Dear Reader,
New opportunities arise and must be taken. Thus, your Musical Patriot has a new music job. It has been time-consuming, even all-consuming in ways.
At the same time, I have not forgotten my blog duties, and plan to continue here as time permits.
In the meantime, events almost seem to defy explanation. This condition should not dissuade the astute writer.
See you here.
TMP
Forward Party seeks to move the country ahead through a united, centrist political movement and party.
Christy Todd Whitman speaks about party on CNN’s Jake Tapper program today.
Party web site here:
By capturing the referees [such as judges], buying off or enfeebling opponents, and rewriting the rules of the game. elected leaders can establish a decisive -- and permanent -- advantage over their opponents. Because these measures are carried out piecemeal and with the appearance of legality, the drift into authoritarianism doesn't always set off alarm bells. Citizens are often slow to realize that their democracy is being dismantled -- even as it happens before their eyes.
-- How Democracies Die
This is so important to understand now -- in America and around the world.There is a common old phrase: pulling the wool over the eyes. But how do tyrants accomplish this? First, as the authors make clear, the stage is often set on a background of a functioning democracy. Next, there is some sort of crisis, either real or manufactured, which unites the country based on fear for one's very life. Then, the would-be autocrat pushes through measures to "protect" the country At this time, citizens are usually too frightened to protest much, if at all.
There is more to this oft-told tale of history. But the outline is pretty much the same. In the case of the United States, Levitsky and Ziblatt point to the aftermath of the events of September 11, '01, when control measures and a spying apparatus were enacted such as never would have been tolerated in America otherwise.
Please do not think tyranny could not happen here, for in some measure, it is already here. And we came terrifyingly close to making it a permanent situation on January 6, 2001. I encourage all readers to take this with the utmost seriousness. Become informed, then work non-violently to ensure America never yields to the ugly blackness of fascism.
At this point in How Democracies Die I am learning about various democracies which have been subverted by leaders who were legitimately elected. Such a leader has been Orban. Another is Erdogan. A third could have been Trump had he not been stopped.
So we are in the unenviable situation in the U.S. of having not only a menace represented by a certain velocitous disdain for anyone different from oneself, from the far-right -- we also have an unrestrained and unrepentant former President who is being shown to be not only authoritarian but a subvert-er of democracy. This is the grave danger we face. Our current peril must not be ignored.
The greatest danger we face other than an increasingly organized far-right movement, are certain members of the press who continue to treat the Republican Party as a legitimate political party. This is no longer true of the Party, and is grossly unfair to the country. . Certainly there are still decent people attached to the Republican Party. But the party itself is led by election-deniers and those who would weaken our democratic norms if necessary to gain or stay in power. This is the looming tragedy of our time. Some think the tragedy has already occurred, for many suffering people.
In some ways How Democracies Die is not the book I was expecting. I thought it was probably a book about special interest politics, centered around issues such as the environment and civil rights -- worthy topics, to be sure.
However, the book is much deeper than that in terms of American politics. It is carefully researched, with ample explanations of past Presidential nomination processes Still early in the book, I will have to read much more before getting to solutions for correctrive action. But what the book is saying is that the Presidential nominating process -- especially in the Republican Party -- has weakened the influence of the gatekeepers -- those who in the past prevented unworthy (read: inexperienced, aged, or off-the-wall). candidates from even being nominated. Right away, this helps explain the appearance of someone like Donald Trump, a person with no governmental experience, and who "'[had] little to lose by stirring up mass hatreds or making absurd promises.'" (p. 51)
America is in a crisis of democracy, partly because of "more democracy," or at least the wrong kind of democracy. We must remember that the Founding Fathers feared the mob as much as they feared a monarch. That is why the democracy was to be a representative democracy -- a government of the people, but run by the cream of the crop of its citizens.
How ,then, to meet the crisis? Later I will have the input of the rest of the book. For now, we must be willing to study on an expedited basis (!), then act to ensure the US. does not fall into the status of a Banana Republic with strongmen (rarely women) man-handling the populace essentially for the benefit of himself and the wealthy. How democracies Die is a most useful, even essential, resource for the battle of now.
More about this book in coming posts
Amidst the understandable moaning and groaning over the very regrettable recent Supreme Court decisions comes a New York Times opinion piece offering very real hope. The article gives no magic answer to the distress caused by these egregious opinions, defiant of the public will as they are. It does,however, show that even in the Constitution itself, Congress was essentially given the power to regulate the Supreme Court even to the point of decideing which cases could and could not be heard.
For those upset over the damage this Court has done to the body politic these last two weeks, Jamelle Bouie offers surcease from sorrows and balm in Gilead.
This article appears to be hiding behind the Times' paywall, and sadly will not be available to all readers. Look for the article in the Sunday Review section, July 3, 2022, p. 11.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez claims to be witness to the fact.
Rush Post
(New York, NY) — Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls the overturning of Roe v. Wade “a crisis of democracy.” Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, the New York Democrat called the decision a lot bigger than abortion rights. Ocasio-Cortez said the conservative justices misled Americans about their stance on abortion rights during their confirmation hearings. She said those contradictions caused a “crisis of legitimacy” and that “lying” under oath should be an impeachable offense.
Quick Link —
How “Neutron” Jack influenced America’s business tycoons and undermined the economy:
Certainly there are many differences between Spring 2022, and the late 1960’s. Sometimes, however, it is useful to find commonalities.
In both eras, America was funding war in a foreign country. In both there was raging inflation. Both times there continued to be significant poverty in America.
The Vietnam War did not turn out well. Speaking honestly, how do we think the Russo-Ukrainian war is working out? Sometimes it is also useful to simplify. Such a time is now.
N.B. LBJ was Lyndon Baines Johnson, President of the United States during the Vietnam War.
Here, then, is my latest book: Capital by Thomas Piketty. In this tome I am expecting to find both history and analysis of the profit system, often called simply capitalism. Now, I am against neither capital (money), nor a simple profit made by an entrepreneur allowing him to feed, shelter, and clothe his (or her) family, as well as obtain some of the finer things of life.
The difficulty arises when there is an imbalance -- one person to another, or one group to another. One group gets too much money, the other gets too little. In one sense the matter is as simple as this. As Piketty writes: The problem is that the price system knows neither limits nor morality. Is this the kind of system we really want? And can it even survive?
The book shown above blazes new trails in its description of the problems facing Big Tech, and as a result, our society. And in this sense, "society" is suddenly what could be considered the world society. The book is almost dizzying in its return to an ethical framework for both individual lives and Big Tech.
Well-chronicled here are the early savants and young billionaires who used the new computer/Internet technologies for both good and ill.
The book is stunning in scope and depth. Highly recommended.
