News bits: The always present matter of false equivalence; Etc.

A Talking Points Memo article brings up the common false equivalence fallacy that the authoritarian radical right constantly raises in defense of its endless stream of indefensible lies, corruption, crackpottery and irrational emotional. TMP writes:

The False Equivalence Between The ‘Far Right’ And The ‘Hard Left’

Throughout the debt-ceiling crisis, news reports have wrongly suggested that each party's activist wings balance one another out

Here’s how, in its lead story Thursday, the New York Times described the House’s vote to resolve Republicans’ self-imposed debt-ceiling crisis:

“With both far-right and hard-left lawmakers in revolt over the deal, it fell to a bipartisan coalition powered by Democrats to push the bill over the finish line, throwing their support behind the compromise in an effort to break the fiscal stalemate that had gripped Washington for weeks.”

It’s not just the Times. This false equivalence between the two parties’ activist wings has been on display in press coverage throughout the debt-ceiling votes. Politico Playbook on Sunday described Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal’s mixed reaction to the debt-ceiling compromise as indicating that the bill may have “a chance to win votes from some on the far left.” A Washington Post sub-headline that same day noted that “far-left and far-right corners of the House have criticized the compromise.”

This idea is, of course, farcical — both in terms of the vote on the debt-ceiling bill and our politics more generally. Yet whenever Congress is debating a high-profile piece of legislation, the media returns to the easy description of pressures exerted by the far-right and far-left, as if these are similar forces.

It is not the far or moderate left that supports and passes laws to support anti-democracy policies. The GOP is in full support of policies that (i) limit civil liberties, (ii) openly attack non-heterosexuals by law, (iii) protect tax cheats, (iv) subvert elections, (v) normalize and justify political violence, (vi) teach Christian nationalist lies to innocent home schooled children to be bigots and hate secular education, and (vii) attack pro-democracy institutions and norms. That is what America's authoritarian radical right Republican Party and its Christian nationalist radicalism routinely does. What corresponding evil is the far and/or center left advocating? Collecting taxes owed from tax cheats? Supporting abortion rights? Accepting actual facts, e.g., climate change, for what they are?

The MSM still fails to understand what it is dealing with, is silently complicit or subverted and/or is unacceptably incompetent. 

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Culture wars -- bible banning: The BBC writes:

A school district in the US state of Utah has removed the Bible from elementary and middle schools for containing "vulgarity and violence".

The move follows a complaint from a parent that the King James Bible has material unsuitable for children.

Utah's Republican government passed a law in 2022 banning "pornographic or indecent" books from schools.

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Culture wars 2 -- defending gender crackpottery: ars Technica writes:

Twitter VP of Product Trust and Safety Ella Irwin resigned from the company yesterday, she confirmed to Reuters and other news outlets. Irwin's departure came on the same day that Twitter owner Elon Musk criticized his staff for restricting What Is a Woman?, a Daily Wire documentary on transgender issues.

Irwin took over as head of Twitter's trust and safety team after the November 2022 resignation of Yoel Roth. Twitter has massively reduced its staff under Musk's leadership and is facing scrutiny from regulators, particularly in the European Union, over its content moderation practices. Twitter executive A.J. Brown, the head of brand safety and ad quality, also left this week.

Twitter recently pulled out of the EU's voluntary Code of Practice on Disinformation but must comply with the mandatory Digital Services Act rules taking effect on August 25. As European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton tweeted, "obligations remain. You can run but you can't hide. Beyond voluntary commitments, fighting disinformation will be [a] legal obligation under DSA as of August 25. Our teams will be ready for enforcement."

Musk supports lies, slanders and disinformation. That's why his Twitter toy is a hellscape. The Daily Wire is a radical right propaganda site. It doesn't produce serious documentaries. It produces serious radical right propaganda, like the stuff that spin dictators like to spew on their people and the world. 

