The end of US democracy

With the benefit of hindsight, Biden might have declared a state of emergency immediately after the insurrection, arrested Trump, and expelled all the congressional Republicans who had voted to overturn the election. But this would itself have represented an admission that democratic norms had failed.

I see it in just the opposite way. Democratic norms are upheld when democracy resists fascist insurrection, as in Brazil or South Korea. Once Biden decided to duck the issue, it was clear that democratic norms were not going to be relevant going forward. In this case, it’s pragmatic (though morally revolting) to support the winning side.

oh dear! i hope trump doesn’t win again in 2028! ????????

Yes, the idea that the next two elections will be legitimate opportunities for unseating Republicans is naive. Given all that they have done and got away with so far that is illegal, nakedly corrupt, and unconstitutional, there is no reason to believe that they would not simply arrest or even take citizenship away from some strategically chosen Democratic candidates, and throw out a few states’ electoral college votes if the state government is R but votes went D. They have already laid the groundwork. They also have a strong motivation for doing everything they can to avoid ever losing power again, as they know how much trouble they would be in if the rule of law was re-established in their lifetimes.

It is fairly frustrating to see people on social and news media continue to point at poll approval ratings as if they were of any relevance. I have in the past used the analogy of realising that my cell phone is lost when I am standing at a cliff edge and the phone is three meters below me in free fall towards the rocks and the river below. The last chance to secure the phone was when it was still in my hand. The last chance to secure US democracy was January 2021, and the Democratic leadership of the time failed completely. They and their centrist followers need to understand that democracy has now terminally slipped from their hands, and that even if they can still fund raise and squabble over primaries, one day soon masked goons may well kick even their door in.

Although I always argue for moral responsibility and agency of the voters, I am here actually slightly more forgiving than the post I am commenting on. Yes, tens of millions of comfortably well-off suburbanites have welcomed the end of democracy. They have made a vile choice, and it is ludicrous to say “but social media” or “but left behind” to make excuses for them. But there will also have been millions of rusted-on voters who were in denial about how far right the Republican party has shifted under their feet and who voted R simply out of inertia or loyalty; plus millions of swing voters who had legitimate frustrations with the incumbent party and thought that fears of dictatorship were exaggerated for electoral propaganda purposes; plus millions of even lower-information voters who vaguely thought that Trump will bring egg prices down by paying all national debt off with Bitcoin or something. He and Republicans could only win by combining all three, not only the first lot, and I honestly don’t know how large the three blocks are relative to each other. It is well possible that those who consciously welcome the end of democracy are fewer than 30% of voters. If the USA had a multi-party system, we might not be discussing the end of democracy, because everybody else could form a coalition against them.

Of course, that doesn’t help much. That’s still lots of people. And the egg price constituency should also have known what happens to the working class people under Republican presidents and maybe read up on project 2025 before casting their vote.

dk@3: Trump’s popular vote was 31.8% of eligible voters, Harris’s was 30.8%. This does not strike me as “unqualified majority support”.

We kind of have to run with the rules the country uses until we have a One World Global Unified Body to Run Elections according to the proper rules. Barring the OWGUBRE Australia can have democracy with preferential voting. Israel can have democracy with proportional system, Aotearoa can have a supplementary system, the UK and USA can have their gerrymandered malapportionment ‘throw half the votes away’ system and so on.

Considering only eligible voters falls apart when a sizeable chunk of the population is entirely disenfranchised, as in the occupied territories of Israel, but also when the demographic makeup favours groups not permitted to vote (Niger with 55% under 18!). So I prefer to look at the total population vs number of first preference votes for the winner. The massive majority of seats held by UK Labour and Aus Labor fall apart under this measure (also by yours, I suspect) and whatever is happening in the US it’s never had a majority government.

That said, the US has taken a huge step away from democracy, and also from rule of law.

There’s no need for it either. Both the UK and Australia (likely others) have all the legal prerequisites in place to implement authoritarian government, and arguably what the UK Labour government is doing is worse than what the Republican administration is doing. Deliberately starving their own citizens (egregiously in the case of the UK)? Jail sentences for minor protests? Calling those protests terrorism? The Republicans could pass similar laws and do everything by the book, but they’re choosing not to for symbolic reasons.

Things are exactly as bad as you write and yet history is open and not predetermined. There is no time for defeatism.

Regarding the 31.8% vs 30.8%: Trump doesn’t have the kind of mass support that his fascist role models enjoyed (Hitler never won a majority in a fair election but nevertheless he was popular). Those voters, a well as the nonvoters, have agency and responsibility for their idiotic choices. At the same time Trumpism – and this also applies to similar fascist movements in Europe – is not primarily a mass driven populist movement. A critical mass was necessary to make it politically viable but what allowed it to win was the fact that most of the economic elites, most of the oligarchy as well as a large number fo small business people and upper middle class professionals, rallied behind Trump, putting heir economic, and crucially, media power on the scales. They decided the election, not “swing voters”.

I’d argue that an important fraction of the capitalist class has revoked the post war compromise, which consisted of liberal democracy, the rule of law, and a limited welfare state. Although liberal democracy has been very good to capitalists, they have decided that they don’t need it any more, they can do better without it. I think they are wrong in economic terms – they are likely blowing up the basis of their own profitability. Which means that they are driven more by ideology than economic rationality, which is not what we’d expect, and requires an explanation.

I think doomerism like this suffers when if fails to think through the actual logistics of establishing a dictatorship in the U.S. Take the 2026 elections. How could Trump seriously compromise them? If he simply declares himself dictator and suspends elections, who will administer that? Blue states would presumably still hold elections, as would some red ones (look at Georgia’s 2020 resistance to his efforts there). Would he attempt to send the military to stop it? Remember, this is the same military he has demoralized by firing many of its generals and even pointlessly cutting fringe benefits many military members enjoy. Even if they obeyed, there are 116,000 polling places in the united states–there just aren’t enough troops. Would he arrest Democratic candidates? Perhaps, but federal courts would order them released. Would he ignore those courts? Perhaps, and maybe the prisons would obey that order. But if the elections are still happening those arrested politicians will probably do better than they would had they not been arrested. Even if he successfully blocked enough elections, blue states would not acquiesce to the new system. So is he going to occupy them militarily? And this massive nationwide apparatus of oppression is going to be run by who exactly? He can’t even muster enough authoritarian cronies to oppress more than a handful of universities and law firms right now. And he’s going to do this when a substantial majority of the population opposes him, something not even Orban or Erdowan have had to face, at least early in their regimes.

There is much Trump and his allies can do to push us toward a less free society, including much of what they have already done. And the 2026 elections will likely be unfair in many ways. But the idea that we’re going to go to full dictator-for-life in the next four years seems very unlikely to me. He just doesn’t have juice.

“capitalists don’t want the authoritarianism per se but they need it because it became popular with some groups that they want to keep on their side.”

I think the most important among these “groups” are … the rich. If the rich – who control practically the entire media including social media – overwhelmingly opposed authoritarianism/fascism, they wouldn’t have a chance. It is only with help from the oligarchs that fascists have again become electorally viable.

“the postwar compromise didn’t serve capitalists all that well, initially (immediately after WW2) it was a shackle placed on them, and progressively they dislodged it”

While capitalists had to accept some shackles, as you say, overall the postwar order served them extremely well. It provided unprecedented political and economic stability; mass affluence expanded demand for consumer goods to the wildest dreams of capitalists. Economic growth reached unprecedented levels, interrupted by a few comparably mild recessions. And government regulation that affects all players equally isn’t a dealbreaker for capitalists, despite ideological hostility. A rational capitalist should by far prefer a rule of law-based democracy to a cleptocratic autocracy in which some players may greatly benefit but at the constant risk of being pushed out a window on the whims of the autocrat.

So my qeustion, why do so many capitalists support Trumpian fascism? 100 years ago, capitalists supported fascism out of fear of a communist revolution, and their fear was not unfounded. Today, what is the worst that could happen to them if they let a center left party govern?

I don’t believe there is a rational economic explanation for this. Neither the cpaitalists nor the workers supporting fascism are primarily acting out of economic motives.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the USA had the most severe racial segregation, the rights of (white) women had only just begun to move towards equality, and about 200 banks in the country issued their own dollars. But no one talked about the “collapse” of democracy.
But they did talk about liberalism. Do you know why? Because democracy is a mechanism for making complex decisions affecting large groups of people. That’s all. The mechanism, you see? The most despotic countries in the world, such as Congo and North Korea, have the word “democratic” in their names.
Part of the Anglo-Saxon world has forgotten how to understand or has changed the meaning of the word “liberal”. Hayek warned about this in the mid-20th century. “Liberal democracy” and “democracy” are different semantic concepts. I recommend that all alarmists refresh their memory.

It is fairly frustrating to see people on social and news media continue to point at poll approval ratings as if they were of any relevance.

