drumdude wrote: ↑Thu Nov 07, 2024 10:53 pm
Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Thu Nov 07, 2024 9:46 pm
Most Americans voted for Trump, so…
Whether a fear is rational is judged at the time the fear is felt, not with hindsight. It is rational to be afraid of driving on a narrow road at night with your lights off even if you do it and get away with it once or twice. The fact is that democracies can and do devolve into authoritarian regimes by electing autocrats. To pretend that it can’t happen in the US is beyond naïve.
Autocracies have elections. It’s just that there is really only one party. Beginning with the George Bush presidency, the Republican Party has been on a tear to institute permanent government by the Republican Party by turning the entire executive branch into a machine for insuring the election of Republicans to the presidency. Trump tried to do that with the Justice Department during his first term, but was frustrated by folks whose loyalties were to the country and not Trump. He won’t make that mistake again.
So, no, if Trump leaves office without misusing the executive branch, including the DOJ, to punish people, companies, media sources, etc. for opposing him in the election, I’ll be relieved. If Trump leaves office without replacing thousands of civil service employees, including scientists, with party apparatchiks who will obey his every whim, I will be relieved. If Trump doesn’t act like a dictator on day one or any other day, I will be relieved. If the Republicans stop their voter suppression tactics, I will be relieved. And if a Democratic President can take office without having to contend with false claims of fraud by the losing R, without a blizzard of frivolous lawsuits without challenging the election, without having R election officials or legislatures overriding the will of the voters, and without a mob using threat of violence to overturn the election, I’ll be relieved.
But I’m not going to let anyone gaslight me into saying it’s irrational to fear that the political party who tried to steal an election won’t succeed the next time or that the candidate who routinely threatens to use his governmental powers to punish his perceived enemies, who already tried to purge civil servants and replace them with political lackies won’t do exactly what he’s promised to do over and over and over and over.
Where we agree is that I also think Trump is the biggest risk to democracy of any president, by far. Where we disagree is how likely the far left's worst fears are to come true.
Big relative risk. Small absolute risk.
The idea that Trump is going to deport 20 million illegals, stay in office forever, make abortion illegal nationwide, etc etc etc is all just fear porn.
Trump is much more likely to act exactly as he did his first 4 years. As an incompetent bumbling moron, who can't change much because of the sheer inertia of our government and its career employees.
And for every Democratic nation that falls to autocracy, there are people who say the threat is overblown — until it isn’t. Just like NASA got away with shuttle launches in cold weather until the Challenger exploded.
In his first term, Trump crashed through every guard rail we have in place to protect our system of government. I mean, how stupid do we have to give control of the government back to a guy who tried to steal the last election he lost?
No one is claiming that Trump will stay in office forever. He’s old and in poor health. He doesn’t have to report 20 million to do the country severe harm. Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to you that ICE will be necessarily beefed up and, given the authority that Trump claims to have and that the MAGA Congresscritters are happy to cede to him, Trump will have his own little police force at his beck and call. Have you been paying attention to what DeSantis in Florida has been doing with his own police force? You should be.
And why in the world do you think Trump wouldn’t sign a nationwide anti-abortion bill? It’s what his base wants, and he wasn’t punished at the polls in the slightest for the Dobbs decision.
I’ve read some articles by folks who watched their democracies get taken over by autocrats. Rule 1: when the autocrat tells you what he intends to do, believe him. Another important rule: institutions will not save you. The autocrat will either capture them or threaten them into submission. Jeff Bezos prohibiting the Post’s staff from endorsing Harris on the same day Trump met with Blue Origin’s executives should have every hair on the back of your neck standing at attention. If a guy with 200 billion dollars is intimidated by Trump, that should tell you something.
Over and over you keep overlooking the fact that the people who kept Trump from acting according to his worst instincts won’t be there. In 2021, the only thing that prevented appointment of acting AG that would have lied through his teeth about evidence of voter fraud was the threat of mass resignations in the DOJ. That won’t be there this time around because the DOJ will be filled with MAGA true believers.
in my opinion, we’ve become so lazy and complacent in defending our democracy that we just expect it to work despite all the evidence of how fragile democracies really are.
I fervently hope that what I fear will not come pass. But I’m not going to ignore what the strongman wannabe tells me to my face what he plans to do. in my opinion, that’s how democracies die.
