The rise of American authoritarianism

[derspiess]

Thanks for posting this  Tim.  It is an interesting explanation.  I am not sure it gives us the whole explanation for the lunacy gripping the Republican party but it gives an interesting explanation for part of the appeal.

  It's a Vox article.  I usually assume Vox stuff to be satire.  Reads more easily that way.

[grumbler]

Who's more authoritarian than Zerobama who rules by decree without congressional approval.

Mitch McConnell who rules by decree without congressional approval.

[grumbler]

Probably because they were measuring proxies for the psychological phenomenon.

  Their proxies for the psychological phenomenon of authoritarianism seem much further off than even what they are for political authoritarianism.  The fact that the author calls it "a niche subfield of political science" is even further confusing, because it leads the reader to believe that they are referring to authoritarianism as understood in political science.  Thank Hod you saw through that! 

[The Minsky Moment]

Who's more authoritarian than Zerobama who rules by decree without congressional approval.

Mitch McConnell who rules by decree without congressional approval.

But then there's the House, where Paul Ryan now fails to rule by smoke and mirrors with only the occasional approval of his herd of mangy cats.  And Siege has a point, because an institution that chaotic and dysfunctional cannot be accused of authoritarianism.  Incompetence, ignorance, and ineptness, yes.  But not authoritarianism.

[Norgy]

Who's more authoritarian than Zerobama who rules by decree without congressional approval.

Now that's just silly.

I guess from your perspective, it's easy to laugh off Obama's power grab via executive orders as "silly".  Here in the US we have to live under it.

I am of course not well-versed in the dos and dont's of constitutional democracy ( ), but the idea that Obama, just because you dislike him, is ruling without consent is silly. Congress seem to me like a bunch of eejits, especially Ryan and McConnell.
Not approving Obama's right to select a new supreme court judge? Childish and petty.

[Berkut]

I thought the article was very interesting, and had some interesting explanations for the Trump class of voters that answered questions that I haven't seen answered elsewhere.

[garbon]

The article struck me as casting about in an attempt to find a theory that might explain people who vote for Trump. It felt like an overreach when it suggested that model would now suggest this will be a continued trend in who voters vote for.

[Grallon]

The possibility of Trump winning the GOP convention is now conceivable - should he succeed, does he have any chance of winning against Hillary?



G.

[Malthus]

I kinda liked the analysis in this article:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/gop-overwhelmed-by-debt

To summarize: the Republicans have been, for years, engaging in tactics of demonization and conspiracy-mongering that have no relationship to facts or logic; such tactics have proved popular. The notion of the leadership was that they could turn on the nonsense to convince the rubes, then turn to governing when they win. This was already a problem for them before Trump came along.

Now, along comes a guy who cleverly creates a campaign that consists of nothing but such absurd statements. The Republican establishment would love to get rid of him, but have, effectively, no tools to dos so; how can they counter (for example) Trump's claim that he is being persecuted by the IRS for being a "Committed Christian" - when they have indulged themselves in exactly that sort of reality-ignoring tactic? He's speaking the language they invented, only better then them, because he doesn't give a shit about whether any of it is possible, or about actual real-world consequences - while establishment Republicans have one eye on the fact that talking smack has to have limits, that governing requires real-world and fact-based input.

Republicans who fail to talk this language have been effectively shut out.   

The truth is virtually Trump's entire campaign is built on stuff just like this, whether it's about mass deportation, race, the persecution of Christians, Obamacare, the coming debt crisis and a million other things. At the last debate, Trump got pressed on his completely ludicrous tax cut plan. He eventually said growth (which if you calculate it would need to be something like 20% annual growth on average) would take care of the huge budget shortfall it created. But Republicans can't really dispute this point since all of Republican campaign economics is based on precisely the same argument. What about Obamacare? Can Marco "Establishment" Rubio really get traction attacking Trump for having no specific plan to replace Obamacare when Republicans have spent the last five years repeatedly voting to repeal Obamacare without ever specifying a plan to replace it with? On each of these fronts, the slow accumulation of nonsense and paranoia - 'debt' to use our metaphor - built into a massive trap door under the notional GOP leadership with a lever that a canny huckster like Trump could come in and pull pretty much whenever. This is the downside of building party identity around a package of calculated nonsense and comically unrealizable goals.