This is key, I think. Trump is still polling around the low to mid-40s, including on deportation raids. Even if he’s in the red overall, disapproval of his performance, as well as of specific policies, does not automatically translate into support for the opposition. It’s hard to see any Republican ticket winning less than 46-47% in a national election regardless of conditions on the ground.

That, incidentally, is precisely the reason Republicans may not need to prevent a genuinely free and open election in the near future, at least. They may very well push the cancel button, but they likely wouldn’t need do. Everyone knows about their structural EC and Senate advantages, gerrymandering, the Supreme Court and so forth. I could even see the GOP and Jeffries-Schumer cutting a deal that hands the presidency back to the Democrats in exchange for a no-prosecution, no-judicial reform pledge. I’m not sure what the GOP has to fear.

The thing is — approximately nobody on the US political scene is behaving as if this is the reality. Democrats have not given up on electoral politics and started stockpiling weapons and forming revolutionary cells. And Republicans are certainly not acting as if they believe the outcomes of all future elections are predetermined in their favor.

OP: “Unemployment was at historically low levels. The short-lived inflation resulting from the pandemic was well below the rates of the late 20th century, crime was far below those rates. And so on. The only real driving factor was the resentment and hatred felt by Trump’s voters for large groups of their compatriots.”

“And so on” seems to be carrying a lot of freight here. Does it stand for, “every other factor or combination of factors you could possibly think of except resentment and hatred”?

Adam H wrote: “It is ironic that Booth’s beef with Lincoln seems to have been the abuse of executive power.”

That is what Booth claimed. But what set him over the edge was Lincoln’s announced intentions to expand the franchise to freed slaves, in an impromptu speech given the day before Lee’s surrender to Grant. This was the tyranny Booth could not allow: dilution of the white vote. Booth vowed that that would be the last speech Lincoln ever gave (and it was).

I.e., Lincoln was killed not just over the war, not even just over emancipation, but over democratization.

Now think about what came next: failed Reconstruction, KKK, Jim Crow, “separate but equal”, creation of the incarceration state, and now MAGA: all of it — ALL OF IT — has been anti-democracy most of all.

Relevant for the present conversation, no? When the Schmittian SCOTUS imposed via anti-majoritarian proceduralism removes democratic protections chunk by chunk? When Democratic leaders are being killed in their homes over support for basic civil rights, with not a peep from GOP officials? When civil rights laws are being weaponized against the minority groups they were designed to protect?

American democracy may or may not be over. It also may or may not have ever existed in the first place.

Regarding 2021, the Democrats slow-walked the legal cases against Trump and the rioters, although by then the Supreme Court was reliably in the hands of the far right, and even a strategy reflecting the urgency of the situation might have been stymied by them. The 6-3 court is really the key to the whole thing, 2021 and after. (RBG is as much at fault for this as Mitch McConnell.

Going forward, I agree that national elections are iffy from here on out, but one remaining line of defense is federalism. State governments have more authority in the US than similar bodies in most other democracies (Germany and Canada excluded). Here the two big questions are, how steadfast will the leadership be in blue states, and will Trump use direct force against them? Personally, I think the bottom line, if we get to it, is the loyalty of state and local police forces, and I’m not exactly brimming with confidence.

All that said, the final link is us, and how quickly and effectively we can organize ourselves. The demos are great, but I worry that there isn’t appreciation yet for how important it will be to have much denser organization that isn’t just about sending out notices for the next street gathering.

Casey @25: YES, and here the ROW has a role to play. The current priority is to reduce the amount of power controlled by nationalists, and one way to do that is to reduce the amount of power controlled by anyone. 47 is TACOman (to the tune of “Macho Man” but his favorite band, the Village People): he does not yet have the power he claims to have, that is why he is so aggressive in signaling that he it. He is a literal “pro wrestling” character — for the non-Americans, these are scripted performances — and he is acting a bit. He flies off the handle at the first signs of resistance b/c his mechanisms of power remain very limited.

Finding coordination mechanisms for bridging resistance efforts is essential. Elon gave us some early targets, but that was always a sideshow (how easily the oligarchs are disposed of when their utility has ended, you’d think they’d learn).

We need other ways to build networks too. This is what Henry seems to be working on in his own way, it’s what we all need to be doing, in whatever little ways we can. The national Democratic Party in the US is constrained, not least by internal divisions, but the rest of us are not limited to working within these institutions exclusively.

For non-Americans, let’s resuscitate the multilateral institutionalism that originally promised global forms of social democracy. We have forgotten the utility of institutions in constraining state power, and by so doing the ability of state actors to repress both domestically and internationally.

There is a BIG opening here to resuscitate that project globally. Let’s use it. If we can, then TACOman’s case for legitimacy will be gone, his power base will erode quickly, and we can avoid some of the mistakes of the last century in this one, while ratcheting up some of its realized gains.

@ Jack, @ both sides do it

“Nobody will declare themselves president for life.”

Translated and clarified:

“Nobody will declare themselves president for life.”

(Because you don’t have to declare that your horse is a senator, do you — all you need to do is fix him up with the right office, and to all intents and purposes you’re in.)

{pause}

“Bet you a $100.”

No takers. Sucker bet.

Greasefire,

Declaring himself president for life also seems unlikely to me. I expect there will continue to be elections. But as for how Republicans could seriously compromise them, just look at how they have been working the last few times: intimidate the media; gerrymandering and the electoral college distort results in favour of Rs; purging voter rolls in D leaning areas and making it difficult to enroll again; close polling stations in D leaning areas; have voter ID requirements that favour retirees and penalise students; if counts are close, have a court decide in favour of Rs (see 2000 presidential election). As I mentioned above, newly available tactics include but are not limited to arresting D candidates and/or stripping them of their citizenship if they aren’t white, R governed states deciding to send R electors to the electoral college even if their voters voted D (with the supreme court holding up that decision), and masked goons abducting random non-white voters while they are waiting in line to vote.

There will be elections every two years, only Ds will need >60% popular support to win them, because many of their supporters will not be able to vote, and even of those who manage to show up, many of them will find that their votes won’t matter. That, and not cancelled elections, is what modern dictatorship looks like. As you may be aware, Russia also has elections, as has North Korea.

I feel that part of the problem in public discourse is that people are confused about the difference between electoralism and the rule of law. This means they can comfort themselves with the observation that there will be an election in a year or three while side-stepping the issue of the ruling movement controlling or intimidating all major media, the judiciary, and the security forces.

mw at 20,

Yes, Republicans are behaving as if they will never lose another election. See the two comments just before yours. If they thought they might ever in their lifetimes face a justice system overseen by a Democratic administration, they would not do half the things they do. As they are doing these blatantly illegal and corrupt things, they have an absolute imperative to ensure that nobody will ever come to power who might hold them accountable.

You are correct about the complacency of the Democrats, of course. It is unclear to me to what degree Democratic leadership are fools and to what degree they are comfortable with being the forever opposition to a dictatorship, like the remnant communist party is in Putin’s Russia.

John–I agree with you unfortunately. But I will ask this: if Agent Orange gets his way with the BBB the House passed and the Senate is considering (and will pass in some form, no doubt), with all its destruction of Medicaid and health-care and SNAP and other benefits that lower-class MAGA depend on, is there any possibility for some hope there?

I’m still of the opinion that any lack of democracy in the US is very unlikely to prevent mostly-fair elections in 2026, or to prevent a change in control of the legislature from reducing the discretion of the executive branch. And I still have not seen anything comparable, for flat-out undemocratic activity by the judiciary and executive, to the 1950’s and 1960’s, when using active-duty troops to suppress protests against judicial power-grabs was cheered on by the national press.

If anyone here (e.g. 29) believes that there won’t be elections in 2026 and/or that they will be so rigged that Republicans will not face any realistic chance of losing the house you can easily bet money on that prediction via kalshi or predicit. Unwilling to do that? Ask yourself why.

The doom is not unreasonable, but we have a ways to travel to get to Mt. Doom yet. The Supreme Court is doing yeoman’s work stitching our Emperor some new clothes made from fig leaves, but the fact that he needs that suit is a tell they don’t have the grip many people are assuming because of the deliberately blatant sideshows, ICE, DOGE. Those are aimed deliberately at invisible vulnerable groups. With Trump predictions are hard, especially about the future, but barring some Event he will likely run in 2028. There will be a well oiled vote suppression and intimidation machine in states Republicans need, and worst case some National Emergency can be declared. One of the big reasons for That Bill is the money needed to turn ICE into a full-blown national SS. He’ll go around the military if he needs to, and he will. That’s gonna be real, real interesting.

Peter 26: “one remaining line of defense is federalism. State governments have more authority in the US than similar bodies in most other democracies (Germany and Canada excluded)”

I have bad news for you: the Weimar Republic was similarly federalist and it took Hitler no time to bring the states under control. In fact the right wing government that came before Hitler already did the work for him by illegally dismissing the Prussian government and seizing control of the biggest state. I’m afraid that in likewise in the US, the blue states cannot seriously withstand a power grab by the fascist regime, and SCOTUS has already made it clear that there are no “states rights” for blue states.

