Jackboots And Apple Pie

Most Americans are spectators in this democracy….I say that because most elections only about 49% of the voting population actually shows up.

But in the last year it seems that this fragile democracy is in danger of falling apart….yes, I am talking about the time from 2016 election to today……nothing happening is encouraging if anything it appears losing ground weekly…..

It can be analyzed back to Pres. Trump……

The problem with Donald Trump is not that he is imbecilic and inept—it is that he has surrendered total power to the oligarchic and military elites. They get what they want. They do what they want. Although the president is a one-man wrecking crew aimed at democratic norms and institutions, although he has turned the United States into a laughingstock around the globe, our national crisis is embodied not in Trump but the corporate state’s now unfettered pillage.

Trump, who has no inclination or ability to govern, has handed the machinery of government over to the bankers, corporate executives, right-wing think tanks, intelligence chiefs and generals. They are eradicating the few regulations and laws that inhibited a naked kleptocracy. They are dynamiting the institutions, including the State Department, that served interests other than corporate profit and are stacking the courts with right-wing, corporate-controlled ideologues. Trump provides the daily entertainment; the elites handle the business of looting, exploiting and destroying.

https://www.alternet.org/peek/donald-trump-useful-idiot

I am not alone…..most thinking people, that means people that can count beyond 10 sees problems mounting up….

Democracy is in under siege around the world, according to a new report by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The annual Democracy Index tracks the health of the world’s governments. And the results for 2017 are depressing. In 89 countries, democratic norms look worse than they did last year, the report’s authors write. Just 4.5 percent of the world’s residents live in fully functioning democracies, down from 8.9 percent in 2015.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/02/01/u-s-democracy-is-in-grave-danger-a-new-economist-report-warns/

So far events in government point to a leader that is more concerned about his personal affairs and not those of the country…..a leader that demands loyalty to him and not necessarily the rule of law….BTW this country was founded on the rule of law, in case there was confusion…..a leader who shows affection for authoritarian heads of state…..

It appears that Trump wants to be a dictator…..

It began the day he was sworn in, with his vow to end “American carnage”—a direct echo of his autocratic pronouncement when accepting the Republican nomination that “I alone can fix it.” Donald Trump has chipped away at the pillars of democracy ever since. According to a new report from Freedom House, an independent watchdog group that has monitored democracy globally for decades, “The past year brought further, faster erosion of America’s own democratic standards than at any other time in memory.” The nation’s core institutions, the report says, have been “attacked by an administration that rejects established norms of ethical conduct across many fields of activity.”

In his first year as president, Trump often appeared driven by his urges for self-aggrandizement, self-enrichment, and revenge against anyone and everyone he perceived to be his political enemies—targets to be punched 10 times harder or screwed 15 times harder than they’ve punched or screwed him. He has used the presidential platform to taunt and threaten, going after federal judges, members of Congress, law enforcement leaders, celebrities, professional athletes, private citizens, and, of course, his greatest bête noire: the “Fake News” media, which he has blasted hundreds of times since taking office.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/01/donald-trump-wants-to-be-dictator-of-the-united-states/

TO political observers nothing about the Trump act seems to be democratic……he desires total control on all aspects of government and even some within the legislative branch are enabling his moves toward authoritarianism.

American democracy is in danger!

That is the tale back when I was a radical wanting to rid ourselves of this system….it is humorous that they saw a danger then but do not see it now…..selective knowledge.

I do not think that our republic will be replaced with some sort of Trumpian mind fuck…..I just see the games being played that can be dangerous to our way of governance.

Did you know that about 1 in 4 Americans would accept authoritarian rule…..

A new survey reveals that although most Americans like to believe they prefer democracy over authoritarian forms of government, the actual content of their convictions can veer precipitously toward authoritarianism.

“If given a direct choice, the overwhelming majority of Americans choose democracy,” writes Lee Drutman, Larry Diamond and Joe Goldman of the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group. “In fact, on each of the five questions we asked, three quarters or more of all respondents provide at least some support for democracy, and half or more express support for the strongest pro-democratic option. By contrast, depending on the question, between an eighth and a quarter of respondents provide an answer that does not support democracy.”

https://www.salon.com/2018/03/16/more-than-one-in-four-americans-prefer-authoritarian-politics/#.Wq0YyHZOt8Y

A scary thought and turn of our democracy…..we should be careful and watchful….

Could this be the beginning of a 3rd revolution?

