In the immediate post-Trump moment and in the middle of the Russian war to extinguish democracy in Ukraine, The New Republic hosted an online forum with three authors, all of whom write about the state of democracy in the world.
It was a fairly depressing show, although full of smart insights. Moderator (and New Republic Editor) Michael Tomasky and three author-guests are all worried about the health and future of democracy in both the world (with autocratic Russia’s invasion of democratic Ukraine in mind) and the United States (having just survived, at least for the moment, a democracy disrespecting president who worked to steal a second term, and didn’t miss it by all that much).
Journalist and author David Rieff, who wrote a great book about the civil war in Bosnia in the 1990s, took the present moment to signal that the immediate post-Cold War period, sometimes referred to as the dawning of an age of “the long peace,” is over, if it ever really occurred.
But the attempted Russian overthrow of democracy in Ukraine is not the resumption of the old Cold War. The new superpower rivalry is between the United States and China, and the panelists noted that the global alternative to the U.S. model is now China, which practices a combination of authoritarianism and capitalism and now represents the key rivalry that defines the current moment and the foreseeable future, Rieff said.
China has brought hundreds of millions of its people out of poverty, without giving them democracy. If you’re poor and hungry, Rieff asked, what means more to you: food or freedom?
He answered his own question thus: “First grub, then ethics,” he said. And he tossed in a reference to the rise of Donald Trump, who seemed, at least to his supporters, to be offering likewise a choice between democracy and prosperity.
In the panel discussion, Rieff asserted that the portion of earthlings living under full democracy is down from its peak by something approaching a third. That’s creepy, if true, although I suppose data is hard to come by.
Rieff also tossed in a reference to the question of whether the United States really represents full democracy as much as we are raised to believe, considering the famous undemocratic features of the U.S. system like the U.S. Senate (where California and Wyoming have equal power), and the electoral college system, in which the popular-vote loser can defeat the popular-vote winner, and the role that money plays in allowing some citizens to matter more than others in our politics.
Panelist Barbara F. Walter, a University of California at San Diego professor who writes about something called “anocracy,” brought that concept into the discussion to complicate the question of whether nations really face a choice between tyranny and democracy.
(An anocracy is a form of government that is neither a full democracy nor a full dictatorship, but has elements of both. I wrote a separate piece on Walter’s work, when I first heard of anocracy. She believes that full democracies rarely have civil wars. And full autocracies rarely have civil wars. It’s the anocracies in between that are particularly at risk.)
Walter asserts that the United States is best understood as an anocracy, with state-by-state differences in who gets to vote and how easy it is to vote (among other factors), complicating the straightforward choice between democracy and totalitarian regimes.
Recent presidential elections have been full of examples of states that make it easier or harder to vote, and, of course, Republicans and Donald Trump have been in full rebellion against ways, generally favored by Democrats, to make it easier to vote.
Partial democracies (such as ours, under this telling) can provide opportunities for political parties to take advantage of racial and religious differences, Walter said. And that decreases the likelihood that the losing side in an election will peacefully abide by the result. Walter has argued that full democracies rarely have civil wars. And full autocracies rarely have civil wars. It’s the ones that are in between that are particularly at risk.
The third panelist was Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at University of California San Diego, whose most recent book, “Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present,” included Trump as one of the strongmen rulers in the Mussolini mold.
She said that Trump had autocratic aims to run the country as a cult of Trump, in which the personal needs and wants of the leader can be achieved by decree; a system in which, she said, “loyalty to the leader, rather than competence, become the key reason for holding office.”
She was struck by the cultish decision of the Republican Party heading into the 2020 campaign to forego adopting a party platform (as major parties have adopted for centuries).
She talked about Trump’s Jan. 6 scheme to steal a second term (she called it a “self-coup”), which she said comes from the playbook of autocrats. She also referred to it as a “leader-cult rescue operation.” The last point is that if you want to have “a leadership culture that supports autocracy.”
She added: “As a first generation American, I will never get over the fact that someone as criminal as Trump was able to be in the White House, and he was criminal in so many ways.”
Tomasky, who moderated this event is, by the way, editor of not only the long-time liberal New Republic but he also edits also a quarterly journal on democracy (named, aptly, “Democracy.”)
