Ministry of Truth?

[hollodero]

(05-09-2022, 07:27 PM)michaelsean Wrote: I don’t think we will go down an authoritarian road. Both extremes like authoritarianism (don’t kid yourselves)that pushes their viewpoint, but whichever side it heads toward, all the rest of the people will oppose including the opposite extreme.

Well, for sure authoritarianism is not connected to any specific political current, it can come from the right, left or center. I hope I am not kidding myself about that, or that I'd use Trump to diminish authoritarian tendencies from other sides. But if you believe that the current danger of authoritarianism is more or less equally distributed between what you call the extremes of both parties, I feel like I kindly have to make the same request to you, as in don't kid yourself.

Eg. Hillary, for all her faults, did not call a governor after her election loss to beg him to find the number of votes it would take for her to overturn the result. Can you imagine what would have happened if a phone call came out, where Hillary is to be heard asking party friends that are responsible for the votes to just find her the votes she needs, saying give me a break, aka what's the big deal, and then trying to pressure and threaten them if they wouldn't comply. If such a phone call became public, she'd be gone in utter shame in the same minute, and no one in the democratic party would defend her or take it up with these officials that would not obey. The republicans, well they did just that, or at least had nothing to say about what should have been a huge scandal.

No democrat would organize a Capitol protest and then be content with it turning into a Capitol storm including violence and death and gallows. The whole party would be in shock. Republicans, not so much, at least not for long. This attempt to overthrow the election was called a vacation, a legitimate protest, and then some. Sure, Navarro complained about it for it interfered with his own plan to overthrow the election through a "Green Bay Sweep". And the party in question has no real problem with any of that.

I feel I have to depict that in some length just to make clear that I do not agree with bothsideism in that matter, at least not for the current state of affairs. Right now, the danger comes from the extreme right, for it holds power over almost the whole republcian party. That is beholden to an authoritarian. Who argues in court that as president he should have the right to do whatever he wants, yes explicitely including shooting random people, who openly admires dictator-like figures for their iron fist and whatnot, at times falls in love with them, threatens critical journalists with new libel laws to sue them for negative stories and calls the press an enemy of the people. CPAC holds a summit in Hungary and quite some people praise the Orban system of an "illiberal democracy". These are not unimportant people, that claim without any proof the election was stolen and thereby undermine democracy. I stop for length concerns here. But as I said, don't kid yourself by claiming the danger of authoritarianism, at this very moment of time, is still distributed quite equally through the political spectrum. It is not and I hope you can see that.

(05-09-2022, 07:27 PM)michaelsean Wrote: The worst thing about the two party system for me is you can’t cross the aisle in federal elections. There’s too much power in the federal government, and you don’t want to hand the other party the majority. I can’t vote for a Democrat for senator when it’s 50/50. I’m not voting for a Democrat for president with all the power the President now has. I just vote libertarian when I can’t swallow the candidate, and wouldn’t it be nice if that meant something.

I understand. I just want to add that imho, the worst thing about the two-party system is that it kills all honest discourse. Supporters of both sides have to dig in, play for their team and use every bad faith, dishonest argument they can muster to score points for their squad. Because what else can they do. Folks cannot possibly go with the detested liberals, or the detested conservatives, never and no matter what, and there's no other alternative (a third party for some, but as you said, it means nothing but checking out).
From an outsiders perspective, I witnessed lots of bad debates in my home country, and in Germany, but they were never nearly as awful and hate-driven as the ones in America, where it's just talking point vs. talking point, that often appear to be designed to cause maximal rift. And in that climate, authoritarianism can thrive.