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A clean energy advance: Beaming solar power from space to Earth has a useful advantage. Power can be beamed 24 hours/day. Gizmodo writes:

Scientists Successfully Transmit Space-Based Solar Power 

to Earth for the First Time

The California Institute of Technology has big news for space-based power. Researchers at the university have reportedly beamed solar power from space to Earth without a single wire—and they say it’s a first.

The researchers conducted the power transfer experiment using the Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment, or MAPLE, which is a small prototype aboard the in-orbit Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD-1) that launched this past January.

The researchers say that, in a first, MAPLE’s array of transmitters successfully beamed solar power collected in space using microwaves to a receiver on the rooftop of Gordon and Betty Moore Laboratory of Engineering on Caltech’s campus in Pasadena.  

The ability to wirelessly transmit solar power from space has huge implications for renewable energy, so much so that Japan plans to start using it by the mid-2030's. A Japanese research team is looking to pilot the technology in 2025 with a public-private partnership.

As humanity’s growing need for energy continues, a powerful solution like space-based solar power collection and transmission could be a huge step in the right direction.

The inside of the space-based Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit 

Experiment (MAPLE) which emits collected energy across empty space

Microwave radiation beamed to Earth of a satellite penetrates through clouds. The energy collected from sunlight is converted to microwaves that the satellite transmits down to Earth. The open questions are how much can this be scaled up and at what cost? Apparently it can be economically scaled enough to lead Japan to at least try to develop it for use by the mid 2030s. Time will tell how this plays out. 

Book review: Spin Dictators

The 2023 book, Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 12st Century, was written by Russian economist Sergei Guriev (professor, Paris, France) and American political scientist Daniel Treisman (professor, UCLA). Putin ran professor Guriev out of Russia for writing an unflattering account of how Putin manhandled a political opponent. 

The book is easy to read and written for a general audience, not academics. It's reasoning and conclusions are heavily sourced and easily fact checkable. I highly recommend this book. In particular, one gets a solid understanding of what the authors are arguing by reading chapters 1, 7 and the last chapter 8. Chapters 2-6 are heavy with facts and accounts of dictators and their playful (brutal, actually) exploits. These authors really understand dictators and tyranny. 

Since this book was written after earlier experts like Hannah Arendt had published their works, e.g., Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, the book relies on the authors' insights from the perspective of later and current history. That informs the research and analyses that underly the author's central argument. And, the book comes from two relevant points of view, economics and political science. 

The author's central argument boils down to this: At the extremes, there are two kinds of dictators, fear dictators and spin dictators. Fear dictators operate mostly by brute force, often in public displays of violence and murder. Fear and violent repression, and control of mass communications are their main tools of control. Those tyrannies are usually wrapped in military regalia and uniforms. Think of Hitler and Stalin as examples. 

At the other extreme are spin dictators. They operate mostly by guile, deceit, spinning false realities, co-option of opposition, and also, control of mass communications. Those tyrants wear snappy business suits, and usually speak of the virtues of democracy, while rigging elections and subverting political opposition and democratic institutions and norms. Spin dictators usually tolerate a limited amount of political opposition. However, that opposition is carefully limited and controlled so that there is just enough to give an appearance of democracy and tolerance to the public at home and governments abroad. This kind of faux democracy deception usually works extremely well and home and abroad, at least for some period of time. Unlike fear dictators, spin dictators do care about public opinion. They tend to have a lot of public support. They work hard to gain it. They create false narratives about how they are valiantly fighting against dark forces internally** and externally to help both the little people and the great, but beleaguered nation. Think of Putin and Viktor Orban in Hungary as examples.

** The LGBQT community is a popular target for evil internal enemy propaganda.

Although those are the extremes, there are times when spin dictators will resort to killing when needed. There can be a lot of overlap in the operations of the two kinds of tyrant, e.g., both tend to create scapegoat groups for the public to hate on. But spin tyrant murders are usually committed quietly and accompanied by denials by the tyrant who falsely claims innocence. Spinner tyrants prefer to silence domestic critics by subverting them on false legal charges, e.g., by jailing them for tax evasion, or for being foreign spies or pedophiles. 

