Tag: Authoritarianism
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Rapists At Heart
Rape is not a sexual act. It’s a power play. Almost exclusively male. The rapist thinks he can violate another person’s personal space – their most intimate personal space(s) – at will and with total impunity. That they derive sexual satisfaction from it – that’s icing. Power is always the cake. When rapists finish and…
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Conservatism = The Death Of Innovation
I take conservatives and conservatism at their word: they’re all about conserving things. My question is always: “what?”. What is it exactly that any conservative wants to conserve? It can’t be the future, of course, because the future – not existing yet – can’t be conserved. That leaves the present and past for conservatives. Okay……
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The Picture Definition Of “Treason”
“Treason” is a loaded word. At least it used to be. Like “Nazi” or “fascist” or “authoritarian”, “treason” was a word that, if you were the first to spew it, it meant you weren’t serious, that you were all feelings over facts. Ironically, in America, it’s still one hundred percent kosher to call anyone left…
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Why Treason Matters
Pull almost any thread on the various crises crippling America and (as it unravels the sweater that was the greatest experiment ever in human self-government), it will lead you to treason. The ongoing threat to our democracy – the Republican Party’s out-in-the-open embrace of authoritarianism – is an act of treason unto itself. But, the…
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Not All Polling Disapproval Numbers Are Created Equal
One can make poll numbers say anything depending on how you frame them. Donald Trump’s poll numbers were especially terrible; h is average approval rating across his entire term was 41.1%, the lowest ever measured by Gallup. When you break that down even further, Trump’s approvals were 4% among Democrats, 30% among independents and 82%…
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The Only “Good Way” For A Democrat To Counter “Critical Race Theory” Is For The News Media To Have Resisted The Rabbit Hole To Begin With
Fascists, authoritarians, seditionists and Republicans all adore rabbit holes, the deeper, the darker, the flat-out crazier the better… What makes the whole “Critical Race Theory” conversation so perfect for them is that their rage isn’t based on anything. Well, not anything real. It’s a balsa wood chimera and that’s super ironic because there really is…
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America’s Exceptionalism — Its DIVERSITY — Will Save Us From The GOP’s Authoritarian Power Grab
In his indispensable book “On Tyranny”, Timothy Snyder lays out the fairly predictable tick tock that democracies experience while succumbing to authoritarianism. It’s impossible not to see us well into that experience. Someone claiming to tweet for German film maker Werner Herzog put it this way (Herzog doesn’t do social media: the tweet itself is…
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Can America Ever Forgive The Republican Party For What It’s Done?
I’m all for kissing and making up. But, kissing and making up for the sake of kissing and making up usually ends badly. The compromises made just to get along aren’t genuine or satisfying. They were entirely situation and now that the situation’s changed? Up until now, America — well, the Democrats — have been…
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Why It’s Really, Really Important That We Beat Trump At The Polls: The Rest Of The World Is Counting On It
There are myriad reasons why authoritarianism is on the rise across the planet. The biggest reason is the success (so far) of authoritarianism here in America. Having Donald Trump in power signals every other tinpot dictator to get his game on. If Putin could pull this off and diminish America, imagine the destruction he could…
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What Will Americans Do If Trump Goes For Broke — And “Makes Us” An Authoritarian Shithole?
Remember back not so long ago when wacky people on the left said things like “Russia controls Trump!” and people would laugh at us? Remember back when people would, reluctantly, compare Trump & Republicans to Nazis and other people would lose their shit because “how dare you compare anyone to Nazis!”? What Trump & the…