I’ve believed for a long time that America has become effectively ungovernable as a single national unit. Representative democracy would struggle to provide effective governance in any nation of 300+ million people from such diverse backgrounds, lacking any significant national culture. It really stood no chance given the profoundly undemocratic aspects of the US constitution such as the electoral college, two senators per state, election of state judges, election of many law enforcement officials, elected officials controlling their own election procedures, and so on.

Consequently Americans with power – overwhelmingly the wealthy and the controllers of influential institutions – grew frustrated with the inability of their federal government to get things done, and decided to support a move to autocracy. At least it promised to break the logjams which had afflicted so much economic activity. Unfortunately, that same frustration with the apparent impotence of the federal government means widespread apathy on the part of Americans who lack power. It’s understandable that they are slow to man the barricades to defend democracy if it means signing up for governance by more geriatric relics of the 20th century who pine for another FDR.

I’ve suggested before that a move to a much more decentralised federal system might be the only way to retain the United States as a democratic nation. Instead of opposing moves to wind back the role of the federal government, embrace them provided states are not constrained in their ability to raise revenue and spend it how they wish. I expect that would see a gradual sorting of the population into states where they found the government acceptable to them. Some states might even see benefit in agreeing to redraw the current arbitrary borders, or go the whole hog and form regional legislatures.

I’ve also noted such a radical transformation will not occur until the nation undergoes a profoundly traumatic crisis of some kind, which has a fair chance of being accompanied by lots of violence, that leads to some sort of emergency administration overseeing a constitutional convention that reforms American governance. When and how that happens would be pure speculation.

mw:

The thing is — approximately nobody on the US political scene is behaving as if this is the reality.

I dunno. Rosie O’Donnell went to Ireland. Ha! Wait’ll she gets a load of real politics.

People in the US don’t know anything about other countries. They’re all just a bunch of little islands that aren’t even shaped like anything. I read somewhere they have politics in Australia. Well, go right ahead, it’s none of my business.

Greasefire@12

Your brand of totally unjustified optimism is indicative of why I won’t be seeing my relatives back in the US anytime soon. Honestly, the fascist insurrection of January 2021 seems to have gone right over your head.

Marcel@41

Trump didn’t have the legal authority to organise a fascist insurrection either. After January 2021, the question never was “can the US preserve the Constitutional order while adhering to every letter of the text”. The question was, would the US have a temporary and limited suspension of the letter of the Constitution, similar to Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War? Or would the Constitution become a dead letter, as in fact it has done this year? Slippery slope arguments like yours abet the latter outcome, so much that I have to wonder about the motives of those who use them.

[correction] The rich supported a candidate who promised to destroy the foundations of their own prosperity in return for making them feel good about being rich white male assholes. I think that’s called decadence.

AlexSL @34

I should have also mentioned that with the Hunter Biden pardon precedent (‘for any and all crimes that may have been committed during an entire decade’) — why would Trump administration, or any future administration, have to fear prosecution for anything, whether it be a crime or not, when such complete, universal pardons are an option? It seems that we really can’t make any judgements about an administration’s behavior based on a lack of fear of future prosecutions — that seems to be no longer a live concern regardless.

As an American in Los Angeles, I feel compelled to speak in defense of naive optimism.
Yes, we know there is no bottom to the Republican depravity. And yes, they control all the branches of federal government.
However, every repressive regime was at one time popular and appeared like an unstoppable juggernaut, until it wasn’t.
This regime is no different, and in fact has crippling weaknesses.

First, it has never enjoyed anything but a razor-thin margin of support, spread across a handful of states.

Second, it is colossally inept at politics and the art of public persuasion. For instance, there is no reason why they should be closing down rural hospitals where their supporters live, but they are. No reason to spark a trade war that damages their core constituency, but they are.

Third, the regime’s goals are fundamentally unobtainable. Its driven by cultural resentment and status anxiety. They don’t really want to eliminate immigration, what they want is to be restored to the top of the social status hierarchy. They are outraged that they are not popular and well regarded and crave the acceptance and respect that liberals enjoy.

On the other side, the resistance has the strength of people whose backs are to the wall and don’t have the option of surrender. We’ve witnessed how even institutions that appease the regime are rewarded with yet more punishment. There just isn’t any upside to surrender.
And as I noted above, it won’t take much movement to shift the entire balance; We don’t need a massive groundswell of radical Marxists, we just need enough disgruntled centrists to tilt just a couple states our way.

Remember that even during the heydey of postwar New Deal liberalism, Trumpism was a potent force throughout much of America; We can do a lot, even with our limited tools.

The downfall of American democracy should serve as a warning. For conservative parties, flirting with fascism is a deal with the devil that must be avoided.

I don’t think that this is the lesson that conservative parties will draw from the US experience.

@TM 14 and 55

IMHO, taking a long term view:

First we have a big crash in the interwar period, that wipes out a lot of the wealth (largely financial wealth) of the rich, and then the war and the new deal and a lot of high taxation, strong unions, and communism in a lot of places. The rich didn’t like this, but couldn’t do anything about this.

Second, in the immediate postwar, we start with the rich who are not very rich, and an high wage share. The rich didn’t like this either and supported the right, up to the early 80s. They also became friends of various religious groups, and various culturally traditionalist groups (that can include racists), because they became friends of the right.

Third, between the 80s and 2008, it was the left that changed, because the postwar statist policies that were followed in the postwar years seemed to hit a wall. We can argue why, but this would be too long, let’s just say that from 1990 to 2008 the left followed soft neoliberal policies, not all that different from the hard neoliberal policies of the right.
The big differencies between left and right were on cultural issues: religion, racism, gays etc..
In this period the right became more extreme, and on cultural policies the left also became more extreme, but in economic policies the left was quite soft.

It is this third period (1980 – 2008) that created the premises of the current authoritarian strands of the right, so there isn’t much point to say that Obama and Biden had a comparatively good economy (and were also comparatively good for blue collars), because the voters are still largely stuck in 1998 or around there. I read somewhere that 50% of voters in the USA are 50y old or more, so born in the 70s or earlier.
This is also the period when inequality increased big time, in the USA and elsewhere.

But in this period, although it sucked on some metric, still there was a perception that the economy was still growing and that all problems would be solved eventually.

Then we entered the fourth period, post the 2008 crisis and up to now, when: it is evident that inequality is high (even though this happened earlier, it became public knowledge later), it is also evident that the way growth worked from 19809 to 2008 cannot work, neither phisically (economic constraint) nor financially.

So the realization that the system cannot go on as it is is what causes the current authoritarian reaction, but the authoritarian tendencies were created in the earlier period.

So about what you said in 55 “The rich a candidate who promised to destroy the foundations of their own prosperity”

The rich follow a candidate who is promising to keep things as they are (which is unsustainable) agains other who tried to put moderate shackles on the growth of their wealth; they are panicking because they realize (after 2008) that the growth of their wealth is unsustainable.
Also the rich do not want to keep their wealth, they continuously need to expand it, hence the problem.

“in return for making them feel good about being rich white male assholes.”
no, this is the part they sell to a group of non-rich to make them believe they are on their side. This works because for a long period they were told that all social spending was an evil trick to siphon money to people who were undeserving (this way the right, from 1980 onward, managed to cut social spending).
Now they can’t say that it isn’t so because they already created the masses of pissed off authoritarians. Also they probably don’t like taxes in general.

The idea that the social-democratic compromise was good for the rich is true, but only if you think that the other option is either torches and pitchforks or social collapse; but they are now deflecting the torches and pitchforks on the liberals, and don’t really expect mad.max style social collapse, so thei are free to despise the social-democratic compromise.

Alex H @63. “But I am not sure what the point of invoking “the Hunter Biden pardon precedent.”

The point is that there seemed to have been very little political price paid for issuing such an astonishingly, unprecedently broad, universal pardon for any and all possible crimes over a long period of time. Just as there seemed to be little political price paid for the other thousands of other Biden pardons or for Trump’s January 6th pardons. That being the case, why would any outgoing administration worry about federal prosecutions when pardons can be handed out wholesale and only political opponents will really object?

the biden pardons were too late to have any impact on the rule of law in america. federal prosecution of any republican won’t do anything because the supreme court will just say they’re immune from prosecution, unlike the filthy, disgusting, worthless WOKE WOKE WOKE LIB WOKE LIBs. pardons are only useful for democrats now; the supreme court will just flatly invalidate any inconvenient legal action that stands in the way of permanent conservative rule, and they demonstrated that between 2020 and 2024. the trump guys know they’ll never go to jail – not because of the biden pardons – but because kavanaugh will switch away from one of the 9 tabs running porn on his work computer, throw a beer bottle at an intern’s head and scream “LET THEM ALL OUT!!!!!!!”