Get ready, America. According to a new study on inequality and revolutions throughout history, the United States soon may experience a profound paradigm shift, Inverse reports (with a hat tip to Lee Camp). A team of scientists at Washington State and 13 other institutions conducted the study, and their findings, published in the journal Nature, could have major implications for today’s world.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/revolution-u-s-brewing/

If accurate which way will it go?

Will the revolution be televised?

It Is Not A Democracy

You know that there is always someone going to point out the US is not democracy but rather a republic…..usually it is someone that is trying to make a point but have nothing to add to the conversation…..

It is true we are a republic…meaning that we cannot elect the president directly….instead it has to go through the whole electoral college thing.

Personally, I have stated many times that the EC has run its course and it is time to get rid of that dinosaur from our early days.

It will not be eliminated simple because our country can only support the 2 party system……according to some government would collapse if we ever rid ourselves of the EC….that the US would slide into anarchy.

I disagree.

The wealthy elite that are our founders did not want a democracy……..

I’ve already confessed my bad attitude about the Electoral College system. And I’ve listed 10 of the potentially serious ways it can screw up our choice of national leaders. The trouble with such a list is that it implies that we have somehow been saddled with the worst system possible. It needs to be said that no system for choosing a national leader would be perfect (although I do believe that considering the anachronistic elements of our system, we could definitely do better).

All this system-bashing could also begin to imply that I have no respect or appreciation for the Framers. That’s not so. Although I don’t seem to have the normal allotment of reverence for the Constitution or its authors, I see them as very smart guys, many of them heroes of the War for Independence, who came to Philadelphia in the summer 1787 hoping to — and trying hard to — make things better.

https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2012/10/why-constitution-s-framers-didn-t-want-us-directly-elect-president

One in a series of articles. You can read the whole series here.

What Fate The Republic?

How many times have you heard some political wannabe tell you that the US is not a democracy but rather a republic? Most times it some well meaning Rightie that wants to point that out when others write about the things that is going wrong with this country.

I will admit that they are right (you do not know how hard that is for me to admit for I dislike most Right wing dullards)…..and since they are right and this is nothing more than a republic …..is there an expiration date?

Whither the American republic? It is worth remembering that no one founds a republic believing the republic will last forever. To believe such a thing automatically negates one’s conservatism. Like all living things, a republic must experience a birth, a middle age, and a death. The question is never if a republic will die, but when. The stronger its soul, the healthier its body. Conversely, the less a people have a purpose, the faster will they decline. A republic, American or not, is a res publica—a common good, a good thing, a public thing. Whether our government still resembles the republic of the American founders is yet another question, and one for another post.

It is also worth remembering that in the long history of western civilization, no political arrangement—with only the rarest exceptions—has lasted more than a few centuries. Political bodies come and go. The two longest lived institutions in the West are not political, but, ethnic and religious. The oldest sustained cohesive people in the world are the Jews, and the oldest institution in the West is the Latin church. We can conservatively date the first at 4,000 years old and, the second, at roughly 2,000 years old. Not a single political body that existed during the time of the Pentecost still exists today. Indeed, even the very form of government that so predominates in the world—the roughly 200 nation states of the world—did not exist until the fifteenth century.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/birzer/the-republic-was-never-supposed-to-be-forever/

When is our expiration date? Are we living that day now?

Is American Democracy Ending?

We hear a lot of people saying that democracy in the US is dying……but then we heard the same type of stuff when America elected a black man as president…..so the question remains….is American Democracy Dying?

Newsweek touched on this topic…….

Disagreement between Republicans and Democrats on the Trump administration’s tax policy is a given. But President Donald Trump’s attacks on the pillars of U.S. democracy is something every American should fight, says Brian Klaas, an academic who studies authoritarian regimes.

“I don’t mind that people agree or disagree on tax policy, health care, foreign affairs,” Klaas, a fellow in comparative politics at the London School of Economics, tells Newsweek. “But there are certain aspects of Donald Trump that go outside of what’s acceptable in all Western politics—our basic values.”

http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-ending-american-democracy-742561

How Democracy Dies

There are many predictions on how democracy will die…..back in the 50’s it was creeping communism that would bring the demise…..the problem was it was not creeping at all…..more recently the predictions have been that if it dies then this society will have killed it……

Let us step into the “way back machine” and visit the days of 1830-1831 when a Frenchman was touring the US and made some marvelous insights into America and its democracy…..

If there are two things that one is likely to hear from college faculty today, they are that 1. Students are too careerist, and 2. We need a more democratic society. They worry about the growing utilitarian cast of education in general, as well as the remnants of hierarchy, authority, paternalism, and inequality in today’s society.

