Category: Anti-Democratic Developments

Democracy’s Deathbed: the U.S. Senate

[Most of the content below is probably familiar to you, but I wanted to put it all together in one place to get a sense of how much of an impediment to democracy and human progress the United States Senate is—at least as it presently operates.  Conceivably it could be reformed to conduce to the betterment of the American people, but the current rules exacerbate the harm from an already non-democratic structure dictated by the Constitution.]

Grave arithmetic: if you think the Electoral College is bad, just consider the Senate

At times, it looks as if a coalition of white supremacists and QAnon cult members, together with right-wing government-hating, racist and xenophobic gun nuts,  whipped into a fact-free frenzy by Donald Trump, is what we most have to worry about in preserving our democracy.

If only.  The Capitol riot was a symptom of a societal breakdown a long time in the making. What we’re looking at now is a tipping point, a massive destabilization of the American public and the institutions on which it relies (with little thanks from a clueless majority of voters). It’s come to the point where such observers as MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan only half-jokingly wonder if the U.S. is becoming a “failed state.” (URL to YouTube is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mzFqKZe60o

There are plenty of villains to blame for this scary predicament—my favorite being social media—but one key contributor is the workings of the U.S Senate.  If we need big change quickly enough to stave off shocks to the system of which the January 6 riot at the Capitol is a brief forewarning, then something drastic has to be done  with the Senate.

Continue reading “Democracy’s Deathbed: the U.S. Senate”

“Digital Oligarchy” – Europeans Say No to Social Media Trump Ban

European leaders have a point—up to a point

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire condemned decisions by Twitter, Facebook, Apple, et al to shut down Donald Trump’s social media accounts.  Le Maire accused Big Tech of forming a “digital oligarchy,” and called for public regulation of big online platforms.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized a “breach” of the “fundamental right to free speech” as “problematic.”

I get it. “Digital oligarchy” is apt.  I applaud the efforts of Europeans to hobble Big Tech as they have been doing and will continue to do; we should have been doing a lot more of it on our side of the Atlantic. If it weren’t for the unshackled free market ideology dominating American politics for the last 40 years, we might have been doing it.

Nevertheless, maybe they should butt out of the Trump social media lockdown controversy for the time being . . . at least until the dust settles around the transition to the Joe Biden administration.

The old analogy of “freedom of speech doesn’t give you the right to yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater” applies in this situation.*  If Angela Merkel had had to live in a country with its leader shouting ‘fire!’ every day for four years straight, ultimately leading to an attack on the nation’s Capitol building by a lawless, violent, gun-toting mob bent on overthrowing the government, she might be willing to bend a little to the practicality of muting that voice as soon as possible, whether by Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, or my local mail carrier (I’d rather entrust the power to her than to the aforementioned, but that’s going to have to wait for The Revolution).

Continue reading ““Digital Oligarchy” – Europeans Say No to Social Media Trump Ban”

Turning Points: MJ, Mitt, NASCAR. Then What?

Surprising Solidarities: Jordan, Romney, NASCAR

Michael Jordan, Mitt Romney, and NASCAR have something in common: they have all said, in their own ways, “we have had enough” in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.

I felt there was change in the air when basketball great Michael Jordan, for years publicly mute on political issues, declared “we have had enough” in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

As recently as May 5th, Jordan defended his apolitical public persona by saying “I never thought of myself as an activist. I thought of myself as a basketball player.”

But following the murder of George Floyd on May 25th, Jordan said on May 31st: “I stand with those who are calling out the ingrained racism and violence toward people of color in our country. We have had enough.”

Those of us who have been puzzled by Jordan’s longstanding refusal to publicly address racism exclaimed, “Finally!”   . . . or words to that effect.

Continue reading “Turning Points: MJ, Mitt, NASCAR. Then What?”

The Liberal Conspiracy Theory We’ve All Been Waiting For

[Note: by Liberal Conspiracy Theory I mean not a theory about liberals, but a theory held  by liberals about the Deep Right.]

Who’s dying of Covid-19?

To state the obvious—I know you’ve been thinking it, but are wary of seeming too paranoid—the Trumpian Right is getting just what it wants out of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Steven Miller goes home at night chortling at the latest death toll—OK, he may be sorry about some bigoted Trump fans dying (there’s always collateral damage in a righteous war), but not enough to suppress his glee at the bigger picture.