Follow up to my post above and JQ’s response.

I wrote “Had he used the military, the Constitution would have been overthrown in its own defense”. This assumes that the military would have followed orders in expelling these members of the House. Looking back on that period, recalling Trump’s shenanigans with the military just prior to the 2020 election this is likely a heroic assumption.

So I disagree with JQ’s statement that he and I are in furious agreement.

yes, it’s a bit of a gag, but you do remember him bellowing at the top of his lungs that he would have his revenge, while Lindsey Graham cheered him on, dont you? a critical moment in understanding the current court majority, in my view. its true that the only firmly committed rapist on the supreme court isnt “the worst”, but that knowledge should make you guffaw at my little jape more, not less; scampering from the room, dripping with warm Budweiser, the intern thanks their lucky stars that at least they don’t work for Alito!

Nothing more from you, please – JQ

JQ’s thesis has taken no damage in the first 74 comments, but I’m prepared to take my shot, though admittedly, it’s a longshot. I think there is a real possibility that the Republicans will rebel – even a couple of Republicans on the Supreme Court.

I said it was a longshot.

The big question is: Where are the red lines? Where is the absolute bottom of the barrel?

It won’t be blatantly stolen elections. That’s the clear goal of the Republicans, and they can be expected to achieve it. Obviously it won’t be bigotry or starving the poor. Those are key Republican priorities.

I say it might be concentration camps. We can expect camps to be built and start filling before too long, and with modern technology (drones, cell phones) they won’t be kept secret. Republicans are cheering (and funding) the camps now, but when push comes to shove, enough could rebel — in Congress and the courts — to make a difference.

Stop laughing! I said it was a longshot!

Early signs are that Trump is making fascism disreputable again, no? Look at the genuinely shocking electoral reversal in Canada, for instance.

MisterMr 64: “The rich follow a candidate who is promising to keep things as they are” (Referring to Trump?)

This is so far from reality I don’t know what to say.

“The idea that the social-democratic compromise was good for the rich is true, but only if you think that the other option is either torches and pitchforks or social collapse;”

Many rich are actually expecting social collapse. They are building bunkers and trying to create their own stalelets on islands and nonsense like that. My observation is that this behavior is doomed to failure and totally irrational but they are doing it anyway, while also supporting a fascist politics that is intent on burning the planet as fast as possible.

Alex: “the illusion that rich people must be smart… I know I am not telling you anything you don’t know, but in reality, rich people are at best people of average mental capacity who got lucky or were particularly ruthless.”

Yes of course. What I’m getting at is that we on the left always assume that capitalists (or really everybody) are primarily motivated by economic interests. And I think that is typically the case and it does call for an explanation imho why they are so eager to commit economic suicide. That workers often vote against their economic intersts has been debated endlessly in the left but I haven’t seen any debate about the economic irrationality of the capitalist class. (Just a data point from yesterday – Tesla reports 15% decline in sales and stock price is up 5%; jobs data are horrible and S&P is at all time high).

The “ICE-capades, and other lawless behavior is a reminder to working class people of their powerlessness, that we can be snatched up just as easily. An expression of their inner alpha primate, which they seem to value more than money. Might they fail? “Evil will doth evil mar”, so, possibly. But a United States recovered from #47 will be a poorer, less influential Nation than if he’d never happened.

Tm@82:

I imagine Thomas Frank is right now writing a book titled “What’s the Matter with Elon Musk.”

Tm @ #82 asks, why are elites so eager to eliminate the system that has made them ultra-wealthy and powerful beyond imagining? the answer, of course, is that elon musk’s daughter came out as trans and his mind convulsed with hatred of this mad betrayal, his whole strange flabby body began to shake, the only soothing comfort was in bigotry. the richest man on earth felt this way so the next hundred richest people also knew they had to feel this way as well. 37 libertarian courtiers rushed up with new books to be made into bestsellers about how, if you think about it, the civil rights act was the greatest crime humanity has ever suffered. “like 4.6 holocausts if you think about it”. the wealthy had to decide: either turn away from bigotry or cleanse the entire nation with torture and violence. here we are.

to turn to the specific point raised by john q @ #77. what does this development mean for democracy in general? i do like to get into the specifics of pointing my finger directly at a person and naming their crimes. so when someone asks me about what a present development means for a broader concept it isn’t easy for me.

perhaps human rights are ideas which only briefly emerge into the light before being brutally snuffed out, since their entire conception is based on limiting people’s power, and powerful people will only tolerate that momentarily. thus, we are doomed to repeat this cycle with longer and shorter dark ages forever. yet i have a hard time feeling that way, in my high dudgeon against the very specific powerful people who decided this was how they wanted things to be. i don’t want to let them off the hook even to the slightest degree by saying “ah this is the normal sweep of history” when i can make a list of about twenty people whose death by suicide between 2000 and 2010 would have flatly stopped this from happening. i prefer to live in the specific. so far (for example) canada and australia have firmly repudiated this path. england not so much. but again, let me make that list and i can move england into the other column as well.

Hitler and Mussolini suspended elections, banned opposition parties, practiced rigorous government censorship, and increased military spending several-fold in support of operations into the Baltic Sea and the Eurasian Steppe.

You know, like Germany today.

He seems nice.

Tm,

In a sense, the capitalist class has always been very stupid and economically irrational. They ideally want to pay zero dollars in salaries but still somehow expect to sell products and services to the workers who then have zero dollars to spend; they ideally want to pay zero dollars in taxes but still somehow expect the state to provide defense, infrastructure, and a well educated workforce. They are smart at microeconomics (i.e., sociopathically creating collective action problems and negative externalities) but extremely daft at macroeconomics.

both sides do it,

You mention in passing the collapse of the USSR. The turning point in ‘Western’ politics was late 1970s to early 1980s, the rise of neoliberalism / Thatcherism / Reaganism. IMO, there are two possible interpretations of what went on in the minds of the right when they fully adopted destroying the post-war compromise and welfare state. First, enough time had passed that their new generation of leaders had forgotten the lessons of 1929 and of WW2. Second, sometime in the 1970s it became very clear that the USSR was not going to win the cold war (even in the early 1960s, some US leaders still worried communism might turn out to be economically superior to capitalism, and the argument for the latter was freedom, not necessarily prosperity). Once the right realised that communism wasn’t going to draw people in with better living conditions, and certainly after the USSR collapsed, the fear of the working class defecting to the other side and doing a revolution evaporated. And that means the welfare state was not needed anymore.

In other words, under the first interpretation, the capitalist class accepted the welfare state and financial regulations out of economic rationality (if the working class have money, they can buy our products and services, and regulations protect us from having economic crises every few years, so we are all better off together) and then unlearned that rationality. Under the second interpretation, the capitalist class accepted the welfare state out of fear (if the working class have money, they won’t get out the red flags and guillotines) and then lost that fear.

Mitchell Porter,

I would have written what John Q already did at 89. The idea that these people do not reject democracy is very funny. I am not even a US citizen, but if I got a dollar every time I read “actually, we are a republic, not a democracy”, I could probably already retire.

Caesarian democracy, New Caesarism, and no gulags!??? From Claire Berlinski’s article.

Mitchell Porter @87 you frame “Putin, Erdogan, Trump, Orban, Duterte” in your comment as different “per se” from fascism, yet you do not mention Claire Berlinski calling these ‘leaders’… “If not fascist, per se, these movements nonetheless have distinct historic antecedents. Their routines, slogans, promises, displays, corruption, and political vocabulary are very old. The term New Caesarism comes the historian Lewis Namier, who coined the termed Caesarian democracy:” [4 – from Mitchel’s link to
Claire Berlinski’s article titled “The New Caesars, Part I” ]

Facist smashist… they are THREATS!
“threats are attributable to ill-intentioned actors, deliberately acting to cause damage to others.” [fn Threats]

Claire Berlinski’s also says “Their coercive tool of choice is not the gulag,”
!!! Are you kidding me Claire? !!!

The Intercept Nick Turse June 25 2025
“TRUMP’S GLOBAL GULAG SEARCH EXPANDS TO 53 NATIONS
“The Trump administration is seeking deals with more and more nations to hold deportees — now with the blessing of the Supreme Court.
…
“The Trump administration began using the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, as a foreign prison to disappear Venezuelan immigrants in March. The Intercept — using open-source information — found that the U.S. has also explored, sought, or struck agreements with Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Costa Rica, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Egypt, Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Ivory Coast, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Mauritania, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Niger, Nigeria, Panama, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Tonga, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.”
…
https://theintercept.com/2025/06/25/trump-immigrant-deportations-supreme-court/

The first? gulag deportee…
“Mr. Abrego’s Account of Torture at CECOT in El Salvador
“Mr. Abrego has filed an amended complaint asking the court to declare the government’s actions unlawful and to order his release. He describes his torture in El Salvador in the complaint.”
Allison Gill Jul 02, 2025

“Beginning on page 20 of the 40-page amended complaint, Mr. Abrego’s lawyers outline the reality of life in CECOT. Content warning for inhumane conditions and torture:

[Start pg 20 of amended complaint]
“Upon information and belief, all Defendants are aware that the government of El Salvador tortures individuals detained in CECOT. Indeed, U.S. President Donald Trump has made comments to the press expressing glee and delight at the torture that the Government of El Salvador inflicts upon detainees in CECOT.

