How countries descend into authoritarianism

[placebo]

Sarah Longwell at The Bulwark talked with Anne Applebaum about how countries descend into authoritarianism in modern times. I found it pretty interesting. Listening to the people in the focus groups was pretty depressing and frustrating, though. It might shed some light for those wondering how we got here and why the reaction to the administration seems so muted.

 

[Borg]

A quote from Physics Forum that will probably be deleted but I wanted to keep it for posterity.

I was trying to read Belief System Dynamics as Network of Single Layered Neural Network (arxiv), without really understanding much, but going through the references brought me to this one:

Characteristics of Successful Opnion Leaders in a Bounded Confidence Model (sciencedirect) which has this in it's abstract:

"[...] The results demonstrate that successful opinion leaders should generally be less stubborn, have greater appeal and be less extreme in order to attract more followers in a competing environment. [...]"

I admit the term "bounded confidence model" makes the discussion very academic, and thus probably says nothing about real world politics. Still, it made me smile and wonder if the authors have been following the recent developments in American politics. I doubt very much that it's a formula President Trump is following.

I have to wonder the same about the authors.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Anne Applebaum is amazing. It is distressing how Americans are not quite alarmed yet. I do think there is a general apathy because, for most people, life hasn't changed. After all, federal changes take a while to affect local enviroments. By then, it's too late.

 

[gleem]

I think they summed up the problem. People are getting used to the shenanigans, and they are becoming normal and no longer seen as problematic. Familiarity breeds contempt.

From some of the responses from the focus groups, it seems that when they don't know all the facts, they try to fill in their uncertainty by making up explanations to justify their point of view as with regards to the Harvard situation or they miss the underlying issue of a controversy, as with the Abrego Garcia case

 

[Borg]

I know a federal employee who was forced back into the office back in March. After a few weeks, she noticed two women regularly walking through her area with clipboards. Last week she asked if they were checking to see who was in the office and the answer was yes.

I have also heard other anecdotal stories of people being checked up on and being fired for extremely minor offenses such as leaving their badge on their desk.

Welcome to Big Brother and 1984!

Of course Signal chats discussing classified information by administration officials is exempt.

 

[fresh_42]

As mentioned elsewhere, watching the USA these days is like a soap opera about a German history class teaching 1920-1936.

 

[Borg]

As mentioned elsewhere, watching the USA these days is like a soap opera about a German history class teaching 1920-1936.

And we have a LOT of people in the USA who, along with flunking history, flunked logic, common decency standards, etc.

 

[fresh_42]

And we have a LOT of people in the USA who, along with flunking history, flunked logic, common decency standards, etc.

The parallels go way deeper than the obvious parallels.

E.g., the "Weimar Republic" (Germany 1918-1933) had a democratic constitution that was based on personal freedom and freedom of speech. It had almost no regularities at all, so that even "unconstitutional" opinions like those of the upcoming Nazis were allowed to promote. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Fascism wasn't a German invention. They copied it from Mussolini in Italy. Anti-semitism wasn't new either. It existed for centuries and gained popularity in the late 19th century. So blaming the Jews was at hand for the Nazis to create a culprit for anything, just like the Latinos are seemingly responsible for anything bad in the USA nowadays. Those currents existed in the population before Trump. Those ICE agents terrorizing tourists, green card holders, Latinos, and who knows whom else weren't recently hired!

Last but not least, the typical "us versus them" mentality that rules this entire nightmare is common to both.

"Divide et impera" (ancient Rome, Macchiavelli 1532)

 

[Borg]

Retired Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter died Thursday.

Former Supreme Court Justice David Souter, a Republican who became a liberal darling, has died

The retired Supreme Court justice died Thursday at his home in New Hampshire, the court said in a statement Friday. He was 85.

www.nbcwashington.com

While he was a Republican, he became a reliable voice for abortion rights to the dismay of anti-abortionists. In reading the NBC4 story of his death, I came across this highly relevant quote:

In retirement, Souter warned that ignorance of how government works could undermine American democracy.

"What I worry about is that when problems are not addressed, people will not know who is responsible. And when the problems get bad enough ... some one person will come forward and say, ‘Give me total power and I will solve this problem.’ That is how the Roman republic fell,” Souter said in a 2012 interview.

Sadly, that person is here and now.