Those who are dying in the greatest numbers, out of proportion to their fraction of the population:

(1) People in big cities: New York; Philadelphia; Chicago; Detroit; Boston; Baltimore  . . .

(2) Minorities, African-Americans in particular: for example, in Wisconsin 40 percent of Covid-19 fatalities are blacks, and they represent 6 percent of the population.

(3) Prisoners, with blacks being imprisoned across the U.S. at five times the rate of whites.

(4)  The elderly—in the U.S. as of March 16, 80% of Covid-19 deaths were in people age 65 or older.

(5) People with serious underlying health conditions.

Continue reading “The Liberal Conspiracy Theory We’ve All Been Waiting For”

Bread and Circuses in the Trump Era: Part IV of Treading into Darkness

[“Bread and circuses” was a satirical term coined by Roman poet Juvenal to characterize how Roman rulers kept the masses compliant with the provision of bread (Roman agriculture was very wheat-intensive) and circuses—public entertainment such as chariot races in the Circus Maximus, and bloody spectacles such as gladiatorial combat in the Colosseum.  Here, the target of Juvenal’s scorn was a disengaged, passive citizenry. He also had plenty of scorn for other forms of decadence prevalent in the Rome of his time.]

Republicans grovel, Trump soars, democracy frays, and who cares?

Two days after the Republican-dominated Senate acquitted Donald Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, the President’s public approval ratings shot up to 49 percent. Stunning, until you look back on the week that was and saw that two events, external to the impeachment trial, had shaped the public mood: (1) the Superbowl three days before the acquittal, and (2) the Iowa caucuses, the day before the acquittal. The first drew a TV audience of 100 million (almost a third of the country’s population) and $10,000 per ticket.  In the second (the caucuses), some missteps by the organizers delayed the vote count, to the delight of the media who were all over the story like flies on a pile of horse droppings.

The Superbowl buildup during the previous week outshone the impeachment trial in the Senate (viewership less than a tenth of Superbowl-watchers), where the Democratic managers were proving that the President had clearly abused his power, and pointed out that, if he were acquitted, he would continue to do so with a sense of impunity (not just a sense of it, but with actual impunity). Part of the fallout from that week was the precedent set by the Senate refusing to call for witnesses and documents that in the normal run of things would be part of any trial. This pseudo-trial was not in the normal run of things—no run but more like a march toward the edge of a cliff.

All the time the managers were unintentionally proving that the American people care more about football  than the rule of law. If 100 million folks watched the Superbowl, you can be sure that at least 30 million of them were feeling a steady upward climb in football fever in the two weeks between the conference championships and the Big Event.

Continue reading “Bread and Circuses in the Trump Era: Part IV of Treading into Darkness”

Senate Republicans 51, America 0 – Part III of Treading into Darkness

U.S. Senate casts vote for nihilism

9 p.m., January 31, 2020

Here I’ve been working intermittently for weeks on drafts of Part III of Treading into Darkness—researching the effects of social media—and now the Senate Republicans (almost all of them) have made easy work of this installment. One of the most ugly gifts that has ever been handed to me.

The impact of the vote not to allow witnesses or documents in the impeachment trial is far broader than a judgment upon the person of Donald Trump.  What the Senate has just done can be used henceforward by the executive branch to shield it from any investigation by Congress being performed in a timely fashion.  That’s because the task of taking the subpoenas through the courts while being continuously obstructed can take months or even years.  That’s exactly what the administration has been counting on with their refusal to turn over documents since last fall.

I can’t see the vote by the Republicans representing anything better than a descent into nihilism. Truth doesn’t matter, justice doesn’t matter, the checks and balances we thought were built into the Constitution don’t matter, the will of the American people (75% wanted witnesses) doesn’t matter, the idea that no one in America is above the law has just been completely trashed.  And government by a gang of thugs has been validated.

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Tyrant in Your Pocket: Part II of Treading into Darkness

So much of dictatorial power comes from just showing up. Everywhere.

Soon after my return from Vietnam, I was living in Boston and saw a notice of an upcoming Black Panther Party meeting.  At the time I wasn’t sure just what they were doing, but I knew one of their primary objectives was protecting the black community from aggressive policing.