I’d like to provide a link to the whole online discussion, but TNR hasn’t posted the video yet. I will include a link here once it is.
It was a learning experience – for me.
Decades ago, while teaching Western Civilization in a public high school in another state, my classes were exploring the notion of self-government while considering the topic of “revolution.” As part of a discussion that spread out over several classroom hours, I asked them a rhetorical question:
“If you could actually choose your government and material lifestyle – today – which would you choose?”
I gave them two options.
Option One will provide you a materially comfortable standard of living, equivalent to what you have now [this was a middle-class high school in a middle-class community], but you would have no voice – none – in how you were governed personally, or how government operated in the society. You will never have the right to vote, or otherwise influence your society’s government. So, materially comfortable, politically powerless.
Option Two will provide you with a direct voice in your government and its operation, both as it affects you personally, and also as it affects the society as a whole. Your right to vote will be treated as sacred and inviolable. The tradeoff is that there is no guarantee of any degree of material comfort. Some of you will be lucky, others, not so much. Some of you will be affluent, others poor. So, politically powerful, materially uncertain.
“Which would you choose?”
Every year, for the last 10 years that I taught – from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s – the overwhelming majority (90% or more) of my students, most of whom were Juniors at the time, aged 16 or 17, chose Option One. This was always followed by further discussion of ramifications of each choice, but those who chose Option One remained pretty sanguine about what they thought their lives might be like as a result of their choice.
Those kids are now in their 40s and 50s, and presumably, most with families of their own. I am disappointed, but not surprised, by the tolerance that sizable segments of today’s electorate displays toward autocratic behavior and ideology.
Mr Schoch, are these the populace that wish to pass speech codes (damn the First Amendment), teach opinions as facts ( America is racist), suppress my free speech when it comes to criticizing Israeli apartheid (BDS laws) ? Why the silence on these autocratic tendencies…..oh wait… never mind.
Provide one instance of a BDF -law-.
Paul, I assume you’re asking about anti-BDS legislation? 25 States passed legislation that prohibits business with anyone who engages in a boycott of Israel. Here in MN anti-BDS legislation passed in 2017- you look at that legislation here: https://legislation.palestinelegal.org/location/minnesota/
This legislation was passed in this instance, and most instances basically in the dark of night with little notice or reporting at the time and most people have no idea it even exists, and don’t agree with it when they find out.
And yes, such legislation is unprecedented and probably unconstitutional, can you imagine anyone passing such laws prohibiting boycott’s of Russia, or China?
The first question: does any of this legislation apply to private businesses, or just to the state?
Second: has any of it actually been enforced, and upheld in court?
So 90% democrats?
Not fair that some have more and some less.
Thank you. This is amazing. Did they know with Option One they’d still have to work? : ) Actually I’m not joking that much. Most teenagers would happily retire at eighteen.
Seeing that CPAC’s meeting in Budapest, to gain wisdom at the feet of Orban, and that millions watch Tucker Carlson, why wouldn’t any sensible citizen become alarmed. And glimpses of what the extreme left watches on the internet are hardly comforting, although the number of viewers remains low.
Anyone interested in making signs? “Make America Weak! Undermine democratic institutions! Go it alone internationally!”
“(Trump) was criminal in so many ways” Not so far. Not according to our laws, which this group appears to want gutted.
Simple question Audrey, what has Trump done in America , or worse, that Democrats haven’t supported in Israel with my tax dollars ?
Sorry Raj. I don’t know what you’re asking. Stripped down: What has Trump done in America that Democrats haven’t supported in Israel? I’m still confused. What do you want me to compare?
Okay, I’ll bite.
First, Trump has objectively broken the law and been found guilty. Look up the now-defunct Trump University and the Trump Foundation. He has objectively broken the law but was pardoned by the party-before-country Republicans in the legislature in two impeachments. He objectively broke the law when he asked Georgia, and was recorded doing so, to “find” enough votes for him to win the state, but he hasn’t been found guilty by the courts…yet. There are many other instances of his wrongdoing that he’s gotten away with simply because he’s rich and can wait out the slow justice system longer than those he’s cheated.
