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Showing posts with label AUTHORITARIAN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AUTHORITARIAN. Show all posts
Sunday, January 2, 2022
Top News: Terrifying Colorado Fires Show 'We Are in a Climate Emergency'
Tuesday, December 21, 2021
Your Turn: Do we want to save our democratic processes?
Your Turn: Do we want to save our democratic processes?
James J. Cullen Guest Columnist
Published Dec 21, 2021
If one defines democracy as the served choosing their leaders by free and fair elections, it seems to me that our democracy has finally come to its tipping point.
The nation is divided between two political choices, Democrat and Republican. We are awash in a political system that is now one of our more significant financial industries. The death struggle over gerrymandering, deciding who gets to vote, when and where, and the lobbying that goes with it has become inordinately large.
Further, it seems that many people would prefer an authoritarian rule in this country. And the vast majority of those folks reside in the Republican party. And, since Republicans are outnumbered by Democrats and Independents, that leads to all-out efforts for minority rule.
The belief that our elected officials should have ideas that serve the common good and not just one extreme or another seems like ancient history. Rather, we condemn each other and attack our very symbol of democracy. And Trump didn't start this and he sure isn't the solution.
As I see it, the only way to get back to our constitutional roots is to expand the two party system, place financial limits on campaigns and donations, and finally, to institute ranked choice voting and term limits. Increasingly, we are telling people their vote doesn't really matter; that it's either right wing or left wing; that you are either for me or a despised enemy. Compromise is long gone.
Why are we so afraid of a new approach? It might actually get to reasonable decision making and politicians who are in it for us and not special interests.
What have we got to lose in trying it? Perhaps you may no longer get to make all these personal choices that we treasure as freedoms if we follow the authoritarian route. Or perhaps not the socialism route that so many are fearful of. But maybe, just maybe, we could get to a point where reasoned thinking and compromise might lead to a healthier and happier society where we all have a stake in decision making.
I know one thing for sure — democracy is worth saving and both authoritarianism and socialism are extreme opposites. What I'm not so sure of is whether we want to save our democratic processes.
James J. Cullen, Yarmouth Port
Thursday, September 23, 2021
RSN: FOCUS: Jonathan Chait | The Horrifying Legal Blueprint for Trump's War on Democracy
22 September 21
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The John Eastman memo is a new high-water mark in Republican authoritarian thought.
The memo, uncovered by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in their new book, Peril, is significant both because of its author, a prestigious conservative legal scholar, and the horrifying ramifications of his argument, which would have likely spelled an end to the republican form of government that has existed in the United States since 1789.
Eastman’s argument at least broadly tracks the plan embraced by Trump and the mob of right-wing supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6. It posits that the Electoral Count Act grants the vice-president discretion over which electoral ballots to accept as part of the official count.
The legal merits of the argument don’t matter very much — Eastman’s interpretation is widely derided as crazy, but the key point is that even if he’s right, he would have identified a wormhole in the Constitution permitting the vice-president to override the election results. Since the vice-president’s interests are typically aligned with the president’s, this power would allow the president’s party to stay in office through an indefinite series of elections.
To be sure, while Eastman’s argument persuaded the president of the United States and several officials close to him, it failed to sway many other leading Republicans, including its most important target: the vice-president himself. Most Republicans tend to dismiss episodes like Eastman’s memo as idiosyncratic ravings ignored by the powers that be. And it is possible the waning days of Trump will eventually be seen as the high-water mark of authoritarian sentiment within the party. But the bulk of the evidence suggests instead that it is a way station to a much darker destination.
After briefly recoiling at Trump’s attempted autogolpe, his party has largely fallen behind him. Trump — confounding the complacent belief that he is too lazy and incompetent to wield authoritarian power — has diligently targeted officials with power over election results and replaced them with loyal functionaries. Trumpist candidates now stand poised to grasp ahold of the election machinery in Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan. Trump’s endorsements have usually proven decisive in Republican primaries. In Arizona, he praised his preferred secretary-of-State candidate’s “incredibly powerful stance on the massive Voter Fraud that took place in the 2020 Presidential Election Scam”; in Michigan, he praised his endorsee as “strong on Crime, including the massive Crime of Election Fraud.”
