expenditure. More than 10% of the national budget is spent on internal security. There are a third more police and security staff than active-duty soldiers.

This 15 minute video, How Putin is Silencing his Opponents, describes what Putin is doing to Russians and how he is doing it.

This is just one example of how much worse the situation can get if American authoritarians take control here and are able to complete to their satisfaction the ongoing destruction of democracy the rule of law, free and fair elections, etc. 

Time for a cheerful thread, and just in time for Christmas

Keep America Great! 

https://donaldtrumpstore.com/

                                                            Get a really great T-shirt: 

Or even a better one:

Or for a more colorful gift:

And of course this one will be very popular:

So, come on all you Freedom lovin' Americans and Trump supporters, get yours today and send us all your hard earned $$ so you can show all your friends and family members what a classy guy or gal you are!

            

Updates on a couple of the ex-president's escapades

Gutting federal agencies and diversity

Remember when the EXP (ex-president) moved the Interior Department to Colorado a couple of years ago? Yes, we all remember it. A Washington Post article points out some of the ramifications. For context, the EXP and ARP (authoritarian Republican Party) both hate the Interior Department and its Bureau of Land Management, along with most of the rest of the federal government except the military, courts and law enforcement. The WaPo writes:  

As Trump officials were moving the headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management from Washington, D.C., to Colorado two years ago, Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, issued a stark warning to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt: The department risked a “significant legal liability” by driving Black employees from an agency that was overwhelmingly White.

The agency’s major reorganization was also done without a “strategic workforce plan,” laying out how the changes would advance the agency’s goals, the report added.

As a result, “BLM lacks reasonable assurance the agency will have the workforce necessary to achieve its goals in managing millions of acres of public lands,” the report said.  

While Trump administration officials argued that moving the BLM West would put employees closer to the lands they manage — primarily located in 12 Western states — current and former employees have described how, in fact, the move derailed the agency by breaking up teams that once worked closely together and scattered people across several Western cities. Most of those ordered to move West chose to quit or retire rather than accept new jobs.

So, as usual for the EXP, there was no plan and the agency's ability to do its job was probably significantly impaired. It was just more seat of the pants ARP anti-governance in the name of tearing democracy down and discrediting it. That stunt gives the ARP an excuse to (i) criticize BLM for failing to do its job, and (ii) push for outsourcing the work to private companies who will be free to fleece the taxpayers. As an added bonus, it got rid of some Black employees. It was a twofer for the EXP and ARP! 

The creepy, scary memo

2nd to last bullet point:

When he assumed his role, he vowed to be apolitical
(In American Democracy, the military is supposed to be apolitical) 

In a truly creepy, scary story, the WaPo reports on a memo that a young, inexperienced but raging authoritarian extremist, Johnny McEntee, in the White House wrote. The WaPo writes about the memo in an opinion piece:

[The] evidence comes courtesy of ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl, who has unearthed a memorandum from Johnny McEntee, Trump’s director of presidential personnel, listing 14 reasons for ousting Esper. That document was dated Oct. 19, 2020. Three weeks later Esper was fired by a Trump tweet.

The very premise of McEntee’s memo was both sinister and ludicrous — a 30-year-old of no professional or intellectual distinction, whose path to power was carrying Trump’s bags, was making the case for getting rid of a senior Cabinet officer for insufficient loyalty to the president. This revealing and chilling document deserves to be read not as a historical curiosity but as a terrible portent of what could be in store if Trump wins another term. He appears determined to turn the military into his personal goon squad.

One of McEntee’s first complaints was that Esper had “approved the promotion of Lt. Col. [Alexander] Vindman, the start [sic] witness in the sham impeachment inquiry, who told Congress that the President’s call with Ukraine ‘undermined U.S. national security.’”

The next item in the indictment of Esper: “Publicly opposed the President’s direction to utilize American force to put down riots just outside the White House.” This was a reference to Esper’s brave decision in June 2020 to resist Trump’s desires to deploy active-duty troops to suppress Black Lives Matter protests.

The most damning and telling grievance against Esper was near the bottom of this pathetic document: “When he assumed his role, he vowed to be apolitical.” Normally being apolitical is a sine qua non for leading the armed forces. That’s why President Biden chose retired Gen. Lloyd Austin as defense secretary and President Barack Obama decided to keep Republican Robert M. Gates in the post. But Trump tried to destroy the professional, apolitical ethos of the armed forces — and if given the opportunity, he will almost certainly do so again.  

Well, the next time around, Trump would want to ensure that the “guys with guns” are on his side. If he wins a second term, Trump’s next defense secretary (Johnny McEntee perhaps?) would almost certainly be somebody more devoted to him than to the Constitution. For anyone concerned about the future of U.S. democracy, that should be a cause of considerable alarm at a time when Trump and Biden are running almost neck and neck in polling matchups.

This is more clear evidence of the deeply authoritarian and anti-democratic character of the EXP, and arguably the ARP too, most of which still supports the guy and his politics and policies. The EXP demanded loyalty to himself, not the Constitution, the rule of law, truth or anything else. That is a key marker of a full-blown tyrant including a fascist tyrant. 

Questions: 

1. Is this more clear evidence of the deeply authoritarian and anti-democratic character of the EXP, and/or the ARP, which has not criticized the memo or its anti-democratic implications? If not, what is it evidence of, just harmless politics as usual?

2. When the EXP stated that he would hire only the best people, is it reasonable to now believe that by 'the best people' he meant people most loyal to him, not the most competent or devoted to democracy or the Constitution? 

3. Should anyone concerned about the future of U.S. democracy be considerably alarmed, or is this just another the EXP's harmless exploits, even if he did fire Esper after the McEntee memo came to his attention?