Second, it’s the Republicans who are changing laws left and right. Why? They hate the Constitution. It prevents them from taking authoritarian control. The Republican Party no longer has a platform. They have no ideas for how to lead, to make the U.S. a better place for all of its citizens, and they don’t care. All they care about is power. So they are changing laws, trying to limit voting rights, imposing a new Jim Crow. They also ignored the Constitution when Obama was president, and the Senate had the Constitutional duty to select a SCOTUS justice. But they decided they were above the Constitution, because the party that used to worship it, now hates it.
“Trump has objectively broken the law and been found guilty.” Nope. Trump has yet to be convicted of any crime. Period.
Did you “Look up the now-defunct Trump University and the Trump Foundation,” as directed? True, Trump himself wasn’t convicted – just his company & foundation – which are now defunct. The ‘beauty’ of laws of incorporation are that the law can be broken, while those responsible avoid conviction. Ain’t our system grand?
Clear thinkers use facts to support conclusions. They don’t use falsehoods. In the above article, an academic made the statement “(Trump) was criminal in so many ways”. This was used as a fact to support her conclusion Trump is an autocrat.
This is not clear thinking. Conclusions must be arrived at through facts. Not falsehoods. Trump has never been convicted of any crime. To call him a criminal, then use this as evidence for your conclusion, is flawed thinking.
A person can be a criminal without being a convicted criminal. Al Capone was convicted only of tax evasion & related crimes. Would you claim that was not a mob boss that oversaw a vast criminal enterprise?
Again, let’s be factual. Trump’s company was not “convicted”. They settled out of court, with no admission of guilt.
Trump is on tape asking the Georgia secretary of state to ‘find’ enough votes for him to win the state. This is a criminal act; ergo Trump is a criminal.
Ergo nothing. In this country you have to be found guilty in a court. Not in someone’s partisan-fueled opinion.
Democracy isn’t responsible for the U.S. being the freest and most prosperous nation in the history of the world. Free market capitalism is. What Russia and China have learned from the U.S., is that your people can be prosperous, raise their families in material comfort, without democracy.
And the dirty little secret is, people made prosperous through capitalism, yet who don’t live in a direct democracy, are freer than people who live in a direct democracy without capitalism. Read that sentence again and let it sink in.
What democrats don’t understand about Donald Trump, is that he’s not so much a republican as he is a capitalist. That’s why he has so much support from groups who are not traditionally republican. His America First agenda is all about growing the economy, becoming energy independent, closing the borders, ending the wars, trying to get along with our adversaries, and making things here in the U.S. instead of depending on foreign powers, many of whom don’t like us.
His opponents are anti-capitalists, and by extension, anti-worker. Their leaders shut down the energy industries, opened the borders, started new wars, insult our adversaries, and the results are blocked supply chains, food shortages, energy inflation, because their agenda is about political power for them and not economic growth for all.
So you’re basically in favor of autocracy, so long as it’s not your ox being gored? I mean it’s not like it was a secret, but at least you’re finally being honest. One little issue of course, in the course of your utopian free market autocracy, how long do you suppose it might take for the autocrat, and those in their favor to make the “free market” a personal piggy bank, a week? Two?
Well at least you’ve got an overarching narrative and you are willing to throw it out there, Dennis. So I commend you.
On the merits, I have to say I certainly agree that capitalism has played a large role in increasing the prosperity of America since its founding, and that our democracy for well over a hundred years let the most successful capitalists free run of the country and its abundant natural resources. The system allowed a free people to “develop” the country from sea to shining sea, and the democracy deployed its military resources to round up and dispossess the longstanding residents of the lands of the US and corral them into desert ghettos. And the democracy did things like dole out free public lands to all (non-Indian) takers via the various homesteading acts. So did capitalism do all that on its own or was democracy also critical? I’d say the latter.