Trump has intimidated his internal opposition into silence, opportunistically picking off his critics. Last week, Representative Anthony Gonzalez, until recently considered a rising star in the party, announced his retirement in a concession that his vote to impeach Trump for attempting to subvert the election left him certain to lose his upcoming primary. The party’s future belongs to the loyalists who have either tacitly or explicitly endorsed his ravings.
A typical case is Representative Elise Stefanik, now the third-ranking Republican in the House, who asserts that Democrats are planning a “PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION” by offering undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship. Here is a perfect sample of the logic and rhetoric of Trump’s authoritarian allies. First, it presents the Democratic Party as the instigator of threats to democratic government (by allowing too many immigrants, who will become voters, presumably for the Democrats). Then it turns Trump’s own behavior into a label for the opposition — immigration reform becomes an “insurrection,” which of course justifies counter-insurrections by the GOP.
Trump’s absurd charging that the election was stolen from him has become the firm majority position among Republicans, claiming roughly 70 percent support. The opposition has retreated to the point where it now frames its objections in minimalist pragmatic terms: Voter-fraud accusations are counterproductive messaging that discourages voter turnout, conservatives sometimes protest.
It may well be true that hyping up vote fraud discourages some Republican would-be voters from casting a ballot. But it encourages Republican legislators to enact the voter-suppression laws taking shape across the country. And it further encourages the party to challenge and undermine elections it loses. This rhetoric hurts our party’s efforts to gain power is an argument that works to an extent against failed bids to overturn an election but has little purchase against successful ones.
Naked authoritarian belief has crept from the margins of the Republican Party before Trump to its very center now. The crisis might not come in 2024, but unless some heretofore undiscovered force comes along to stop its takeover of the party, the crisis will come eventually.
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Friday, July 16, 2021
RSN: FOCUS: 'They're Not Going to F**king Succeed': Top Generals Feared Trump Would Attempt a Coup After Election, According to New Book
16 July 21
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15 July 21
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he top US military officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, was so shaken that then-President Donald Trump and his allies might attempt a coup or take other dangerous or illegal measures after the November election that Milley and other top officials informally planned for different ways to stop Trump, according to excerpts of an upcoming book obtained by CNN.
The book, from Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, describes how Milley and the other Joint Chiefs discussed a plan to resign, one-by-one, rather than carry out orders from Trump that they considered to be illegal, dangerous or ill-advised.
“It was a kind of Saturday Night Massacre in reverse,” Leonnig and Rucker write.
The book, “I Alone Can Fix It,” scheduled to be released next Tuesday, chronicles Trump’s final year as president, with a behind-the-scenes look at how senior administration officials and Trump’s inner circle navigated his increasingly unhinged behavior after losing the 2020 election. The authors interviewed Trump for more than two hours.
The book recounts how for the first time in modern US history the nation’s top military officer, whose role is to advise the president, was preparing for a showdown with the commander in chief because he feared a coup attempt after Trump lost the November election.
The authors explain Milley’s growing concerns that personnel moves that put Trump acolytes in positions of power at the Pentagon after the November 2020 election, including the firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and the resignation of Attorney General William Barr, were the sign of something sinister to come.
Milley spoke to friends, lawmakers and colleagues about the threat of a coup, and the Joint Chiefs chairman felt he had to be “on guard” for what might come.
“They may try, but they’re not going to f**king succeed,” Milley told his deputies, according to the authors. “You can’t do this without the military. You can’t do this without the CIA and the FBI. We’re the guys with the guns.”