Some definitions and data

Spin dictatorships are defined as:

1. a non-democracy country; and

2. national elections with at least one opposition party running; and

3. tolerance of at least several media outlets that criticize the government each year; and

4. less than 10 political state killings per year; and 

5. less than 1,000 jailed political prisoners in any year.

That is a rule of thumb definition. There are variants, exceptions, complexities and hybrid fear and spin dictatorships. A spin tyranny can and sometimes does degenerate into a fear tyranny and vice versa as circumstances change. For example, some spin dictators have become more fear dictator-like when China steps in with needed loans for the country. Unlike Western financial donors, China does not criticize dictators for murdering people or brutally oppressing them. Western loans sometimes come with good dictator behavior strings attached. China never attaches pro-democracy strings like that to its loans.

For contrast, the rule of thumb definition for fear dictatorships is:

1. a non-democracy country; and

2. at least one year where there no or few media outlets criticize the government; and

3. at least 10 state political killings per year; and

4.  at least1,000 jailed political prisoners in at least one year.

The author's analysis of dictators in power at least 5 years for fear vs spin dictatorships from 1946 to 2015 indicate that fear dominated spin until the 1990s when spin dominated. In 1946-1949, it was about 47% fear, 8% spin and 45% hybrid. By 2015, spin was about 53% of dictatorships, fear 7% and hybrid 40%.

Other observations

A couple of other points merit mention. Technology has changed and is relevant but the concept of spin dictatorship with rule by deceit and guile is not completely new. Aristotle wrote aspects of about it in ~400 BC. Machiavelli's 1532 book, The Prince, was a guidebook for spin dictators of that time, not fear tyrants. The authors write and quote Machiavelli:

Machiavelli advised princes (dictators) to use "simulation and dissimulation." Since most people are influenced by appearances rather than by reality, an ambitious ruler should create illusions. He "need not have all the good qualities . . . . but he must be seen to have them." How to fool the public depends on context: "The prince can gain favor in many ways." But obtaining public support is crucial. "I will only say in conclusion that prince must have the people on his side."

Consider this. The people of Turkey have just re-elected spin dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, despite his authoritarianism and his significant flaws and failures. Euronews writes:

Turkish election 'free but not fair', say international observers

"Media bias and ongoing restrictions to freedom of expression created an unlevel playing field, and contributed to an unjustified advantage of the incumbent," the OSCE said on Monday.

Free but not fair is an oxymoron for elections. If an election is not fair, it's not free. That's just reasonable, rational thinking. This reflects the amazing effectiveness of dictators holding sham elections. The democratic West is mostly fooled or confused and the dictator stays in power and continues to pretend to be supporting democracy. However, the dictator non-West is not fooled. Those tyrants watch and learn the art of killing democracy while claiming to defend it.

Future prospects

What the authors think the future of democracy will be was not quite clear to me. They seem to be torn between not being alarmist and not being naïve or too optimistic. My confusion aside, maybe the overall thrust of history and current events is mildly positive for democracy. Based mostly on dictatorships since the 1980s, the authors do an in-depth analysis of what they call the modernization cocktail. It has three ingredients, (i) the transition from an industrial to a post-industrial society**, (ii) economic and information globalization, and (iii) the rise of a liberal international order. Together, those developments tend to push nations from fear dictatorships to spin dictatorships and finally to democracies. The modernization cocktail is an international social and political force or phenomenon that is emergent from all three ingredients acting together on post-industrial societies and the rest of the world. 

** A post-industrial society is one where services and information processing is a more important aspect of the economy than old-fashioned manufacturing. The US completed the transition to a post-industrial country in the years after WWII. We're not going back, despite what politicians say about it.

There is a lot of historical fact and analysis to support that argument. Their argument is well documented and plausible in my opinion. For example, America's radical right relentlessly attacks globalization claiming it hurts people and the status quo, and undermines freedoms and traditions. The radicals largely appeal to a time when America was industrialized. That cannot happen. It has been tried and it fails. 

