Actual headline: "Life in authoritarian states is mostly boring and tolerable."
Of course, it's a piece about Trump.
How strange an argument for a parallel with Trump, though: "[Y]ou usually learn that you are no longer living in a democracy not because The Government Is Taking Away Your Rights, or passing laws that you oppose, or because there is a coup or a quisling. You know that you are no longer living in a democracy because the elections in which you are participating no longer can yield political change."
This last election was probably the most momentous in my lifetime, except possibly Reagan v. Carter in 1980. A few votes in a few states and we'd be facing a completely different future. If this is the measure, America must be the least authoritarian place it's easy to find. Brexit was a strike against authoritarianism too. Every nationalist movement in Europe is about telling the EU that the People of Our Nation will no longer be commanded by a distant bureaucracy of which they have no vote.
2 comments:
I assume "yielding political change" means "advancing my particular agenda."
The effect of presidents and Congress on us is at the margins for most Americans. The military would be a significant exception to that pronouncement of mine, and some who do considerable business internationally. Yet for the rest, a hundred other factors of family, health, and local government have far more effect.
What remains is the symbolism of how people feel they are being represented. Even with setbacks, The Cathedral has felt it has been winning on the long march. This defeat is simply intolerable to them.
I remain deeply suspicious of Trump, but I admit I am loving how he is torquing off all the right people, causing them to make stupid statements.
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