What they generally don’t see is the deep underlying connection between these two phenomena. A familiarity with Tocqueville’s essential Democracy in America would prove enlightening.

Tocqueville expresses wonder and awe at the activity of the Americans that he encountered during his visit to the United States in 1830-31. In contrast to the relative complacency of people in their social roles in aristocratic Europe—where no amount of work, effort or activity could move one either from the ranks of the aristocrats to the commoners, or vice-versa—Americans live daily with the awareness that their station in life is one of variability, potential, and fragility. The result was a society that was, by appearances, industrious, but more deeply riven with anxiety. Thus, Tocqueville was moved to call this condition one of “restlessness,” or “inquietude,” the inability to be “quiet” or still or in a state of quiescence.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-democracy-dies/

It is a marvelous book with many insights that de Tocqueville witnessed that are as much today as it was in his day. I recommend that all Americans read the set for there is much to be learned within its pages.

Rats Desert A Sinking Ship

Obstructionism and division has been part of the American political scheme for decades. And since the election of Trump and his brand of autocratic rule Congresspeople are deciding to cut and run from government service.

After Democrats handed President Donald Trump his biggest legislative achievement, Republican leaders are worried he doomed his party for the 2018 midterm elections.

Trump, “paved the way for hazardous, rolling deadlines over the next six months,” Burgess Everett, Seung Min Kim and Kyle Cheney report for Politico.

“The debt and spending bill approved by Capitol Hill on Friday averted imminent fiscal disaster, but it’s added more misery for a Republican Party whose agenda has floundered even with unified control of Washington for the first time in a decade,” Politico explained. “It’s also given Democrats significant leverage to imperil tax reform, the GOP’s best hope at a major legislative victory.”

Source: ‘It is not going to be pretty’: GOP panicked over midterms as Trump continues destroying their agenda

Repubs have NO one but themselves to blame for their current state of confusion and sluggishness…..and some are running sacred and have decided to desert this sinking ship we call democracy….

Outraged by the behavior and radical right-wing agenda of Donald Trump and GOP congressional leadership, Democrats are laser-focused on winning back the House in 2018.

And that could spell huge trouble for Speaker Paul Ryan, who could end up struggling to maintain his majority.

There is no question Democrats have a massive advantage in voter enthusiasm over Republicans for the midterm, and a record-shattering edge in candidate recruitment. But many political experts are still skeptical that Democrats can win the House, due in part to how Republicans rigged and gerrymandered congressional districts.

Source: Seventh Republican retirement signals House GOP’s massive Trump problem in 2018 – Shareblue

Could this be the only way the Dems can return to the power of DC? They have no new ideas and Trump is about as popular as a turd in the punch bowl….that alone is a scary thought….

This country needs help….but this is not the type I am talking about.

Democracy No More

Since the early days of the republic the US has been a beacon for democracy. We have promoted democracy all across the globe.

The new president and his State Department may be in the mood to change America’s promotion of democracy…….

The days of global democratic movement may be drawing to a close……

In the course of their broad restructuring of the State Department, the Executive Steering Committee has revealed in an internal email that the formal mission statement for both State and USAID is going to be revised, with draft versions being circulated around the office for comment.

While the draft statement still talks up America’s “global advocacy, action, and assistance,” suggesting a very interventionist viewpoint, it remains language from the past version about creating a “just, and democratic world” as being a priority.

Former Reagan-era State Department official Elliott Abrams was very critical of the move, saying that the removal of justice and democracy were the only significant changes, suggesting the US doesn’t want those things anymore.

It might simply suggest those aren’t going to be used as pretexts for future US interventions abroad, however, potentially reflective of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s viewpoint that American values need to take a back seat to national security interests that are often directly contrary to them.

(antiwar.com)

This should not be a surprise for the US has been turning its back on democracy for some time now……we have backed some of the most blood thirsty dictators all in the name of a free market and profit……we have been just pretending for decades.

So now we can come out of the shadows as the real nation we have become.

In The Shadow Of De Tocqueville

Any person who has studied Political Science will know the name of De Tocqueville……you would have studied his major work, Democracy In America–volume 1 and 2……..

Depending on where you studied….this work was a major part of the course on PoliSci…..especially in Political History.

A French sociologist and political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) traveled to the United States in 1831 to study its prisons and returned with a wealth of broader observations that he codified in “Democracy in America” (1835), one of the most influential books of the 19th century. With its trenchant observations on equality and individualism, Tocqueville’s work remains a valuable explanation of America to Europeans and of Americans to themselves.