“Each of the 256 cells is intended to hold approximately 80 inmates but often holds nearly double. See Ex. F. The cramped cells are equipped with tiered metal bunks without mattresses, two basins for washing, and two open toilets. There are no windows, fans, or air conditioning, despite the region’s warm and humid climate.

“Inmates in CECOT are confined to their cells for 23.5 hours daily and cannot go outdoors. They are denied access to reading materials, including even letters from friends or family. Inmates are prohibited from receiving visits from family and friends. Meals are provided through the bars, and the facility enforces strict regulations to maintain order.

“In May 2023, Cristosal, a leading human rights organization in El Salvador, released a comprehensive report detailing severe human rights abuses within the country’s prison system, especially CECOT. The investigation documented the deaths of 153 inmates between March 27, 2022, and March 27, 2023, attributing many to torture, beatings, mechanical asphyxiation (strangulation), and lack of medical attention. Autopsies revealed common patterns of lacerations, hematomas, sharp object wounds, and signs of choking or strangulation. Survivors reported being forced to pick food off the floor with their mouths, subjected to electric shocks, and exposed to untreated skin fungus epidemics.

“Plaintiff Abrego Garcia reports that he was subjected to severe mistreatment upon arrival at CECOT, including but not limited to severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture.

“Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was the first name called to disembark the plane that transported him to El Salvador on March 15, 2025. As he exited the aircraft, still in chains, two officials grabbed his arms and pushed him down the stairs, forcing his head down

“There were strong lights illuminating the area despite it being nighttime, and cameras were filming the detainees’ arrival.

“Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was pushed toward a bus, forcibly seated, and fitted with a second set of chains and handcuffs. He was repeatedly struck by officers when he attempted to raise his head.

“Upon arrival at CECOT, the detainees were greeted by a prison official who stated, “Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn’t leave.” Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was then forced to strip, issued prison clothing, and subjected to physical abuse including being kicked in the legs with boots and struck on his head and arms to make him change clothes faster. His head was shaved with a zero razor, and he was frog-marched to cell 15, being struck with wooden batons along the way. By the following day, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia had visible bruises and lumps all over his body.

“In Cell 15, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia and 20 other Salvadorans were forced to kneel from approximately 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM, with guards striking anyone who fell from exhaustion. During this time, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was denied bathroom access and soiled himself. The detainees were confined to metal bunks with no mattresses in an overcrowded cell with no windows, bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day, and minimal access to sanitation.

“While at CECOT, prison officials repeatedly told Plaintiff Abrego Garcia that they would transfer him to the cells containing gang members who, they assured him, would “tear” him apart.

“Indeed, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia repeatedly observed prisoners in nearby cells who he understood to be gang members violently harm each other with no intervention from guards or personnel. Screams from nearby cells would similarly ring out throughout the night without any response from prison guards on personnel.

“During his first two weeks at CECOT, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia suffered a significant deterioration in his physical condition and lost approximately 31 pounds.

“Mr. Abrego’s amended complaint is asking the court for an order:
a) Declaring that Defendants’ actions, as set forth herein, violated the laws of the United States and the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution;
b) Immediately ordering Defendants to restore the status quo ante, which includes returning Abrego Garcia to Maryland, where he was before being picked up by DHS agents in March, 2025;
c) Issue a writ of habeas corpus ad testificandum, ordering that Plaintiff Abrego Garcia be brought before this Court for a habeas corpus hearing. At the habeas corpus hearing, this Court should order Defendants to show cause why continued detention is lawfully permissible; and if they cannot meet their burden of so showing, issue a writ of habeas corpus and order Plaintiff Abrego Garcia’s immediate release from custody;
d) Order that Defendants return Abrego Garcia to his prior Order of Supervision;
e) Granting Plaintiffs costs and fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act; and
f) Granting such other relief at law and in equity as justice may require.

“For in-depth coverage on the case of Mr. Abrego, the case to return all the prisoners sent to CECOT, and other cases of people deported without due process, you can listen to the UnJustified podcast hosted by former Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe and me.”
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815.211.3.pdf
https://www.muellershewrote.com/p/mr-abregos-account-of-torture-at

Canteloupe Caligula is now Ceaser von Clownswitz.
And no gulags!

Claire Berlinski is a motivated reasoner. Claire Berlinski’s entry in Wikipedia:
“Career
“Berlinski has written two spy novels,a work on Europe’s importance to American interests, and an admiring but critical biography of Margaret Thatcher.”

Claire Berlinski
“Five myths about Margaret Thatcher”
December 22, 2011
…
“Afterward, the others could be heard muttering among themselves, “Phwoar, wasn’t she sexy tonight?” French president Francois Mitterand is said to have called her Brigitte Bardot with Caligula’s eyes.”
…
“and it is true that Thatcher promoted deregulation. As leader of the Opposition, she once interrupted a droning speech by a fellow Tory about the “middle path” the party must follow. She extracted a copy of free-market thinker Friedrich von Hayek’s “The Constitution of Liberty” from her briefcase, held it up before the audience, then slammed it on the table. “This,” she said, “is what we believe!” … “… Before Thatcher, commissions of civil servants decided, for example, what sorts of cars Britons should drive. That was the kind of regulation she ended. She was a passionate proponent of regulation that makes free markets function properly — otherwise known as the rule of law.”
…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-margaret-thatcher/2011/12/12/gIQA6W21BP_story.html

Claire Berlinski totally contradicts herself in the above Washington Post article.
Claire Berlinski’s point “1. The Iron Lady never backed down.” seems to me to be a lie, call it motovated reasoning, yet in point “4. No one would meddle with Britain if she were still in power.” Claire Berlinski then writes;
“In 1984, Moammar Gaddafi loyalists opened fire on demonstrators from the second floor of the Libyan Embassy in London, killing a young British policewoman. The shooters were permitted to leave the country. They were not arrested and tried, despite howls of outrage from the British media. “Why not? Because Thatcher feared reprisals against British citizens in Libya. This is precisely the sort of thing that would never happen if Thatcher were still in power, except that in this case, Thatcher was in power.”

[4] Claire Berlinski continues her tradition of… let’s call it the “Claire reverse pike “never” … “except”… with the new term of vaugeness “per se” [5] in the link you posted to her “The New Caesars, Part I”…
“If not fascist, per se, these movements nonetheless have distinct historic antecedents. Their routines, slogans, promises, displays, corruption, and political vocabulary are very old. The term New Caesarism comes the historian Lewis Namier, who coined the termed Caesarian democracy:
“Such morbid cults have by now acquired a tradition and ideology, and have evolved their own routine and political vocabulary. … Napoleon III and Boulanger were to be the plagiarists, shadowy and  counterfeit, of Napoleon I; and Mussolini and Hitler were to be unconscious reproducers of the methods of Napoleon III. For these are inherent in plebiscitarian Caesarism, or so-called “Caesarian democracy,” with its direct appeal to the masses: demagogical slogans; disregard of legality in spite of a professed guardianship of law and order; contempt of political parties and the parliamentary system, of the educated classes and their values; blandishments and vague, contradictory promises for all and sundry; militarism; gigantic, blatant displays and shady corruption. Panem et circenses once more and at the end of the road, disaster.” “As Namier pointed out, it is a form of governance that tends to lead to true Caesarism. “But Caesarian democracy should not be confused with the totalitarian movements of the twentieth century. They are different,…” per se

It is NOT “a mistake to call the likes of Putin, Erdogan, Trump, Orban, Duterte” … THREATS. As were Ceaser, Caligula and other dictators, facists, demagogues.
All are, per se, THREATS.
JQ: “the the Republican party was a deadly threat to US democracy from the moment of Trump’s nomination in 2016 and certainly after the 2021 insurrection.” … “until we understand that Trumpism is not an aberration but the course Americans have chosen, we will not be able to free ourselves from our past allegiance to an idea which is now an illusion.”

fn Threat
“Dangers, risks and threats: An alternative conceptualization to the catch-all concept of risk”
August 29, 2018
Fabrizio Battistelli and Maria Grazia Galantino et al
Current Sociology Volume 67, Issue 1
…
“… but also the intentionality of social actors in the production of risks, which introduces the distinction between risk and threat. … threats are attributable to ill-intentioned actors, deliberately acting to cause damage to others.”

Threats, the lot. A label is not the wearer.
And what JQ said @89.