In the days leading up to January 6, Leonnig and Rucker write, Milley was worried about Trump’s call to action. “Milley told his staff that he believed Trump was stoking unrest, possibly in hopes of an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and call out the military.”
Milley viewed Trump as “the classic authoritarian leader with nothing to lose,” the authors write, and he saw parallels between Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric as a victim and savior and Trump’s false claims of election fraud.
“This is a Reichstag moment,” Milley told aides, according to the book. “The gospel of the Führer.”
Ahead of a November pro-Trump “Million MAGA March” to protest the election results, Milley told aides he feared it “could be the modern American equivalent of ‘brownshirts in the streets,’” referring to the pro-Nazi militia that fueled Hitler’s rise to power.
Milley will not publicly address the issues raised in the book, a defense official close to the general told CNN. The official did not dispute that Milley engaged in activities and communications that are not part of the traditional portfolio of a chairman in the final days of Trump’s presidency.
“He’s not going to sit in silence while people try to use the military against Americans,” the official said. So while Milley “tried his hardest to actively stay out of politics,” if the events that occurred brought him into that arena temporarily, “so be it,” the official said.
The official added that the general was not calling Trump a Nazi but felt he had no choice but to respond given his concerns that the rhetoric used by the President and his supporters could lead to such an environment.
’This is all real, man’
Rucker and Leonnig interviewed more than 140 sources for the book, though most were given anonymity to speak candidly to reconstruct events and dialogue. Milley is quoted extensively and comes off in a positive light as someone who tried to keep democracy alive because he believed it was on the brink of collapse after receiving a warning one week after the election from an old friend.
“What they are trying to do here is overturn the government,” said the friend, who is not named, according to the authors. “This is all real, man. You are one of the few guys who are standing between us and some really bad stuff.”
Milley’s reputation took a major hit in June 2020, when he joined Trump during his controversial photo-op at St. John’s Church, after federal forces violently dispersed a peaceful crowd of social justice protesters at Lafayette Square outside the White House. To make matters worse, Milley wore camouflage military fatigues throughout the incident. He later apologized, saying, “I should not have been there.”
But behind the scenes, the book says Milley was on the frontlines of trying to protect the country, including an episode where he tried to stop Trump from firing FBI Director Chris Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel.
Leonnig and Rucker recount a scene when Milley was with Trump and his top aides in a suite at the Army-Navy football game in December, and publicly confronted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
“What’s going on? Are you guys getting rid of Wray or Gina?” Milley asked. “Come on chief. What the hell is going on here? What are you guys doing?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Meadows said. “Just some personnel moves.”
“Just be careful,” Milley responded, which Leonnig and Rucker write was said as a warning that he was watching.
’That doesn’t make any sense’
The book also sheds new light on Trump’s descent into a dark and isolated vacuum of conspiracy theories and self-serving delusions after he was declared the loser of the 2020 election.
After the January 6 insurrection, the book says Milley held a conference call each day with Meadows and then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Leonnig and Rucker report the officials used the calls to compare notes and “collectively survey the horizon for trouble.”
“The general theme of these calls was, come hell or high water, there will be a peaceful transfer of power on January twentieth,” one senior official told the authors. “We’ve got an aircraft, our landing gear is stuck, we’ve got one engine, and we’re out of fuel. We’ve got to land this bad boy.”
Milley told aides he saw the calls as an opportunity to keep tabs on Trump, the authors write.
Leonnig and Rucker also recount a scene where Pompeo visited Milley at home in the weeks before the election, and the two had a heart-to-heart conversation sitting at the general’s table. Pompeo is quoted as saying, “You know the crazies are taking over,” according to people familiar with the conversation.
The authors write that Pompeo, through a person close to him, denied making the comments attributed to him and said they were not reflective of his views.
In recent weeks Trump has attacked Milley, who is still the Joint Chiefs chairman in the Biden administration, after he testified to Congress about January 6.
’You f**king did this’
The book also contains several striking anecdotes about prominent women during the Trump presidency, including GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former first lady Michelle Obama.
