Did I? I don’t believe I said that you said anything. Please point it out. You probably can’t. Similar to those who can’t point out how the US is an “authoritative state”.
Chicken Little specifically predicted the sky would fall. You, on the other hand, have avoided any specifics, just vague warnings that things will get really, really bad, and claiming every headline as proof of your prescience. You haven’t predicted anything, so please stop.
You may be right. Me, I’d like to learn more about how the thing made its way into the qualifying criteria in the first place, and maybe something about how it’s been being applied before deciding whether I do.
Can you imagine the hullabaloo if Obama had even suggested something even remotely similar?
It’s Trump’s version of The Emperor’s New Clothes. In this case, it’s The President’s Constitution.
I’ve had a few experiences with living in an authoritarian state. First, I lived in South Korea under the first President Park. As you say, most people went about their daily mission (make money, feed the family, survive). Those who thought they could challenge the government generally didn’t have a good time of it.
Next, I lived in Guangdong Province, China. The city I lived in is considered small by Chinese standards (~5,000,000). Almost every day for a couple of months, I saw protests in the park near City Hall. They were very low-key protests. It wasn’t until my next stint in China that the protests went high-key and the troops were sent in (People’s Armed Police, not the People’s Liberation Army) and a couple of people died. The upshot of the protests was that, besides the deaths, key people in the city government and local party apparatus were prosecuted or otherwise disciplined under Xi’s anti-corruption drive. If China’s liberal in anything, it’s certainly in the application of capital punishment. That tends to put a damper on sticking your neck out. And there is rampant censorship.
Finally, I’m living in Beijing and that’s even more authoritarian than the far south. First, there are not any local elections. Second, the city government/party apparatus is fond of announcing “big events” and attendant to said events is martial law in various places in the city. Of course, there are other things in daily life that show it is authoritarian: opaque judiciary, lack of actual input in legislative issues, requirement to have a hukou for such basic things as education, renting an apartment or house, and even for medical care. Of course there is also rampant censorship, including WeChat and QQ messaging services.
But this isn’t any different than what’s been going on for the last 40 years. The conservative states pass laws that nibble at the edges of Roe vs Wade and then they usually get struck down by the courts. They’re just trying again hoping that Kavanaugh gives them the edge. But until the Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade, none of these new laws are going to take effect. I agree with you that it’s not going to end, but it’s nothing new.
And actually, now that I think about it, I disagree with your assertion that they are winning by tearing down what our country was built on and rebuilding it as a white supremacist, god-fearing country. Unfortunately, our country was founded as a white supremacist country. It took us 90 years to stop owning people. Then it took another 60 before women were allowed to vote. It took 40 more years before we got serious about allowing black people to vote. And for blacks and whites to marry. But since then - the women’s liberation movement, gay rights, gay marriage, transgender rights; change is coming faster and faster. Progressives are winning. Conservatives are backed into a corner and they are dangerous right now - we have to keep fighting. But progressives are winning.
I grew up in a small town during the 60s and 70s. I didn’t know any black people. I didn’t think I knew any gay people (I was wrong). I laughed at and told jokes about black people and gay people (I was wrong). Then I went to college and met black students. My best friend told me he was gay. Gradually my view of the world changed and I began overcoming my prejudices, so as I got more out into the world and began meeting people from lots of other kinds of cultures, I was better able to accept all those challenges to my initial small world view. Contrast that with my sons who are in high school right now, and different cultures mixed together is their default. They don’t have to get over their prejudices, because they didn’t have them to start with. That’s how I know the progressives are winning.
So, yes, we started as a white supremacist country, but we’ve been trying, and succeeding, from the beginning to change that. Yes, it’s going too slow, and yes, some conservatives are trying to push things back to the way they were, but there are too many different kinds of people saying fuck that, we like the gains we’ve made and we want more. The situation today is kind of like the Battle of the Bulge. The conservatives have made a strong attack which has pushed the lines back. But the progressives have the bigger, more diverse army and we can, will and must win this war.