It is likely that in post-industrialized countries like the US that globalization defends people and their freedoms and traditions more than it undermines them. The US just has not adapted very well to post-industrialization. The authors cite Singapore's pioneering spin dictator of the 1990s Lee Kuan Yew as fully understanding the implications of the modernization cocktail:

With today's high technology, you just can't squeeze the maximum productivity out of advanced machinery without a self-motivated and self-governing work force. . . . . One simply cannot ask a highly educated work force to stop thinking when it leaves the factory. 

There was the problem in a nutshell. Too many people in post-industrialized countries have college degrees. You cannot control their thinking. Stalin had the same problem. The authors commented on the dictator's dilemma using Stalin as the example: 

Despite the inefficient organization of Stalinist industry, labor was still more productive in the factories than on peasant farms. But once progress required imagination [in the post-industrial society], Stalin-style coercion no longer worked. You could not order people to have ideas. Bureaucratic disciplined stifled innovation, which almost by definition requires breaking rules. Ideology was even more deadly. . . . . Dictators had to contend with a third, related challenge. The spread of higher education and creative works catalyzed another disruptive development. This one had to do with the beliefs and values of citizens.

The authors go on to point out that global survey data is clear on this point, which applies in all ~100 countries surveyed: As countries develop economically, their citizens undergo dramatic shifts in values and beliefs. Those values and beliefs tend to be pro-democratic. That, coupled with the rise of mass internet communications makes it hard for dictatorships in post-industrial countries to fight against sliding into democracy. 

[A spin dictator] can even hire the creative types to design an alternative reality for the masses. [it does not work against informed people, but they are rare and can be neutered] . . . . Co-opting the informed takes resources. When those run low, spin dictators turn to censorship, which is often cheaper. They need not censor everything. All that really matters is to stop opposition media reaching a mass audience. . . . . The less educated are alienated from the creative types by resentment, economic anxiety, and attachment to tradition. Spin dictators can exploit these sentiments, rallying the remaining [industrial?] workers against the "counterculture" while branding the intellectuals as disloyal, sacrilegious or sexually deviant.

Does any of that sound familiar? It should. That reflects mainstream rhetoric and tactics by America's authoritarian radical right, including alternative reality and independent thinker bashing.

The book concludes with these thoughts:

Internationally, Western societies are now linked to the dictatorships of the world by multiple capillaries [information, and economic and trade ties?]. There is no safe way to opt out of the global system. . . . . Spin dictators would like their citizens to trust them and distrust the West. They thrive in a world of cynicism and relativism. But the West has something they do not: a powerful idea around which it can unite, the idea of liberal democracy. This idea -- although some today see it as tarnished -- is, in fact, the West's strongest weapon. . . . . But the only way to defeat an idea is with a better idea, and they do not have one. That spin dictators pretend to be democrats proves they have no vision to offer. They can only delay and discourage us for a while -- if we let them.

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To a large extent Guriev and Treisman see the situation with democracy about the same as reflected in many of the politics posts here. I take my own assessment as mostly reinforced by the analysis and reasoning that Spin Dictators lays out. What the Republican Party and its leader Trump have done and are still doing looks a lot like spin dictatorship to me. Too much like it. 

Maybe my assessment of authoritarian threat in the US has been significantly overstated. A reassessment after the 2024 elections are over will be in order. Until then, erring on the side of alarmism seems prudent.

What remains unclear and unpredictable is the ultimate fate of democracy. Despite clear historical evidence that the human situation was slowly moving toward democracy, the ultimate power of the dark internet, global overpopulation, climate change and other pressures could tip mankind back to tyranny as the norm everywhere. Maybe countervailing historical forces like the modernization cocktail will prevent that. Maybe not. 

Contemplating chronic health problems and procreation…

Q: Should people with chronic health problems have kids?

Some possible answers:

• Yes, there’s a chance science might be able to fix the genetic health problems of their offspring.  They should “go for it!”
• Yes, they have a right to know the joys of childrearing like everyone else out there.
• No, that puts unnecessary health burdens on their potential kids.
• No, such people are purposefully being selfish with no regard for the potential child’s future.
• [Other analyses here]

So, what do you think?  How do you see/evaluate such a scenario?