The book details a phone call the day after the January 6 insurrection between Milley and Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who has close military ties. Cheney voted to impeach Trump and has been an outspoken critic of his election lies, leading to her ouster from House GOP leadership.
Milley asked Cheney how she was doing.
“That f**king guy Jim Jordan. That son of a b*tch,” Cheney said, according to the book.
Cheney bluntly relayed to Milley what she experienced on the House floor on January 6 while pro-Trump rioters overran police and breached the Capitol building, including a run-in with Jordan, a staunch Trump ally in the House who feverishly tried to overturn the election.
Cheney described to Milley her exchange with Jordan: “While these maniacs are going through the place, I’m standing in the aisle and he said, ‘We need to get the ladies away from the aisle. Let me help you.’ I smacked his hand away and told him, ‘Get away from me. You f**king did this.’”
’Crazy,’ ‘dangerous,’ ‘maniac’
The book reveals Pelosi’s private conversations with Milley during this tenuous period. When Trump fired Esper in November, Pelosi was one of several lawmakers who called Milley. “We are all trusting you,” she said. “Remember your oath.”
After the January 6 insurrection, Pelosi told the general she was deeply concerned that a “crazy,” “dangerous” and “maniac” Trump might use nuclear weapons during his final days in office.
“Ma’am, I guarantee you these processes are very good,” Milley reassured her. “There’s not going to be an accidental firing of nuclear weapons.”
“How can you guarantee me?” Pelosi asked.
“Ma’am, there’s a process,” he said. “We will only follow legal orders. We’ll only do things that are legal, ethical, and moral.”
A week after the insurrection, Pelosi led House Democrats’ second impeachment of Trump for inciting the insurrection. In an interview with the authors, Pelosi said she fears another president could try to pick up where Trump left off.
“We might get somebody of his ilk who’s sane, and that would really be dangerous, because it could be somebody who’s smart, who’s strategic, and the rest,” Pelosi said. “This is a slob. He doesn’t believe in science. He doesn’t believe in governance. He’s a snake-oil salesman. And he’s shrewd. Give him credit for his shrewdness.”
’That b*tch’
The book quotes Trump, who had a strained relationship with Merkel, as telling his advisers during an Oval Office meeting about NATO and the US relationship with Germany, “That b*tch Merkel.”
“‘I know the f**king krauts,’ the president added, using a derogatory term for German soldiers from World War I and World War II,” Leonnig and Rucker write. “Trump then pointed to a framed photograph of his father, Fred Trump, displayed on the table behind the Resolute Desk and said, ‘I was raised by the biggest kraut of them all.’”
Trump, through a spokesman, denied to the authors making these comments.
’No one has a bigger smile’
After January 6, Milley participated in a drill with military and law enforcement leaders to prepare for the January 20 inauguration of President Joe Biden. Washington was on lockdown over fears that far-right groups like the Proud Boys might try to violently disrupt the transfer of power.
Milley told a group of senior leaders, “Here’s the deal, guys: These guys are Nazis, they’re boogaloo boys, they’re Proud Boys. These are the same people we fought in World War II. We’re going to put a ring of steel around this city and the Nazis aren’t getting in.”
Trump did not attend the inauguration, in a notable break with tradition, and the event went off without incident.
As the inauguration ceremony ended, Kamala Harris, who had just been sworn in as vice president, paused to thank Milley. “We all know what you and some others did,” she said, according to the authors. “Thank you.”
The book ends with Milley describing his relief that there had not been a coup, thinking to himself, “Thank God Almighty, we landed the ship safely.”
Milley expressed his relief in the moments after Biden was sworn in, speaking to the Obamas sitting on the inauguration stage. Michelle Obama asked Milley how he was feeling.
“No one has a bigger smile today than I do,” Milley said, according to Leonnig and Rucker. “You can’t see it under my mask, but I do.”
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