A Deeply Fractured US

[Brad Sallows]

I didn't think that the universality of democratic backsliding was a concept that was that hard to understand.

It isn't, but culture matters. Hitler was able to rise to power in Germany because Germany was the kind of country in which a guy like Hitler could rise to power (centuries of hierarchical political and religious traditions, orderliness, obedience to authority). A country like the US, which grew from the bottom up, is entirely different, and not necessarily as susceptible.

 

[brihard]

One might take issue with your implied characterization of fetuses as beings devoid of any rights.

There isn't a technical or rational argument that can settle the abortion debate. It comes down to what each individual believes spiritually.

In that sense, it may seem to pro-life folks that allowing people to arbitrarily "murder babies" is more tyrannical and authoritarian than to prevent them from doing so.

As Brad touched on, I believe democracy by the people is vastly superior to governance from the bench.


Same thing here.


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Although here the CPC benefits from the left's division (20% right to 75% left). Even old women (33%) don't vote CPC as much as young men (38%).

Take issue with my view on abortion all you want. On this subject I really don't care about alternate opinions and I won't waste time debating them. I was highlighting the specific subject that arose in the course of this conversation.

It's being done legislatively, following a decision from a court, and it's clear that in some jurisdictions the efforts of governments are motivating people to vote in different governments to get different legislated results. That's not authoritarianism; it's essentially democracy.

All sorts of legislated acts are "flexing legislative muscles to impose ideological views on some people".

"I disagree" isn't the basis for "that's authoritarianism".

Utter nonsense, as others have alluded to. When a state lawfully controls the monopoly of force, it can have the power to lawfully enact increasing manifestations of authoritative rule that it has the power, backed by law, to impose. There's plenty of both historical and modern precedent for that.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Oh wait, sorry…that was another government…one that some of Canada’s own cabinet ministers are colluding with elements of the autocracy…

You're too kind G2G. Maybe he's Red China's Enviromental Advisor? Red China had 1,118 coal fired plants in July 22. They are permitting 2 a week now. Must be facilitating building permits

However, when he comes home and puts on his ' I AB 🛢 & ️ ' T-shirt, he wants us freezing in the dark.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

And probably the system most susceptible to vote rigging.

It's what we do and many other countries. Do you recall any vote rigging in our elections? I can't think of any.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Utter nonsense, as others have alluded to. When a state lawfully controls the monopoly of force, it can have the power to lawfully enact increasing manifestations of authoritative rule that it has the power, backed by law, to impose. There's plenty of both historical and modern precedent for that.

Pretty much all states lawfully control the monopoly of force. I wouldn't be surprised if someone combed all the threads of this board and found all manner of contributors solemnly praising the state monopoly of force for one reason or another, in a context which the writer found favourable.

But that has nothing to do with authoritarianism, which has some criteria by which one can decide whether a government is authoritarian or not.

It's buffoonery to descend to the level of trying to shoehorn the ordinary usage of the legitimate institutions and their processes as "authoritarianism".

 

[brihard]

Pretty much all states lawfully control the monopoly of force. I wouldn't be surprised if someone combed all the threads of this board and found all manner of contributors solemnly praising the state monopoly of force for one reason or another, in a context which the writer found favourable.

But that has nothing to do with authoritarianism, which has some criteria by which one can decide whether a government is authoritarian or not.

It's buffoonery to descend to the level of trying to shoehorn the ordinary usage of the legitimate institutions and their processes as "authoritarianism".

I explained exactly what I meant in a prior reply; you’re trying to shift the goalposts and put words in my mouth.

@FJAG nicely amplified the concept I was speaking of.

 

[TacticalTea]

Take issue with my view on abortion all you want. On this subject I really don't care about alternate opinions and I won't waste time debating them. I was highlighting the specific subject that arose in the course of this conversation.

You completely missed my point. I don't have a strong opinion on abortion either way. I was pushing back on your depiction of American political stability.

Point being that disagreement on social issues on which the general consensus was completely different less than a hundred years ago, when America was also a full-fledged democracy, is not an example of authoritarianism or democratic backsliding.

 

[FJAG]

It isn't, but culture matters. Hitler was able to rise to power in Germany because Germany was the kind of country in which a guy like Hitler could rise to power (centuries of hierarchical political and religious traditions, orderliness, obedience to authority). A country like the US, which grew from the bottom up, is entirely different, and not necessarily as susceptible.

A country like the US that had a civil war in which 620,000 died out of a population of roughly 19 million. The South had around 5.5 million whites but only 317,000 slave owners and yet they convinced 5.2 million non slave owners to support the war and die so that the elite could keep owning 3.5 million slaves.