Prescriptivist checking in: Please try to avoid using the term “conservatives” when speaking (posting) about reactionaries. Especially the ones as radical as those to whom you refer. The Language virtually groans under the strain generated by the paradox.
…they aren’t “nibbling at the edges” of Roe vs Wade. They are trying to steamroll right over the top of it. The game has changed. This isn’t the “same thing” that has been happening over the last 40 years. This is a significant acceleration. I have no fucking idea how any of this is going to play out. But as the Slate article I posted pointed out:
They aren’t overreacting. I am not overreacting. This is a goddamn emergency. “Nibbling?” I mean what the fuck?
Progressives are complacent. Women’s liberation came about because women stepped up a fought for their rights. Gay marriage and gay rights came about because gay people came out (literally) and fought for those rights. And the battle for transgender rights isn’t even close to “being won.” All those hard-fought battles can be overturned at the stroke of a pen. We are watching that happen right now.
Progressives aren’t winning. The people that want to take away women’s rights and gay rights and transgender rights are not going to go away. Trump still has 46% approval rating. (Obama, at the same time in his term only had 44% approval) Progressives aren’t winning because several states have just signed into law restrictive abortion bills. They aren’t winning because transgender people can no longer join the military. They aren’t winning because they are on the defensive. And they will always be on the defensive and the best they will ever be able to do is to marginalise the voices that seek to silence them.
Congratulations on “being woke.” Unfortunately that doesn’t fucking matter if the people that “aren’t woke” control the administration, the senate and the federal courts.
The “conservatives” are playing fucking dirty and the “centerists” are too far up their own arses to realize what they are doing. The progressives should be winning. They are bigger and more diverse. But the progressives are being fought by both the “centerists” **and **the “conservatives.” The centerists keep telling the progressives to “shut up we want to win the marginal Trump supporter.” The centerists need a fucking wake-up-call.
This isn’t the “Battle of the Bulge.” This isn’t a traditional war and the metaphor doesn’t fit whats actually going on. They control the Federal Government, the Senate, they are packing the Federal Courts at an unprecedented rate. And its the last one that will won’t be able to be fixed readily, even if Trump gets kicked out of office in 2020. And heaven forbid something happens to Ginsberg.
People could adapt to living in an authoritarian state. What people have a harder time adapting to is the idea that a corrupt regime takes your hard-earned tax money to enrich themselves and their cronies, allows the businesses you buy from to cheat you blind, allows the companies you work for to cheat you out of income, allows the factories and mines your son/uncle/father/uncle works for to literally kill them, and that there just isn’t damn much you or anyone can do about it short of rebellion. As you say, people who challenge the government generally don’t have a good time of it. At least in America, we have elections in which people can decide who gets to run things, but in China there’s really no such thing. And in Russia and other places, there are “elections” but they’re kind of a joke.
When I say that America’s becoming more authoritarian, I don’t mean that it’s necessarily going to turn into Saudi Arabia or North Korea, but it could become a LOT more like, say, Turkey or Russia, where we have democracy in theory, but in reality it is a democracy that is highly flawed and suspect. People would still live life, eat out at restaurants, spend money as they please, even vote. But our ability to get corrupt people out of power would be seriously undermined, and it would have noticeable consequences.
It takes collective outrage to push bad people out of power, and even then, it doesn’t guarantee that things will get better. You have to have people who can actually run the government and keep everyone’s electricity on and water running.
You make some good points, but one thing I’ve mentioned before is what Yale Prof David Blight refers to as revolution vs counter-revolution. Take, for instance, the American Civil War, the slavery amendments, and the Reconstruction era installation of freedmen in government – that was an example of a revolution. But the Reconstruction era violence against black freedmen and the white members of the freedmen’s bureau, eventually driving them out of the South after the election of 1876, coupled with the Jim Crow era that followed, is an example of a counter-revolution. And the point to keep in mind is that counter-revolutions can succeed, and they can have long-lasting consequences.