Of course, you seem to forget that “the people” by the later stages of the Robber Baron Era came to have had quite enough of the unregulated capitalism which had held sway until that time, and that democratic forces intervened to pass the Antitrust laws and the various constitutional provisions to rein in excesses of the capitalist plutocrats. This was the first Progressive Era, an era of a more engaged democracy. By 1932, three decades later, after another run of unregulated Roaring Twenties capitalist excesses (frauds, really), the democracy again had to jump in save the whole capitalist structure from collapse upon the onset of the Great Depression. This was the New Deal revolution, which essentially laid the permanent groundwork for the regulated capitalism that fueled the stable prosperity of the 20th Century. And it is this democracy-fueled New Deal that today’s “conservatives” wish to abolish, allowing freer run to today’s crackpot billionaires like Elon Musk and the Koch Boys. So again, democracy saved capitalism from itself and today’s “conservatism” seeks once again to reverse the nation’s victory.
I’d like to know the countries that you say have “democracy without capitalism”. Presumably you mean those failed “socialist” countries like Norway and Denmark. Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you those are democracies with capitalism, pretty much like all nations of western Europe.
I don’t know what to tell you if you think that today’s US economy is best described as “free market capitalism”. We don’t have competitive markets, and haven’t for probably 3 decades now. Most industries in America, and certainly the fossil fuel industry you admire so strongly are oligopolistic markets, with a limited number of firms, all of whom have some level of power over price. This is largely because “conservative” economic ideology since St Reagan has praised the rise of large firms and downplayed the need for anti-trust laws and competitive markets. Plutocrats have loved this philosophy as well as the democracy-destroying tax cuts which are the entire economic program of “conservatism”. So your description of today’s economy does not square with reality.
Finally your paen to the wannabe dictator Trump also fails to square with reality. He is at best a crony capitalist, and a completely failed and incompetent one at that. It’s strange to call a (failed) casino mogul and reality TV performer much of a “capitalist”. What he really is is a celebrity conman, fraudster and (Russian) money launderer. I suppose that’s “capitalism” of a sort, but Robber Barons like Carnegie, Mellon, Hill, Morgan and Rockefeller wouldn’t agree to sit at the same table with such an obvious ignoramus and crook.
I’ve been thinking about how the likes of Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Gates, Jobs and other modern billionaires compare to the Robber Barons. Where’s Teddy Roosevelt when we need him?
I’ve not seen equivalency comparisons of the economic power of the Robber Barons with today’s billionaires. My impression is that the Robber Barons of then had a greater stranglehold on the most critical organs of the nation’s economy than the likes of outsize goofballs like Musk. Which is not to say that Zuckerberg and Bezos don’t have alarming power.
The question is whether today’s citizenry has the sense to combat the plutocrats of the Second Gilded Age and whether our failing institutions could still accomplish what was done to advance democracy (and free markets) in the First Progressive Era.
One difference: the economy was simpler then.
Controlling petroleum or the railroads had a bigger effect than any single monopoly could today.
Today control tends to be more by business associations rather than single privately held businesses.
“The question is whether today’s citizenry has the sense to combat the plutocrats of the Second Gilded Age and whether our failing institutions could still accomplish what was done to advance democracy (and free markets) in the First Progressive Era.”
Clearly not. Too many of today’s citizenry have been deluded into believing that Trump, and other ‘america first’ types, are on their side.
To be sure, capitalism is a far better system than socialism, or communism, or anarchy. But with an asterix. Capitalism works best when the profits are shared widely. Think of the mid 20th century when a booming working class could earn a fair wage for a day’s work. Now we celebrate the corporations that squeeze the workers in order to maximize shareholder returns.
What’s perhaps most remarkable is at how the GOP has grown its base while continuing to screw them over. All these years of deregulation, ‘right to work’ laws, and free trade have suppressed wages & funneled more wealth to the top; yet those voters are clamoring for more.
What conservatives in America don’t understand is that we have ALWAYS had a mix of socialism and capitalism. The U.S. government corralled the natives with military force and gave their land away to white people. The U.S. government protects corporate interests by force through military action and by laws through the judicial system. It provides maritime systems, weather prediction, highways, all of which are used by the capitalism we enjoy. State education systems provide educated workers and legal protections for businesses and citizens.
Conservatives also don’t understand that Democrats don’t want to abolish capitalism. I’ve never in my life met a pure communist. Even a “Democratic socialist” wants capitalism in America, but wants to nationalize certain aspects that objectively just don’t work well as private concerns, like healthcare.