[derspiess]

I am of course not well-versed in the dos and dont's of constitutional democracy ( ), but the idea that Obama, just because you dislike him, is ruling without consent is silly. Congress seem to me like a bunch of eejits, especially Ryan and McConnell.
Not approving Obama's right to select a new supreme court judge? Childish and petty.

I may not have been 100% serious

[derspiess]

The possibility of Trump winning the GOP convention is now conceivable - should he succeed, does he have any chance of winning against Hillary?



G.

Nobody knows.  Conventional wisdom states that Hillary will trounce Trump and win by a landslide that gets called for her as soon as the polls close. But conventional wisdom has taken a few swift kicks in the nuts so far during the primaries, so who knows.

[crazy canuck]

Probably because they were measuring proxies for the psychological phenomenon.

  Their proxies for the psychological phenomenon of authoritarianism seem much further off

What proxies would you suggest?

[Valmy]

Nobody knows.  Conventional wisdom states that Hillary will trounce Trump and win by a landslide that gets called for her as soon as the polls close. But conventional wisdom has taken a few swift kicks in the nuts so far during the primaries, so who knows.

Yeah I think it will not be easy for Hillary to prevail in that scenario. She is hated by lots of people and has a large track record for Trump to attack.

[viper37]

Thanks for posting this  Tim.  It is an interesting explanation.  I am not sure it gives us the whole explanation for the lunacy gripping the Republican party but it gives an interesting explanation for part of the appeal.

it is no different than what happenned before and what is happening elsewhere.
People react to a perceive threat and seek to eliminate it.
In the past, in the US, Indians were seen as a threat and were forcefully eliminated.  French speakers were a threat to their way of life and laws were passed to deal with it.  The Federal government was a threat to Southerner's lifestyle, they took actions to deal with it.  Europeans have a fear of massive immigration that increase exponentially to the number of migrants, government become more&more authoritarian.

[Berkut]

I kinda liked the analysis in this article:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/gop-overwhelmed-by-debt

To summarize: the Republicans have been, for years, engaging in tactics of demonization and conspiracy-mongering that have no relationship to facts or logic; such tactics have proved popular. The notion of the leadership was that they could turn on the nonsense to convince the rubes, then turn to governing when they win. This was already a problem for them before Trump came along.

Now, along comes a guy who cleverly creates a campaign that consists of nothing but such absurd statements. The Republican establishment would love to get rid of him, but have, effectively, no tools to dos so; how can they counter (for example) Trump's claim that he is being persecuted by the IRS for being a "Committed Christian" - when they have indulged themselves in exactly that sort of reality-ignoring tactic? He's speaking the language they invented, only better then them, because he doesn't give a shit about whether any of it is possible, or about actual real-world consequences - while establishment Republicans have one eye on the fact that talking smack has to have limits, that governing requires real-world and fact-based input.

Republicans who fail to talk this language have been effectively shut out.   

The truth is virtually Trump's entire campaign is built on stuff just like this, whether it's about mass deportation, race, the persecution of Christians, Obamacare, the coming debt crisis and a million other things. At the last debate, Trump got pressed on his completely ludicrous tax cut plan. He eventually said growth (which if you calculate it would need to be something like 20% annual growth on average) would take care of the huge budget shortfall it created. But Republicans can't really dispute this point since all of Republican campaign economics is based on precisely the same argument. What about Obamacare? Can Marco "Establishment" Rubio really get traction attacking Trump for having no specific plan to replace Obamacare when Republicans have spent the last five years repeatedly voting to repeal Obamacare without ever specifying a plan to replace it with? On each of these fronts, the slow accumulation of nonsense and paranoia - 'debt' to use our metaphor - built into a massive trap door under the notional GOP leadership with a lever that a canny huckster like Trump could come in and pull pretty much whenever. This is the downside of building party identity around a package of calculated nonsense and comically unrealizable goals.

I've been saying that this would be the end result of the Fox News "information" model for some time.

Beebs assured me that was crazy.