In the Army I had rubbed shoulders with enough African-Americans to understand what comes of being systematically oppressed. Although I was troubled  by the shootings of police on the West Coast, the Panthers’ Boston chapter had not been accused of violence, and was  ostensibly oriented toward helping blacks with food and education—it seemed like a positive move toward peaceful support of the black community.

I went to the meeting, curious to see what was up, and even considering helping them out. I also had a notion of showing that not all white people were clueless.

But I was greatly disappointed.  It was a small gathering of young black men in a windowless room (lacking windows made sense, but it was depressing nonetheless). While I, as the only white person there, was understandably greeted with suspicion, they seemed more curious than hostile. It was a good start. But then I began asking questions, and before answering, whoever I was talking to would consult the Little Red Book (“The Sayings of Chairman Mao”) which everyone possessed.  Where the book was not actually lying out in full view on a table or shelf, it would be in someone’s pocket—pants pocket, shirt pocket, out it came.

Continue reading “Tyrant in Your Pocket: Part II of Treading into Darkness”

Democracy’s Downward Slide and Totalitarianism’s Upward March – Treading into Darkness, Part I

Recession of democracy

On the day I began writing this (December 18), the depressing spectacle of the House of Representatives impeachment vote on Donald Trump occurred, and I happened to come across an even more depressing op-ed by Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post.  Zakaria described a trend toward repression of minorities, tribalism, and incipient totalitarianism.

    • The widening schism between Hindus and Muslims in India,  now being codified into laws that repress the latter. For a look at the rising persecution of Muslims in India, check out this in The New Yorker.
    • Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Trumplike attack on the Israeli justice system, together with an accusation that the police and prosecutors are attempting a coup.
    • Hungary’s  Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s moves to silence opposition voices, curtail the power of local governments, and throttle immigration with fences and razor wire and a limit of 10 asylum applications per day.
    • The massive government persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar.
    • White-hot partisanship in the U.S. political system (compounded by the resurgence of White Nationalism), whipped up by a demagogue whose bent is toward autocracy.

Zakaria refers to the human rights watchdog group Freedom House finding a worldwide decline in global freedom over the past 13 years. He quotes Stanford’s Larry Diamond, coeditor of The Journal of  Democracy, saying that we are seeing a worldwide “Democratic Recession.” Zakaria puts it more strongly: it may be a “Democratic Depression.”

Totalitarianism in the Information Age: the China model

To Zakaria’s list, we can add human-rights abuses in China, on the cusp of becoming a totalitarian surveillance state (more on that in later parts of Treading into Darkness).  The Chinese leadership’s actions to control its population is pulling it so far away from democracy that democratic aspirations are destined to become an illusion for the people of China (no matter what the outcome in Hong Kong).  The Artificial Intelligence-assisted mass surveillance system they have developed in the Xinjiang region to control, police, detain,  sometimes torture, and imprison minorities (such as the Uighur Muslims) serves as a model to extend throughout China going forward.

Continue reading “Democracy’s Downward Slide and Totalitarianism’s Upward March – Treading into Darkness, Part I”

Secession: Has Its Time Come?

Tell me you haven’t been thinking about it.

Secession.

I.e. a “Blue” withdrawal from the paradoxically named “United” States.

[sorry Barack, your farewell speech was laudable, but as your mom said, Reality has a Way of Catching Up with You.]

I realize there are many practical obstacles to this split, of which the two biggest are:

(A) Geographic.  North Dakota, Montana, and a finger of Idaho break up a Blue Northern Arc extending from Virginia to California. Boundaries could be especially problematic there. If the other side started building walls, access between regions might be managed through Canada.

(B) Asymmetry of Resources & Money:

  • The non-Blue portion of What Was the United States (WUSS) has most of the physical resources: oil, coal, natural gas, solar, and land-based wind energy, and most important—if push came to shove—most of the armaments, from handguns to ICBMs.
  • The Blue Arc has most of the financial wealth, intellectual property, and potential for innovation.  You can see where the above-mentioned asymmetry would interact with this one. But, with enough tribute paid to the non-Blue states—continuing an existing de facto practice—the Blue Arc could minimize the use of force. The Blue Arc, if it joined NATO, would shine among the other NATO countries, in actually paying its way.

Think I’m joking? I’m not sure. I actually don’t believe Secession’s time has come. Yet. But it is time to start thinking about it so that future generations might not have to endure the charade of creating a More Perfect Union from the schizophrenic nation that exists now.