Finally, autocracy doesn’t jibe with our Constitution. Americans were intended by the Founding Fathers to rule themselves, not to be controlled by a strongman or ruling party. The Constitution isn’t infallible, and our interpretation of some of it (see 2A) has gone astray, but you can’t uphold the Constitution and hope for autocracy at the same time.
Take out the defense boondoggles (see F-35) and there are a number of developed nations that afe more prosperous in terms of per capita wealth.
The most likely way for a democracy (long established or no) to fail is to have an important or critical domestic political party working to undermine that nation’s democracy at every turn. Hence Putin’s Russian Nationalist party assiduously worked to frustrate any hope for democracy in Russia, and various rightwing parties are now doing the same in a number of eastern European states, such as Hungary.
Obviously, in the US, the Repub party has similarly openly opted for an agenda of party over country, and is working just as assiduously as Putin did to wreck American democracy and place itself in power as a minority rule, white nationalist party. Today’s “conservative” movement doesn’t make the slightest pretense that it will select and run candidates in upcoming elections that could possibly win the WH via the popular vote, nor do they (or most Americans, it seems) have any qualms about having the US senate controlled (for decades) by a “majority” of senators who represent perhaps 44% (and falling) of the US population. We aren’t remotely a modern democracy, yet even the limited one we do have is unacceptable to the “conservative” movement. Finally, after years of hearing conservative laments about how unacceptable they regard “judicial activism”, we can see that what they really wanted was rightwing judicial activism, an operation by democratically-illegitimate actors that seeks to roll back the past 90 years of American history. That dream is now also a reality.
China got where it is today not by the wonders of its autocratic system of crony capitalism and dictatorship; it got where it is by Western plutocrats and CEOs investing huge amounts of capital in China so that these capitalist entities could take advantage of China’s cheap, unprotected excess labor and non-existent environmental safeguards. The US economy and workforce were therefore undermined as a result of unregulated global capitalism that cared only about profits for a few; it was not destroyed by Chinese brilliance in constructing systems of government. It wasn’t unions and leftists who advocated for this development in world history, it was capitalists and their rightist defenders.
As of the 21st Century, most of the world’s excess supply of billionaires are doing anything and everything they can to ruin popular democracy as a viable governing system in every country they can. A huge part of the long-term project has been the “conservative” radicalization of all right-leaning citizens, particularly in America. Now the right-leaning base in America has been so radicalized they are wild to nominate the most unqualified crackpots imaginable to be the nation’s elected officials, crackpots such as Trump, Doctor Oz, JD Vance, and here in MN “Doc” Jensen. This wholesale radicalization has been especially crucial in rural areas, because under our failed constitution, rural citizens are give an outsize voice in national affairs (see the electoral college and senate). And now that radicalization of the rightwing base has reached the stage of passionately believing that they have a “right” to rule as a minority faction. That was the intent of the Founders! White nationalists in charge is bizarrely seen as “consensus” government…
So in other words, majoritarian democracy is now “tyranny”. Hence the end of democracy as an “idealized” system.
Zalensky in Ukraine believes in Democracy like our ruling elite believe in Democracy…
https://news.yahoo.com/zelensky-nationalizes-tv-news-restricts-173820471.html
“On Saturday and Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky invoked his emergency powers under martial law to suppress several opposition political parties and implement a “unified information policy.”
“In an address to the nation delivered Sunday, he announced a temporary ban on “any activity” by 11 political parties.
“The ban includes the Opposition Platform – For Life party, which holds 43 seats in Ukraine’s national parliament and is the largest opposition party.”
…and you’d have had a very hard time as a Nazi Party member in the U.S. in 1943, or an Italian Fascist, or the Japanese variety of, in that case, Japanese-nationalist fascism. We not only restricted the activities of known foreign agents, we put citizens of Japanese descent in prison camps, and while it was seldom used due to self-censorship, we had our own watchdogs examining press accounts of political and military affairs.
It’s sad, but understandable, to see Zelinskyy cracking down on political opponents, but Putin would cheerfully snuff out Ukraine as a nation to fulfill his own political and economic goals. I don’t want to be too strong in defending Zelenskyy, but his country is under attack by a much larger and more powerful neighbor, and without cause, so I’m willing to cut him a little slack, at least for the time being, while he tries to ensure the survival of Ukraine. I’m willing to change my mind about that somewhere down the road, but to my knowledge, and in the meantime, Zelinskyy is not rounding up members of the opposition party and executing them.