It seems with ICE getting somewhere north of 100 billion in the budget, the Trump administration will have no shortage of coercion at its disposal. This puts it in the same general ball park as Russia’s total military budget. Obviously, this is not just a force for immigration policy – though they will no doubt find the time also to torture a few migrants. It is, after all, why they got in this game in the first place. This is the establishment of a force for totalitarian repression of the American population.

Obviously, there will be push back: don’t confusion the occasional glorious wrecking of idiot Trumpist figures on social media with real victories, though. The Trumpists won’t always have everything go their way. Judges will rule things illegal, dissidents will get free and get away once in a while, and Democrats will win elections here and there, and need to be coopted or removed, or, if circumstances allow, tolerated and ignored. The ICE agents they hire won’t always toe the line – they signed up to torture migrants, not liberal university professors – so there’ll be defections and exposés and hand wringing . Bumps in the road may slow them a little, but when you’ve go that kind of money and apparatus, you can overcome a lot. And they will.

If I lived in America, I’d be getting out. Sure, sharp and massive resistance might change the direction of things, but it does not look like resistance will happen. Yes, I know about No Kings Day, and there are big protests, but they are not big enough. And while activists often cite the 3.5% non-violent protester rule, this is just a observation from past democracy movements – it does not mean the Trumpist Regime will resign when they count 3.5% of the population at the protests. They are likely to respond with violent repression instead, and in so doing either trigger their own overthrow – if they haven’t secured the main organs of coercive power adequately by then (they have made a good start, and now know they need to do this, see the ICE budget), or move straight from the downward spiral of democracy phase into open and complete totalitarianism. Some Americans seem to grasp this. Most haven’t got a clue.

I failed (above) to close the italics after ”Bolsa de Basura”.

I guess that makes everything a sack of garbage!

Mitchell 87 : „true fascists do reject democracy, whereas all these regimes do hold elections“

Trump has tried to overturn an election he lost, has already threatened to arrest elected governors and has just days ago threatened to arrest an opposition politician explicitly to prevent him from winning an election. He’s made it perfectly clear that he rejects democracy. He said it often enough explicitly that he will never ever accept an election outcome if he doesn’t win. It takes olympic levels of delusion and denial to doubt that he sincerely hates democracy.

And I haven’t even mentioned decades of gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement by the Republican Party, and public statements by prominent Trumpists (e.g. Thiel) saying explicitly that democracy needs to be abolished.

“But he hasn’t outlawed elections (yet)” (5 months after taking power) is an ignorant, ahistorical argument. Neither Hitler nor Mussolini abolished elections altogether. Corey Robin has spent years defending a similarly ahistorical argument here on CT, claiming that Trump can’t be a fascist because he relied on constitutional institutions to gain power. Hitler of course came to power by perfectly legal and constitutional and electoral means. Maybe he wasn’t a fascist after all. Depressing that we still have to debate nonsense like this.

Robin at least has finally admitted having been wrong…
https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/there-was-never-any-fascism-debate

William Berry @93: “As The Bruce has written and sung: “No retreat, baby, no surrender.”

Mainly so I can recommend the HBO documentary, “Stephen Van Zandt, Disciple”, which I have watched several times, according to Bruce Springsteen in that documentary, those lyrics were written by Stephen Van Zandt, who convinced Bruce to include the song in the “Born in the USA” album against Bruce’s inclination. (Bruce of course has sung it, including within the documentary.)

On topic, I am in general agreement with this post and many of the comments, and can only repeat a comment I saw on “Lawyers, Guns, and Money”: “If you [in the USA] ever wondered what you would have done in Germany in February of 1938, you’re doing it now.”

eq@99, a) that is not correct; b) that group has been wrong about quite a lot recently; c) that is not the only way to end democracy, as JQ has already noted above.

89 / 92 / 100: Germany and Italy were actual one-party states. They openly disavowed multi-party competition, in favor of political philosophies asserting a unity of party, people, and state.

Our modern strongmen do no such thing. They work within systems that are formally multi-party democracies, and then they rig everything they can in their own favor. I felt that Berlinski’s essay was of interest because she tries to identify the essence of this new kind of political system (though perhaps it’s not so new, I’m sure the history of democracy is replete with regimes that corrupted the process).

So, the idea that Trump will earnestly declare himself president-for-life is just silly, but the idea that the Republicans would pursue unlimited lawfare against the Democrats is not silly at all. I’m sure there are even unlikely-but-possible futures where the Democrats are outlawed and the opposition is Elon Musk’s America Party. But if the Democrats can be beaten by much milder measures, then why would the Republicans take the risk of doing anything more extreme?

Personally I doubt that Trump will even make it through this term. He’s 80 next year. Vance is set up to be a bridge between Tech and MAGA. And to be honest, I’m a short-timelines quasi-doomer when it comes to AI. The near future may be a struggle to see whether Chinese or American transhumanism rules the world, if humans are even still a factor in what happens. But there’s no point in pursuing that theme within this conversation.

P.S. I am not American and may just be taking through my hat when it comes to American politics, as #31 puts it.

Trump’s power is based on popularity as expressed through elections. Why is Trump the President? Clearly because he was more popular with Republican voters than other candidates. That was true in 2016 and still true in 2024. A major component of that popularity with Republican voters is that he was more popular with all voters in key states than other republicans.
The fact that he uses power in non-democratic ways doesn’t change the fact that his power is based on popularity, and electoral popularity in particular. The comments I read about him having the power to change the electoral process to retain power seem to me very inexperienced in what makes a politician popular in republican areas of the USA. Power in the USA is massively decentralized. That is true in terms of money and institutions and the number and types of elections.
I guess the paradox is that anti-democratic policies are very popular.

BUT it will NOT be over before ‘THE FAT LADY SINGS’
(in a matter of philosophical speaking)
BE-cause FIRST we will party at the opening party for the new Amerika Party
On 9/24
in
MONTAUK
at
NOON
at the Lighthouse!
(and this is NOT a joke and ALL Philosophers are WELCOME!)

It will be difficult for Trump to subvert the 2026 election unless there is a war, and I believe there will be a war, a coordination of terror transglobally between Russia, China, and the United States. The reason America is losing our democracy isn’t due to the moral failure of suburban Republicans, although that has created the permission structure for it. I believe it is because we are under an information war from Russia who understands it is in their long-term security interest (and China’s too) for American democracy to fail. Behind Trump there are philosophical revolutionaries, not only Thiel, Yarvin, the techno-fascists, and Heritage, but also Russian Federal Security Bureau (FSB).

For my part, John Q, maybe I am more optimistic and pessimistic at the same time than you are, because I think there is a weakness is their certainty in propaganda and scapegoating as a kind of Dept of Reality, but society does not create you or me. However, there is great deal of normalcy bias to think this regime will ever willingly give up power and face prosecution or that Trump’s failure will be equivalent to the failure of this regime, which I think disregards Russia’s information war on us as well as the power which the techno-fascist capitalists are seizing through integrations of technology with government process and surveillance, where the post 09/11 regime of fear has given us the Dept. of Homeland Security and a turn-key surveillance state.

Some would claim that the World Trade Center attack was not militarily significant, that it did not significantly damage the country in the economic or military sense, but it changed social reality, and Trump’s second election has broken democratic equality and the rule of law in this country. I believe to understand both the damage Trump has done, how deep is our dilemma, and also the path out, involves the difference between effectuality and possibility where the first involves our norms and scripts and the second involves what is possible.

Trumpism represents the founding of Putinism for America, and to understand how sophisticated they are about it, in the inner recesses of this fascism, makes anyone who talks about it sound like a maniac, but it is happening, and it’s impossible to deny. They will have four years to prepare, to unite the government and “the party”. Our next Dear Leader may not need to be so charismatic because Trump’s scapegoating mechanisms, viciousness and animal cunning will remain in the bureaus of the government, and all of his functionaries will see elections as an existential threat for the rest of our lives. We need to look at it straight, but we also need to be fearless about it.

So, if I understand the current state of this discussion correctly, modern right-wing strongmen are not anti-democratic, and democracy of the USA in particular is not over, because: (a) in contrast to real anti-democrats, they do sham elections, and (b) some of their generation, like Duterte and Bolsonaro, lost re-election. However, (a) is nonsense, as has been pointed out repeatedly, because many past dictatorships also had sham elections. East Germany was even nominally a multi-party state, as is today’s Russia. As for (b), these people operate on a spectrum defined by their own ruthlessness and the possibility space in their country. Yes, one extreme of the spectrum is the military simply arresting the democratically elected government and erecting a military dictatorship. But that doesn’t mean that everything except that extreme is democracy. Many dictators came to power through election. Others may want to establish a dictatorship but don’t have the momentum to get away with it, so their movements fizzle out; that doesn’t mean those weren’t anti-democratic movements.

What gets constantly muddled in these conversations is that democracy in the sense of meaningful elections and the rule of law are two different things but also connected in that democracy cannot work without the rule of law. This means that “but Trump won’t cancel elections” is irrelevant and useless as an argument against the end of US democracy if MAGA trample the law and the constitution to arrest opponents and suppress their opponents’ information, opinions, and votes.