It isn't only Weimar Germany that's bound up with "hierarchical political and religious traditions, orderliness, obedience to authority." The Nazis had the Communists as their touchpoint/scapegoats - the US has perceptions of woke socialism and radical conservatism. You create blind order and obedience by fabricating an enemy to rally and unite against. It's really not that hard to parse the similarities.

 

[Brad Sallows]

I explained exactly what I meant in a prior reply; you’re trying to shift the goalposts and put words in my mouth.

What happened was what often happens: someone in politics/media descends to clown level by using the word "authoritarianism" (or sometimes "fascism") to describe what might happen in the US if Trump (or sometimes just Republicans) gains power again (despite the obvious absence of pursuit of authoritarianism/fascism previously). It is basic intellectual laziness: throw the "A" word or "F" word (or in other contexts, the "R" word "racism") at something. Then other people put on the makeup and join them in the ring.

What it looked like you exactly meant was that somehow, the actions of courts and legislatures acting independently within the scopes of their legitimate authority and subject to substantial open criticism by media and accountability at the ballot box, represented an "authoritarian shift". On what basis is any legislation, except that which limits exactly no-one, not "authoritarianism" from the point of view of anyone whose utter freedom is in some degree curtailed?

Here are some examples of "authoritarian shifts":

• a dear leader who exceeds his authority, albeit probably only by reference to a constitution which is so obviously ignored as to be a joke. But the US has a strong constitution, even if the dear leaders occasionally exceed their powers, in some cases after having earlier acknowledged that to act would exceed their powers. (Awkward, that!)
• packing a court with compliant judges so they will always vote the way the dear leader would prefer. That's not very likely, and almost certainly unlikely at Republican hands.
• media who habitually support the dear leader irrespective of how inconsistent and hypocritical they must be. Notwithstanding how much water they carry, even the most loyal sycophants of the media in the US have limits.
• a legislature that essentially rubber stamps dear leader's initiatives, all but absconding from its authority to set the rules of the game and check usurpation of its powers by dear leader.
• a fully compliant and obedient military, in which no-one would dare oppose or undermine dear leader.
• ditto civil service.

Notwithstanding its revolutionary war and civil war, the US has been around a long time and was annoyingly (to the true believers) resistant to the authoritarianism of the 1930s that gripped so much of Europe. Some cultures are prone to accepting the weights of chains, and some are not.

 

[Brad Sallows]

"hierarchical political and religious traditions, orderliness, obedience to authority."

Since clarity is required: catholicism is the hierarchical religious tradition which is likely at the heart of some cultures' willingness to be supine. Too many centuries under a pope and not enough Protestantism, which tends to make people independent-minded and difficult to overbear.

Any governance requires some orderliness and obedience to authority, but the US has always had a particular strain of orneriness. Certainly enough people complain about how unruly the despised classes are.

 

[Retired AF Guy]

It's what we do and many other countries. Do you recall any vote rigging in our elections? I can't think of any.

We use computers in our voting system.

 

[FJAG]

Since clarity is required: catholicism is the hierarchical religious tradition which is likely at the heart of some cultures' willingness to be supine. Too many centuries under a pope and not enough Protestantism, which tends to make people independent-minded and difficult to overbear.

I think that you are selling Protestantism short.

Once you convince someone to believe in some unseen higher power that has to be pleased through a variety of forms of fealty you have the foundation of an authoritarian hierarchy. It doesn't matter if it comes from a central power like a pope or a distributed one like a body of elders or mullahs. The key issue is whether it is self-limiting or not. Is it a movement that concerns itself solely with the souls of its voluntary membership or does it wish to achieve political power so as to impose its belief system on everyone. Therein lies the rub in the US. The schism there comes from a religion-based social conservatism which seeks political power in order to firmly cement their views of a Judeo-Christian code of ethics on the country as a whole while others oppose that.

If you are looking for true independent-minded and difficult to overbear population, look to atheist and even agnostics; albeit even they are open to other, non-religious, voluntary or involuntary authority.

With some exceptions, we're basically herd animals that want to belong to a group or pack. Individuals have little power by themselves. They surrender what they do have to the herd of their choice and its leadership. They decide on which herd to join not because they are supine but based on the perceived benefits that the herd offers them both in this life and, for those who believe in higher beings, in the afterlife. The biggest choice any individual can make is deciding what pack it wants to be associated with. After that its deciding when and how to leave the pack when it no longer provides the promised benefits.

 

[GR66]

If you are looking for true independent-minded and difficult to overbear population, look to atheist and even agnostics; albeit even they are open to other, non-religious, voluntary or involuntary authority.

