Hot Take: NY Times Says Authoritarian Rule Is Just Around The Corner

Excitable Paul Krugman is Very Concerned. See, he thinks authoritarian rule is coming, but fails to mention all the people arrested, detained, and fined over failing to social distance. Like that guy on the paddleboard who wasn’t near anyone. Or how about the use of ankle monitors in Kentucky? And using Google data to track where everyone is going? And more? Nope, something different, in a piece that would have been in Prison Planet or the Democratic Underground 10 years ago

American Democracy May Be Dying
Authoritarian rule may be just around the corner.

(info on the really bad unemployment data)

Yet the scariest news of the past week didn’t involve either epidemiology or economics; it was the travesty of an election in Wisconsin, where the Supreme Court required that in-person voting proceed despite the health risks and the fact that many who requested absentee ballots never got them.

Why was this so scary? Because it shows that America as we know it may not survive much longer. The pandemic will eventually end; the economy will eventually recover. But democracy, once lost, may never come back. And we’re much closer to losing our democracy than many people realize.

To see how a modern democracy can die, look at events in Europe, especially Hungary, over the past decade.

What happened in Hungary, beginning in 2011, was that Fidesz, the nation’s white nationalist ruling party, took advantage of its position to rig the electoral system, effectively making its rule permanent. Then it further consolidated its control, using political power to reward friendly businesses while punishing critics, and moved to suppress independent news media.

Until recently, it seemed as if Viktor Orban, Hungary’s de facto dictator, might stop with soft authoritarianism, presiding over a regime that preserved some of the outward forms of democracy, neutralizing and punishing opposition without actually making criticism illegal. But now his government has used the coronavirus as an excuse to abandon even the pretense of constitutional government, giving Orban the power to rule by decree.

Obviously, you can see where Conspiracy Theorist Paul is going. And he links this all to the recent primary in Wisconsin, in which the GOP forced them to vote in person, because that’s kinda what the law requires. And the GOP is only in charge of the legislature because of gerrymandering (the Dems never do that, right?), even though Dems had more votes (funny how they hate allowing other people their voices). And this all means

This November, it’s all too possible that Trump will eke out an Electoral College win thanks to widespread voter suppression. If he does — or even if he wins cleanly — everything we’ve seen suggests that he will use a second term to punish everyone he sees as a domestic enemy, and that his party will back him all the way. That is, America will do a full Hungary.

See, it was Trump who forced Hillary to forgo visiting several states she needed, like Wisconsin. And be a terrible candidate and a terrible person. And pass out on 9/11. And violate all those national security rules, regs, and laws.

What if Trump loses? You know what he’ll do: He’ll claim that Joe Biden’s victory was based on voter fraud, that millions of illegal immigrants cast ballots or something like that. Would the Republican Party, and perhaps more important, Fox News, support his refusal to accept reality? What do you think?

Paul should just come out and write it, having gone this far: he thinks Trump will go dictator and refuse to leave. But, we’ve seen this same thing when it came to George Bush in 2004 and 2008, but those conpiracy theories came more from places like Prison Planet, the Democratic Underground, the Daily Kos, and other hardcore places, not the New York Times

So that’s why what just happened in Wisconsin scares me more than either disease or depression. For it shows that one of our two major parties simply doesn’t believe in democracy. Authoritarian rule may be just around the corner.

See, all those people getting sick and dying isn’t that bad in Paul’s World. The First Street Journal notes that the Supreme Court refused to change the voting laws in Wisconsin, especially when there were no provisions of mail in ballot security. Further

Dr Krugman bemoans his fears of authoritarian rule, yet the left in general, and The New York Times specifically, have been cheering that very same authoritarian rule by Democratic governors and mayors, with our constitutional rights under the First, Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments just blithely swept aside, as the majority of the public seem to support. When we are allowing, with only a few ineffectual protests, state Governors to use the force of law, backed up by police power, to confine people to their homes, to stop cars with out-of-state license plates, and to go door-to-door demanding to know if a resident has been in a certain place, all done without a warrant, all done without any semblance of due process of law, all done without people having a day in court, that is when we are experiencing authoritarian rule, and the esteemed Dr Krugman hasn’t uttered the first peep of protest over it.

Yup. I don’t see Paul complaining about NYC, where the Times is located, raising fines for not social distancing from $500 to $1000.