TRUMP SUPPORTERS TARGETED BY HAVANA SYNDROME – AND IT COULD BE HAPPENING TO YOU!

 In a sinister new development, Radio Free Ozarks has learned from our source inside the FBI of stateside Havana Syndrome attacks carried out by US-based Antifa operatives targeting supporters of Donald Trump. A leaked US intelligence memo states that in at least one case a Trump supporter was targeted simply for having a “Trump Won” sign in her yard.

The leaked memo, which our source confirmed as believable, states that the communist partners of Russia, China, and Cuba transferred this technology stateside to the US domestic terror organisation Antifa in early 2022. Specifically, in March 2022 a shipping container full of Directed Microwave Energy weapon modules was sent from Cuba via oceangoing cargo ship. Based on satellite images, the cargo container was transferred to another vessel while at sea, in order to skirt the US embargo on trade with Cuba. From there the container made a final port of call in a radical leftist state, believed to be Massachusetts. The ship’s Bill of Lading listed the cargo container as carrying “200 CD Players.” Our FBI source stated that the Bill of Lading appears falsified, because who buys a CD player anymore?

More on this:

https://radiofreeozarks.net/trump-maga-havana-syndrome/

News bits: The Supreme Court vs ethics; Etc.

The Supreme Court's war against ethics is playing out well for the generals running the show at the court. Slate writes:

It Took Alito Barely a Month to Violate the Supreme Court’s New Ethics Rules

On April 25, Chief Justice John Roberts sent the Senate Judiciary Committee a “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices” signed by all nine justices. Roberts forwarded along the “statement” in lieu of testifying before the committee, and obviously hoped it would quell growing congressional concern over the Supreme Court’s growing ethics scandals. The document identified various recusal and disclosure practices, claiming that “all of the current Members of the Supreme Court subscribe” to these suggested rules.

It took Justice Samuel Alito barely a month to violate them.

In the court’s orders list on Tuesday, Alito noted his recusal from BG Gulf Coast and Phillips 66 v. Sabine-Neches Navigation District—a case about two energy companies shirking their obligation to help fund improvement of a waterway that they use for shipping. (The court declined to take up the case, leaving in place a lower court decision against the companies.) But the justice did not explain his reason for recusing, one of Roberts’ promised “practices.” To obtain that information, you must dig through his financial disclosures, which reveal that he holds up to $50,000 of stock in Phillips 66, one of the parties. Alito is one of two sitting justices who still holds individual stocks (as opposed to conflict-free assets like mutual funds). The only other sitting justice who maintains investments in individual stock is Roberts himself.

For years, Alito has periodically recused from cases involving energy companies without explaining why. This spring, however, that practice was supposed to change. Roberts’ ethics “statement” explained that justices “may provide a summary explanation of a recusal decision” with a citation to the relevant provision of the Judicial Code of Conduct. (That code is binding on lower court judges but voluntary for the justices.) The “statement” offered this example: “Justice X took no part in the consideration or decision of this petition. See Code of Conduct, Canon 3C(1)(c) (financial interest).”

In Philips 66, it appears that Alito should have cited his “financial interest” in a party to explain his “recusal decision.” (In other words, he should have been “Justice X.”) This could have been a textbook example of the new rule in action; indeed, it was literally the example that the court offered the Senate Judiciary Committee. Instead, Alito refused to adhere to this new procedure.   

As Leah Litman pointed out on the Strict Scrutiny podcast, though, Kagan was never the problem: She has long complied voluntarily with the Judicial Code of Conduct, so much so that she once turned away a gift of free bagels and lox from high school friends. The real question was whether any justices at the center of the ethics maelstrom would follow through on the promises of the court’s “statement.” It seems the answer is no.