As “Democracy in America” revealed, Tocqueville believed that equality was the great political and social idea of his era, and he thought that the United States offered the most advanced example of equality in action. He admired American individualism but warned that a society of individuals can easily become atomized and paradoxically uniform when “every citizen, being assimilated to all the rest, is lost in the crowd.” He felt that a society of individuals lacked the intermediate social structures—such as those provided by traditional hierarchies—to mediate relations with the state. The result could be a democratic “tyranny of the majority” in which individual rights were compromised.

Tocqueville was impressed by much of what he saw in American life, admiring the stability of its economy and wondering at the popularity of its churches. He also noted the irony of the freedom-loving nation’s mistreatment of Native Americans and its embrace of slavery.

If you have NO idea who this person is or the book to which I refer then maybe you should read this democratic classic…..you could learn alot about early American nation.

Source: Democracy in America: TOC

I bring this man and work up because of something I read in the Unz Review….a traditionally Libertarian point of view……

Re-reading Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835) can be a sobering experience. The first time I delved into it was back in 1971, when I was assistant to conservative writer and thinker, Dr. Russell Kirk. I had read bits of de Tocqueville as an undergraduate, but had not managed to read the entire Democracy in America until I had more leisure time working with Kirk. And now, refreshing my memory, so much of what the great French observer of American life wrote seems so current.

Source: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy, and the End of America? – The Unz Review

In closing a little something for the women folk…..and it is from De Tocqueville….

Alexis de Tocqueville came to America in 1831 to study its prisons, but ended up documenting nearly every facet of American life. With journalistic curiosity, the French aristocrat scrutinized America’s religion and government, its society and industry. He wanted to know what allowed the United States to surpass Europe as the world’s political and economic superpower.

His conclusion? Women.

The women Tocqueville saw were not CEOs or celebrities, politicians or professional athletes. They were largely confined to the home: cleaning, cooking, taking care of children. But to the young political historian, no position seemed more important. “There have never been free societies without morals, and…it is the woman that molds the morals,” he wrote. Tocqueville saw American women as the keystone of the family, the ones who held everyone else together.

Source: Tocqueville: Women Made America Great | The American Conservative

Turn The Page!

No Democracy–No Weapons

Everyone the regularly visits IST knows that I am an antiwar supporter…..and that I feel that the US Congress has relinquished is power of the use of military force to the president…..there have been a few bills, mostly from Dems, that have tried to re-establish Congress’ power but they usually go nowhere…..

For two years the Saudis have been systematically destroying Yemen under some pretense of fighting terrorism and the US has been supporting the Saudis behind the scenes mostly….but they could change…

The House version of the nearly $700 billion 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes multiple amendments aimed at limiting US involvement in the Saudi War in Yemen, explicitly forbidding the deployment of ground troops there, or spending any money on military operations outside the scope of the 2001 AUMF.

The Nolan Amendment prohibits the deployment of troops to participate in any way in the war, which is seen not only as restricting ground troops being sent to Yemen to fight on the side of the Saudis, but also appears aimed at limiting mid-air refueling operations for Saudi warplanes.

The Lieu Amendment requires a report from the State Department and the Pentagon on whether or not the Saudis are complying with the US-provided “No Strike List” for Yemen, as well as their improvement of targeting capabilities to avoid hitting civilians.

Finally, the Davidson Amendment prohibits all US military action in Yemen that is outside of the scope of the 2001 AUMF. This would preclude operations against the Shi’ite Houthis, who obviously were nothing to do with 9/11, though it would not restrict US operations against al-Qaeda forces inside Yemen.

(antiwar.com)

Small efforts that I suspect will go down in flames…but I give them an “A” for effort.

A better idea is one that comes out of Sweden….

Sweden’s Social Democratic government has received general support from opposition parties for a new legislative plan to curb weapons sales to so-called autocratic and nondemocratic nations.

The proposed legislation would have a direct impact on weapons sales to certain countries in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America. Military sales to countries applicable under the new proposal would be regulated according to tougher humans rights criteria.

The proposed legislation will amend Sweden’s existing Arms Export Controls Act. The strong degree of opposition party support for the legislative initiative means the new law could be introduced as early as 2018.

Countries that will be affected by the proposed legislation, like Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, all remain important customers for Sweden’s defense industry companies.

(defensenews.com)

A helluva idea….no democracy, no weapons!

Of course the M-IC will fight this tooth and nail…..but what a great way to promote democracy……

In Saner Thought

"It is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error"..Thomas Paine

Tag: Democracy