Conversely, dictatorship can work with our without rule of law. And perversely, it means that a lot of people now feel safer traveling to, say, China than they do to the USA; while the USA still have, relatively speaking, freer elections, the average German tourist can be more confident that they won’t randomly be arrested at the Chinese border and deported or locked up in a prison camp for several weeks because they had tattooing equipment in their bag or had too little luggage for some border agent’s taste, to cite two of many cases where US immigration recently ruined people’s lives. I was at a conference in China a few years ago but would not feel safe going to a conference in the USA right now, not because I think the USA won’t have elections, but because it appears that US immigration officials are getting shouted at by their superiors for not hitting arrest and deportation numbers, giving them a strong incentive to hit those numbers.

Similar logic applies internally to a country to everything from research grants being honoured to not being randomly arrested at your place of work for having dark skin. Or in other words, rule of law – having the certainty that you can plan out and live your life if you follow a set of transparent rules – is more fundamental on the hierarchy of needs than elections. And MAGA is taking that certainty away, which then makes everything higher on the hierarchy of needs hollow, including electoralism. If people do not even feel safe in their daily lives even if they follow the regime’s alleged rules, how can they expect to vote freely?

wa:“perhaps that group has been wrong about a lot lately, but do the people proclaiming the end of US democracy have a better track record on public predictions of the sort Scott Alexander & Matt Yglesias make annually? Avoid the Nirvana fallacy.”

This debate is obviously going nowhere since one side is constantly moving goalposts and simply in denial of what is happening. But I take this opportunity to point out that predictions were indeed made that distinguish the clearsighted from the delusional. There were actually people who correctly predicted that Trump would resist leaving office after losing the 2020 election and who predicted something like the January 6 coup attempt to happen. The delusional fraction mocked them – until it happened – and then afterward simply denied that the coup had been a coup.

Those who have been clearsighted about Trump from the beginning include Timothy Snyder, Thomas Zimmer (https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/fascism-in-america), John Ganz (https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/the-fascism-debate-e72), some headliners at Lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com – and John Quiggin here on CT. I think he was the only one who took Trump seriously from early on – the others wrote embarrassing stuff, none as embarrassing as Corey Robin of course (https://crookedtimber.org/2021/03/13/what-was-the-is-trump-a-fascist-debate-ultimately-about/), but he at least finally has admitted having been wrong, to his credit.

A final historical point. In pre-war Europe, apart from Hitler and Mussolini, there were a bunch of other right wing autocratic regimes or dictatorships: Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Austria, Spain all had their own versions of antidemocratic right wing regimes before the war that had some degree of similarity with fascism. They don’t all have to be exactly the same, you know! Likewise, the question whether Trump is a fascist cannot be answered by discussing Duterte or Erdogan or Orban. Orban in particular is restricted in what he can do by the EU, a restriction that doesn’t apply to Trump. Putin clearly is a fascist and his regime is a fascist regime and there are zero factual arguments to the contrary. Erdogan, who has numerous oposition leaders imprisoned, is an absurd choice as an example of a “democratic autocrat”. The only point of this line of argument is confusion and deflection. It’s nowhere close to a serious argument.

@TM 80 and 82

“This is so far from reality I don’t know what to say.”

“What I’m getting at is that we on the left always assume that capitalists (or really everybody) are primarily motivated by economic interests. And I think that is typically the case and it does call for an explanation imho why they are so eager to commit economic suicide. That workers often vote against their economic intersts has been debated endlessly in the left but I haven’t seen any debate about the economic irrationality of the capitalist class.”

I think that the idea that people’s political behaviour is mostly motivated by economic class interest was really a staple of the left’s view up to some time ago, but currently isn’t anymore that dominant.
That said, perhaps we just disagree, but perhaps I explained myself poorly, so I’ll try to be more explicit on why (many) capitalists are going towards long term economic suicide.

That said, the problem, for capitalists, is that they need to continuously accumulate capital, at a speed that outpaces the actual growth of the economy, and that capital must remain profitable.
I say “need” and not “want”, because each singular capitalist would understand that this is impossible because it implies eating an every increasing share of the pie, and at some point it has to stop, or to have a continuously increasing wealth to income proportion (remember Picketty?) and interest rates/profits close to 0; but capitalists are in competition with each other and try continuously to eat each other’s share of the pie, so collectively they can’t avoid to search continuously for a larger and larger share of the pie.

So, in order to keep things as they are (meaning that capital accumulation continues steadly), everything has to change (society has to be restructured so that the profit share of the pie can grow).

Up to recentlty this was done by increasing rents and financial ballooning, but this model is faltering (because it already ballooned too much), so they have to find a way to increase again the profit share (again, this is just to keep capital accumulation steady), so for example Trump’s “tariffs” are sold to the plebs to be way to increase employment in the USA, but are more likely to be just way to keep USA consumers captive to USA producer who can then increase prices, and so on.

Of course this kind of behaviour is risky because it could crash the whole economy in various ways, so there is the danger of “economic suicide”, but they (capitaslists) can’t just leave things as they are because it would be impossible to continue with capital accumulation.

The problem is the continuous need for “growth” of a capitalist economy, that outpaces the normal growth due to technological improvements.

@Mitchell Porter 106
Mussolini took power in 1922 and outlawed other parties in 1926, don’t give too much weight to the pseudo-hegelian ideology of the one-party state. The USA equivalent is just that Trump will declare everyone who disagree with him or with his followers as “antiamerican”, as is already happening to pro-palestinian supporters, and at that point if you are antiamerican your rights go out of the window; he will not use the sort of pseudo-hegelian phylosophical justification that Mussolini or Hitler used, because the cultural milieu is different, he will use equivalent ones based on tradition, christianity, and apple pie.

Its obvious that your definition of ‘democracy’ is ‘policy positions I agree with.’ Not unusual in academia, but not in any way meaningful.

Joe

So, how exactly would Trump suppress votes here and make the outcome a sham? Be specific

Trump doesn’t have to suppress voters in your state to suppress democracy. He just needs to do that in states that don’t have the attributes of your state. And if he has a particular problem with an aspect of democracy in your state, he can call in the national guard or the Marines. This is not a speculation about the future, but a discussion of what has already taken place six months into his term.

The Supreme Court has allowed Trump to deport legal residents without due process. SCOTUS asserts that Trump cannot be prosecuted for anything that is a result of carrying out his official duties. This is history, not some speculation about the future.

How exactly is Trump going to suppress this information and these opinions?

The information ecosystem is increasingly controlled by people beholden to Trump. Witness the CBS and ABC bribes/settlements, and the impact those have had on journalism and the future of coverage at those organizations. Look at Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg et al. And of course, that doesn’t reckon with his huge captive media.

The US Federal Trade Commission is currently investigating whether it is legal for advertisers to choose not to advertise on X. That’s a specific mechanism, and the probe is history, not an extrapolation into the future.

The fact that Sulzberger stands out as an avatar of press freedom tells you everything you need to know. Yes, people are currently able to criticize Trump, but only some people and only to a point. Trump has raised the possibility of deporting Mamdani and defunding-and-deporting Musk because he doesn’t like their political views. Much of the media has been complicit in normalizing that kind of language, and much of the rest of the media has openly praised Trump for this.

Lastly, how will he go about arresting opponents. Specifically, what charges (even ‘trumped up’ charges) will be brought?

Why do we need charges? Trump has arranged for arrests of legal residents who expressed pro-Palestinian views. What were the charges there? And Trump has explicitly asserted that he will extend that policy to born-in-the-US citizens. So for instance, he advised El Salvador’s Bukele: “The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You’ve got to build about five more places.”

How do you not know these things? How do you explain the imprisonment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a legal resident of the US? What charges were brought against him before his imprisonment? What did Trump do when it became clear that his detention was unjustified?

John Q:
Are you serious with that flowchart? The Yglesias/Alexander predictions I was referring to were this sort of thing. The predictions are specific, not “Governs constitutionally” (what does that mean?) or “Supreme Court stops him” (stops what?).

Alex SL:

(a) in contrast to real anti-democrats, they do sham elections

I’m far from an expert on other countries, but in the US we have real rather than sham elections. In fact the incumbent party has lost the last three presidential elections!

many past dictatorships also had sham elections. East Germany was even nominally a multi-party state

Mencius Moldbug used to make the same comparison of the DDR to the US. It was dumb then and dumb now. You couldn’t vote for an opposition party instead of the Communist party, rather they were all on one list.

as is today’s Russia

Opposition parties do get separate votes there rather than being part of the same list as the government party. Here are the results for the most recent presidential election in Russia vs the last election in the DDR prior to the end. This is not to say that elections in Russia aren’t rigged, after all Navalny was thrown in prison where he died. It’s just not done the same way as genuine one-party states.

but also connected in that democracy cannot work without the rule of law

Maybe it would work badly, but you could have a system where everything is decided by voting and there aren’t enduring laws separate from that.