The idea that Putin invaded Ukraine without cause, after we have been manipulating Ukranian politics for a fecade at least, after we have been supporting Ukraine bomobing the ethnis Russian Donbass, is the kind of propaganda that leads to endless war.
“I don’t want to be too strong in defending Zelenskyy, but his country is under attack by a much larger and more powerful neighbor, and without cause, so I’m willing to cut him a little slack”
The Donbas region – a part of the territory of Ukraine, a sovereign state with internationally recognized borders – is or was (pre-invasion) a majority Ukrainian region.
Perhaps we should look at the history of allowing one state to claim territory of another based on ethnicity. Our first speaker on that subject is a Mr. Neville Chamberlain.
Zalensky in Ukraine believes his country is being attacked and invaded by Putin’s Russia.
Zalensky in Ukraine believes his country is in a war. It is.
Tankies gonna tank. At this point I read WHD “commentary” in the “Peanuts” parents voice…
You are welcome to read this in the Peanuts parents voice: it seems the ideological left are now neocons willing to wratchet up a regime change war against Russia.
Yes indeed. The only moral and ethical response is to allow Putin the Terrible to successfully implement regime change in (democratic) Ukraine!
I don’t know if you’ve been following the news, but Ukraine has been at war since Russia invaded almost three months ago. Taking emergency measures such as this is not unusual for a country at war.
Well, obviously no proponent of democracy is going to praise that decision, WHD, and I don’t know what the response of the various western democracies is going to be to this announcement. Is it your position that this negates the need to aid Ukraine militarily in Putin’s illegal war of annihilation?
I surely don’t know the on-the-ground politics or information services of embattled Ukraine. So you’d need to address the actual specifics of what Zelenskyy’s government is concerned about. I can say that very few democracies in the world have a First Amendment. We are rather unique there, and ours is probably now contributing to our political and intellectual death, since the “marketplace of ideas” is an obvious failure as an operative concept.
Finally, I will note that our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, suspended the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War, despite the Constitution’s ban on such an action. Hostile invasions, and all that….
So better to let the party in power, corporate media and tech oligarchs (as long as they are in cahoots with the party in power) control and decide what can and cannot be said?
“very few democracies in the world have a First Amendment. We are rather unique there, and ours is probably now contributing to our political and intellectual death, since the “marketplace of ideas” is an obvious failure as an operative concept.”
What, you are answering my question with a question? I have no idea what I am supposed to make of this reply, other than that you won’t tell me what you think the US and the EU should be doing in response to Putin’s invasion.
I can only surmise that your answer is “nothing”, under the absurd reasoning that NATO actually tricked Putin and the Russian Bear” into invading Ukraine so they could (finally!) prosecute the proxy war they so obviously desired for decades.
Very Machiavellian of us! “Western devils” as the Patriarch of Moscow would say….
Svoboda, the National Corps (led by Andriy Biletsky), and other Nazi parties were not banned. Many of the opposition leaders have been imprisoned, and only one television station is now allowed. To claim Zelensky is a defender of democracy is absurd, since he is only a pawn of the USA as was shown by his comments before and after the Istanbul meeting.
Ukraine was the strongest economically of the former Soviet republics when the Soviet Union broke up, and had sunk to one of the poorest even before the conflict in February. Being that it is broke it is the American taxpayers who are funding the Azov Battalion, Right Sector, and other Nazi groups.
Tankies to the left of me, tankies to the right and here I am stuck in the middle with the reality that other nations actually have agency and can make their own decisions, without it being a vast conspiracy of an apparently omnipotent United States.
The Guardian reports that Zelensky banned several parties that his government concluded had actual ties to Russia; the largest one was/is led by a pro-Russian oligarch with personal ties to Putin. If true, Zelensky has basically suppressed a number of Quisling parties, because such parties naturally would oppose fighting Putin’s war of annihilation. Neither you nor I are in a position to know the truth of the matter.