Which is, of course, the entire problem with the unenforceable ethics guidelines that the chief justice offered up to the Senate Judiciary Committee in place of an actual code. The “statement” declares at the outset that it contains “foundational ethics principles and practices”; you might assume that if an ethics principle is “foundational,” then every justice should feel compelled to follow it. Yet the guidelines use voluntary language throughout, hedging at every turn to avoid committing the justices to any explicit mandate.

So, there aren't any new rules. A “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices” is just paper with words and signatures on it. The Supreme Court's paper is intended to deceive and deflect from the fact that ethics are meaningless and can be ignored with impunity.

Q: Is it reasonable to think that in view of the Supreme Court's explicit refusal to adopt any code of ethics that at least some of the justices are corrupt criminals?

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Various sources report that the House voted to accept the McCarthy-Biden debt deal. Now it's on to the US Senate.

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From the Pounding Square Pegs Into Round Holes Files: The NYT writes: 

Talk of Racism Proves Thorny for G.O.P. Candidates of Color

As candidates like Tim Scott and Nikki Haley bolster their biographies with stories of discrimination, they have often denied the existence of systemic racism in America while describing situations that sound just like it

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and Nikki Haley, who are both seeking the Republican nomination for president, have often spoken of discrimination and alienation they have experienced in the past

But in bolstering their own bootstrap biographies with stories of discrimination, they have put forth views about race that at times appear at odds with their view of the country — often denying the existence of a system of racism in America while describing situations that sound just like it.

“I’m living proof that America is the land of opportunity and not a land of oppression,” Mr. Scott says in a new campaign advertisement running in Iowa, though he has spoken of his grandfather’s forced illiteracy and his own experiences being pulled over by the police seven times in one year “for driving a new car.”

See, it fit perfectly!

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Military inflation: 60 Minutes reported: Us taxpayers are getting gouged, ripped off and royally screwed. Those valiant American weapons suppliers are stealing from us. Neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party shows serious interest in protecting the taxpayer. After all, weapons makers are just hard working people (human beings) who have rights to make "campaign contributions" to powerful politicians. This is just another example of brass knuckles capitalism operating on a corrupt American pay-to-play political system.

Thoughts on an American Christian theocracy

A recent comment chided me for putting too much emphasis on America's radical right Christian nationalist (CN) wealth and power movement. The CN movement is anti-democracy, pro-tyranny politics packaged in faux Christianity. The commenter made a good point:

Germaine Germaine, you DO realize white Christian nationalism is actually on a sharp DECLINE, as is all church attendance. The more it declines, the more they will BLEAT and try by whatever means to stay relevant. But as all church doctrines, the end WILL COME. Those who recognize the end is coming will become more extreme (witness Putin and his war against Ukraine) but in the end it won't matter, they are DOOMED.

My response was:

Yes, I do know that church attendance is dropping and demographic changes are shifting away from the CN movement. That constitutes an existential threat to CN wealth and power. That is what makes the CN movement a brutal, enraged, vicious animal that is fighting for its very life.

Why do you think the radical right has gone all in on subverting the federal courts, especially the Supreme Court? This is the last gasp of the CN movement's attempt at forever power, wealth and a hyper-radical, morally and financially corrupt Christian fundamentalist theocracy. If they fail now, they know they may never get another chance.

But that only scratches the surface of thinking about the CN movement and tyranny more broadly.

There is solid research that shows a tendency among humans and societies to support some form of tyranny. That kind of mindset is present in all societies. If I recall right, the authoritarian mindset tends to constitute ~30-60% of a nation's population.

A near-final 2022 draft of a 2023 research paper entitled, Professed Democracy Support and Openness to Politically Congenial Authoritarian Actions within the American Public, comments:

Elites degrade democracy in part because of incentives that arise from public opinion. We report pre-registered and exploratory tests of which Americans are most likely to support democracy-degrading action, focusing on three distinct democracy attitudes assessed in a large demographically representative sample five weeks before the 2020 election. Professed opposition to democracy was relatively rare and most common among citizens who felt disengaged with politics. But a different pattern of findings emerged for attitudes toward (1) flagrant, politically congenial authoritarian policy action and (2) election subversion framed with a pro-democracy justification. These anti-democratic attitudes were relatively common, related to cultural conservatism among both Republicans and Democrats, and – consistent with an “involved-but-ignorant” hypothesis – highest among those who combined strong political interest with low political sophistication.