This means that “but Trump won’t cancel elections” is irrelevant and useless as an argument against the end of US democracy

I wouldn’t say “irrelevant and useless” because the cancellation of elections is a thing that has happened, so it is a useful bit of information.

if MAGA trample the law and the constitution to arrest opponents and suppress their opponents’ information, opinions, and votes

Those are also relevant, though the devil is in the details. Some elected members of the Democratic Party have been arrested at protests, but I don’t think they believe that means they won’t be able to return to office and be re-elected. On suppression of information, that is why some on the right argued that the 2020 election was “rigged” in an informal sense, but that’s not an argument to be taken seriously (overcoming hostile social media companies is/was a “skill issue” as they say).

Your point about China is excellent, as it shows that many things we care about have nothing to do with “democracy”, since China obviously isn’t democratic by US standards. Those things you care about can be argued about on their own terms without bringing in “democracy” at all.

And MAGA is taking that certainty away, which then makes everything higher on the hierarchy of needs hollow, including electoralism. If people do not even feel safe in their daily lives even if they follow the regime’s alleged rules, how can they expect to vote freely?

I don’t think that follows. People felt free to vote against Trump in 2020, and those upset with him were indeed able to remove him. People are still free to oppose Trump, and they do so openly even if Trump complains about it. Immigration enforcement isn’t even that relevant to voting because people eligible to be deported generally aren’t allowed to vote in the first place. The bigger problem with the upcoming midterm is, as Yglesias emphasizes, that the odds are against Dems taking the Senate given what seats are on the ballot.

Tm:

Putin clearly is a fascist and his regime is a fascist regime and there are zero factual arguments to the contrary.

I disagree. Putin did not come to power by railing against a parliamentary system via a party dedicated to that system’s overthrow. He was Yeltsin’s designated successor and has been a man of the system throughout. He didn’t even have a party when he was first elected President, instead United Russia formed around him after he was in office. He didn’t attain office by valorizing violence for its own sake, a key philosophical element of fascism and that was why multiple US administrations thought of him as someone they could work with even if he was unfriendly to the US.

MistMr:

so for example Trump’s “tariffs” are sold to the plebs to be way to increase employment in the USA, but are more likely to be just way to keep USA consumers captive to USA producer who can then increase prices, and so on

The simpler explanation is that they don’t serve either workers or capitalists (hence the response of the stock market), but Trump likes tariffs so he enacted them despite them not doing any good. Elon Musk opposed them because even though his cars are among the most American by construction, he still relies on some imports and is worse off as a result.

The USA equivalent is just that Trump will declare everyone who disagree with him or with his followers as “antiamerican”, as is already happening to pro-palestinian supporters, and at that point if you are antiamerican your rights go out of the window

No, pro-palestinian Americans still have rights. He has attempted to deport people based on pro-palestinian speech, violating the First Amendment, but he can’t deport US citizens, who in turn can vote.

Find a way to do the same to major newspapers.

Would the Underpants Gnomes know how to do that?

At the end of this process, there will be very few reputable journalists, intellectuals etc. who publicly confront him

I will publicly bet against that happening. People writing critically about Trump has been one constant of the Trump era.

and those who are there will be perceived as extremist weirdos, so when he does the big egregious things, most people won’t even notice

That’s one of those things described as a “skill issue”.

And, I forgot but very important, put loyalists in charge of the army, police, and in the judiciary.

That actually is important if you’re going to end elections.

Have it your way. There was an election. American voters elected Trump. Trump is a fascist, and he will now end democracy in America. There are no institutions, public or private, which can stand against him. His administration will soon exercise permanent, iron control over every detail of American life.

In his insatiable personal greed, Donald Trump never contemplates the moral meaning of environmental or social harm. Under Trump’s policies, every ecosystem on Earth will be doomed to extinction within the next century: an unforgivable crime not only against humans, but against every living thing on the planet. This crime was knowingly abetted by hundreds of millions of American voters: Trump voters. Their guilt is undeniable; they can’t say they weren’t warned.

mw @121 “this is nothing close to a carte blanche rounding up of political opponents.”
mw @117 “I live in a state with a Democratic governor and secretary of state, and they control the election process in my state. So, how exactly would Trump suppress votes here and make the outcome a sham? Be specific”

Ok mw!
Two words; Supremacy Clause.

NYT; “The memo commands state and local officials to cooperate with the department under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, or face criminal prosecution or civil penalties if they fail to comply.”
“Justice Dept. to Investigate Local Officials Who Obstruct Immigration Enforcement” Jan. 22, 2025 NYT

And what MPAVictoria said @125

mw, which of these definitions of “carte blanche” do you NOT agree with re Trump invoking the Consritution’s Supremacy Clause?
– carte blanche
– Unrestricted power to act at one’s own discretion; unconditional authority.
– Unlimited discretionary power to act; unrestricted authority.
– Complete freedom or authority to act.

Or for that matter conferring reasons to invike Marshall Law ot the Insurrection Act.
Oh! Trump has enacted all THREE!

mw @121 “These are domain-specific actions — there’s just no reason to believe they’re the harbingers of generalized extra-legal authoritarianism and that if Trump can do these things that he can do anything. He can’t.”

The Republic as a vehicle.
The Republic is “having domain-specific actions” taken against it so it is driven, not off a cliff, but where Trump, Technocracy, Capital, existentialist – religious, and the base require it so as to NOT have to shoot locals.

Each EO, law ignored, ICE funded… ARE “…harbingers of generalized extra-legal authoritarianism”.

If conditions of the drivers, road and systems encounter Marshall Law or Insurrection Act or Supremacy Clause…
– easy imo or orchestrate faux emergencies allowing Trumo to invoke them… The Authoritarian Drivers do to enact Marshall Law or Insurrection or the Supremacy Clause…
– then mw, your “the harbingers of generalized extra-legal authoritarianism” won’t be “Trump can do these things that he can do anything. He can’t.”… they will be, while you gape…
Trump CAN do these things then he can do anything. He DID.

it is revealing here that some imaginations imagine in the direction we imagine… mw for example… “there’s just no reason to believe”.

So some can’t imagine a simple vehicular crash… of the Republic.
And that our imafinations are unable to imagine the lack of coordination currently, which MAY become an emergent coordination clusterf#ck of a facistic fatal blow to your perceptions of ‘democracy’ and law and constitution. And you State Laws and protections.

joeyjoejoe @120
Its obvious that your definition of ‘democracy’ is whollistic and ‘policy positions you want to disagree with.
Not unusual in trolls, but not in any way meaningful.
KT2

Wonks Anonymous @124
The trifecta, Marshall Law, Insurrection Act and the Supremacy Clause.
“That actually is important if you’re going to end elections.”
Correct.

@mw 121

You asked how (means) could Trump instate a dictatorship of sort, I gave you an example of how he could do that by increasing his level of control bit by bit (instead of doing a very obvious coup), and I implied that he is going in that direction. I do also expect him to go in that direction, based on his actions last time he lost elections.

You say: “These are domain-specific actions — there’s just no reason to believe they’re the harbingers of generalized extra-legal authoritarianism and that if Trump can do these things that he can do anything.”

Well if he could do anything he would be aready a dictator, no? The point is if he is going in that direction, not if he is already there; if he was already there it would be too late to argument about it.

@SamChevre 123
I can’t find any source that says that membership of the KKK is illegal in the USA.
That said, I think there is an evident difference in quantities and in directions: the dems didn’t yet try to overturn extralegally an election they lost, so the fact that Trump is doing actions that position him better to overturn future election is more dangerous than if dems (or other more traditional republicans) did similar actions.

@Wonks Anonymous 124
“No, pro-palestinian Americans still have rights.”
Yes, I used the future tense “Trump will declare everyone who disagree with him or with his followers as “antiamerican”, as is already happening to pro-palestinian supporters”.
My expectation is that he will erode freedom of speech rights by extending the definitions of terrorism, or of being antiamerican (betrayal) etc., not that he is already there.

MisterMr:

Yes, I used the future tense “Trump will declare everyone who disagree with him or with his followers as “antiamerican”, as is already happening to pro-palestinian supporters”.
My expectation is that he will erode freedom of speech rights by extending the definitions of terrorism, or of being antiamerican (betrayal) etc., not that he is already there.

But there is no legal category of “antiamerican”, nor can Trump create it by declaring this or that. There are laws defining terrorism, but Trump can’t arbitrarily change them without Congress. Congress often creates vague laws that grant the executive a lot of leeway, but it’s not so much that Trump can simply declare things to be terrorism. Hamas is an officially designated terrorist organization, and he’s arguing that certain people are Hamas supporters, but in the most notable case of that I can think of (Rumeya Ozturk) he was trying to deport her (something that can only be done to non-citizens), and his argument didn’t do well in court so she’s currently released.

So…we good?