 

[TacticalTea]

If you are looking for true independent-minded and difficult to overbear population, look to atheist and even agnostics

I strongly object to this assertion.

The modern Left has clearly demonstrated that, in the absence of a spiritual religion, humans will form a conformist political religion and submit to its dogmas with complete disregard for reality and the truth.

We can point to the cases of Richard Bilkszto and Bret Weinstein as manifestations of this cultism and its zealotry. Or to their narratives wrt gender and climate ideologies which would have you disbelieve your own lying eyes.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

We use computers in our voting system.

Ahhh what?

"Elections Canada, on the other hand, has no plans to introduce technology into the voting process, though it did allow voters to go online to request a paper-based mail-in ballot for the 2021 election. But beyond that, Elections Canada believes a human being casting a paper ballot and a human being processing and counting those paper ballots is still the best way to secure an election. And, indeed, that’s the way it’s been for every single federal election ever: paper ballots and human beings. Elections Canada, in fact, keeps all paper ballots cast in any federal general election or byelection in a warehouse near downtown Ottawa and only disposes of them after 10 years in storage."

 

[FJAG]

I strongly object to this assertion.

The modern Left has clearly demonstrated that, in the absence of a spiritual religion, humans will form a conformist political religion and submit to its dogmas with complete disregard for reality and the truth.

We can point to the cases of Richard Bilkszto and Bret Weinstein as manifestations of this cultism and its zealotry. Or to their narratives wrt gender and climate ideologies which would have you disbelieve your own lying eyes.

Except for the fact that the "left" is neither atheist nor agnostic. At least according to this survey:

A Gallup Poll released in 2019 indicated that 60% of Americans would be willing to vote for an atheist as president.[23] Research shows that candidates that are perceived to be religious are considered more trustworthy.[24] A 2020 PRRI American Values Survey found that of Democratic voters, 42% were Protestant while 23% identified as Catholic. The same survey found that of Republican voters, 54% were Protestant while only 18% were Catholic.[25]

So 65% of Democrats identify with the two main Christian religions and 72% of the Republicans. That's not a large enough difference to have any statistically significant meaning for any evaluation of the left or the right as a whole. Each side has its religious zealots and one could argue until the cows come home about the prattle of any one or another side's morons.

What you define as "clearly demonstrated" is purely subjective. Those who sit towards the extreme side of their own belief system tend to tar even the moderates on the other side as extremist simply because they sit so far from the centre. Extremist Republicans and "woke" Democrats even hound the more moderate members of their own parties. Neither the left nor the right has a monopoly on zealots and raving lunatics.

Those of us who occupy the centre--in my case the centre-right (fiscally conservative but socially liberal)--throw curses on the extremists of both intolerant houses.

 

[Blackadder1916]

. . . (fiscally conservative but socially liberal) . . .

So, Progressive Conservative

 

[FJAG]

Ahhh what?

"Elections Canada, on the other hand, has no plans to introduce technology into the voting process, though it did allow voters to go online to request a paper-based mail-in ballot for the 2021 election. But beyond that, Elections Canada believes a human being casting a paper ballot and a human being processing and counting those paper ballots is still the best way to secure an election. And, indeed, that’s the way it’s been for every single federal election ever: paper ballots and human beings. Elections Canada, in fact, keeps all paper ballots cast in any federal general election or byelection in a warehouse near downtown Ottawa and only disposes of them after 10 years in storage."

I'll go a step further and say that we never should go to computer voting. I think there is a need to require some minor effort on the part of the citizen to exercise their right to vote. Walking up to a polling booth where the lines are not a mile long like in some States or even completing and mailing in a mail-in ballot should continue to be required. I really don't want to see every cellphone owner using an app to vote while drinking their latte or beer or smoking a joint.

I've been a scrutineer in the past and am also quite fond of the process of physical counting and objecting to ballots (as long as the scrutineer next to me doesn't have the right to open carry an assault rifle or conceal carry a pistol while doing his job). It allows for human objections and a judicial determination of the validity of the vote based on clearly set criteria.

The biggest difference, however, is that our election process is run by an independent (as much as anything can be these days) organization and not by 51 separate yet highly politicized organizations. In fact, I'm still amazed at how well those entities running the last presidential election withstood the enormous pressure put on them by the extremists. It makes me wonder if any unbiased workers will show up to take that kind of crap again.

 

[FJAG]

So, Progressive Conservative

Very much so and still lament the day that "progressive" was taken out of the name and spirit of the party. I still trend that way and am still searching for the herd among today's contenders that represents me best.

 

[Remius]

Very much so and still lament the day that "progressive" was taken out of the name and spirit of the party. I still trend that way and am still searching for the herd among today's contenders that represents me best.

I share that lament…