“We are acting not to thwart the democratic process, but rather to protect it.” --- Joint Statement from Senators Cruz, Johnson, Lankford, Daines, Kennedy, Blackburn, Braun, Senators-Elect Lummis, Marshall, Hagerty, and Tuberville, January 2, 2021

As risks to American democracy have become more apparent, scholars have increasingly focused attention on attitudes toward democracy within the American public (Bartels, 2020; Drutman, Goldman, & Diamond, 2020; Zechmeister, 2018). The precise role that public attitudes play in the maintenance of democracy is a matter of debate. However, mass democracy attitudes can influence the incentives that elites face, and shortcomings in the public’s ability to serve as a check on undemocratic behavior would seem to constitute a liability for democracy (Graham & Svolik, 2020). Furthermore, anti-democratic sentiment may motivate or promote sympathy for political violence directed at opponents or those carrying out democratic processes (Kalmoe & Mason, 2022; Sullivan, Piereson, & Marcus, 1983). These types of concerns are no longer just theoretical in the United States, and the nature of anti-democratic sentiment therefore seems to be a matter of pressing normative importance.  

But efforts to understand the prevalence and implications of anti-democratic sentiment quickly run into a complication: there are different kinds of democracy-related attitudes and their distributions, correlates, and normative implications are likely to vary. For instance, substantial majorities of Americans profess support for a democratic system of government (Drutman et al., 2020). But it is well known that some Americans who profess support for democracy simultaneously report being open to authoritarian actions (Voeten, 2017), sometimes rather flagrant ones (Zechmeister, 2018). What is more, support for authoritarian actions rises to even higher levels when these actions are cued as instrumental to favored goals within the context of current political conflict (Bartels, 2020; Drutman et al., 2020; Malka & Lelkes, 2017; McCoy, Simonovitz, & Littvay, 2020). Indeed, vulnerabilities to American democracy seem to stem less from a weak commitment to the concept of democracy than from an openness to authoritarian actions carried out by favored political leaders to achieve specific goals in a polarized context (McCoy, Rahman, & Somer, 2018; Svolik, 2019). Moreover, elites may justify these actions as necessary for preserving democracy, as our epigraph illustrates, thereby harnessing abstract commitment to “democracy” for the goal of degrading democratic institutions and norms. 

Finally, we find that the link between political engagement and democracy-related attitudes is more complicated than previously assumed. Specifically, involvement with politics was a relatively strong predictor of professed democracy support, but not of politically congenial authoritarian actions or election subversion. Most intriguingly, the data were consistent with an involved-but-ignorant explanation of support for authoritarian actions and election subversion. That is, the Americans most likely to support such democracy degradation were those who combined low political knowledge with high subjective political involvement, a finding that was consistent across Republicans and Democrats. Strong involvement with politics may be favorable for giving lip service to democracy but may also energize support for politically congenial anti-democratic behavior among those who are unsophisticated.

So, yes, there are social and demographic trends that point to a weakening of the CN movement. That terrible fact is what infuses the CN wealth and power movement with urgency and focus. That is what gives rise to brutal, morally untethered tactics, e.g., endless outrageous lies and slanders. It fights for its life. All means and tactics are fair game because God's sacred ends justify all immoral and brutal means. 

The CN fight for life includes tactics like passing voter suppression laws, passing election subversion laws, gerrymandering the hell out of state legislature and House of Representatives voting districts, packing federal courts with radicalized theocratic-authoritarian capitalist extremists, and acting in concert with the other ideology that dominates the radical right Republican Party, namely brass knuckles, government and regulations hating capitalism.   

The point here is simple: American democracy and civil liberties can fall to a minority or minorities who cooperate to establish their own form of a tyranny of the minority.

Now I feel better. I just needed to get that off my chest. 😘