Your focus on “Nazi” parties in Ukraine causes me to wonder if you credit Putin’s hyperbolic claim that the Zelensky government is “Nazified” and this was the reason for Putin’s invasion to overthrow that democratically elected regime. That claim is obviously absurd Putinist propaganda, credited only by the spoon-fed Russian populace and the anti-anti-Putin left, propaganda which doesn’t explain how the Ukrainian populace has overwhelmingly rallied to fight the unprovoked Russian invasion of their country. Are all Ukrainians “Nazis”?
Where you have gotten your figures on the economics of the Soviet Union and Ukraine today (and during what time period) is anyone’s guess. Ukraine was the largest of the “republics” in the Soviet Union, with a significant industrial base in the Donbas. It was in this region that Putin instigated a rebellion and civil war in 2014; obviously having a war in Ukraine’s most developed region was going to reduce its GDP and economic prosperity over the past 8 years. And if you are implying that Ukraine was somehow more corrupt and economically under-performing than Putin’s corrupt and similarly wildly under-performing kleptocracy, good luck with that; such an argument is hardly persuasive.
It wouldn’t be a surprise that there are far rightist elements in Ukraine and that they would be engaged in fighting the Russian war machine that invaded Ukraine; there are far rightist elements in all societies, including most especially the US, where our White Nationalists support the Repub party, which receives the support gladly. But your notion that the US taxpayer is “funding” Nazis is hyperbole; the US is providing military and humanitarian aid to the democratically elected government of Ukraine; it is not providing funding to Nazis.
There is no doubt that Zelesky is the duly elected leader of Ukraine and there obviously isn’t going to be another national election in Ukraine for some time, the war and all. I’m sure that Putin will hold mock plebiscites in the areas of Ukraine he has invaded and occupied with his brutal soldiery. I’m hoping we don’t have to start arguing about whether such “elections” are valid….
The irony of this group being worried about their democracy is fascinating. They have no problem taking away individual liberty. Also they most likely aren’t concerned with the ethics of the Hillary Clinton campaign Russia collusion hoax. In fact, they probably applaud it as a successful operation to save their party.
I’m not sure it’s the most opportune time to decry the left’s hostility to “individual liberty” when the democratically-illegitimate Repub Supreme Court is poised to strike down the longstanding constitutional right to reproductive choice and patriarchal Repub state legislatures across the country are slobbering all over themselves to regulate contraception and reduce women to second class citizen status…
And whatever the Rightwing Noise Machine may be blatting out these days, the reality of Trump’s collusion with Russian intelligence assets to aid his “election” in 2016 is now a documented and established historical fact, which will be used by all future historians seeking to explain and assess the criminal presidency of Donald Trump.
“They have no problem taking away individual liberty.”
You mean, like the right of a woman to choose an abortion?
Gullibles Travails.
Democracy has been in crises for decades, this is not a “new” crises. Fascism has predictably arisen by virtue of bi-partisan complacency among a political class that has been serving corporate interests at the expense of the majority it pretends to serve for decades. When the political class fails so spectacularly for decades on end to address even the most basic of needs i.e. housing, health care, food security, and basic gender, racial, and economic equity, extremists will eventually exploit the pain and suffering being inflicted by the oligarchy. This is coming to pass, and yeah, it’s depressing but not surprising, and it was long ago predicted.
Tester’s claim that freedom never emerged from democracy is a revealing example of libertarian absurdism. The claim that a system responsible for global slave trades, multiple genocides, wage slavery, military junta’s, and ecological catastrophe, is the “true” engine of liberty and freedom my be a ridiculous claim… but it’s a popular delusion that actually promotes dictatorial impulses and fascist designs. We see in Tester’s delusion the obvious hostility to democracy that has gained so much traction over recent decades; is it any wonder that “libertarians” like this lead the charge towards election nullification and the project of erasing the 20th century?
If we’re going to talk about the crises in democracy at all it’s absolutely critical to recognize the role of bi-partisan fantasies and “centrists” complacency that normalized right wing extremism and created so much space for Fascist politics. When the New Democrats like the Clintons decided that Liberalism was obsolete in the 1980’s they began creating fertile political landscape wherein Fascists like Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh could pretend to be normal “Republicans” just vying for elections on the other side of the isle.
Of course we can trace this Democratic duplicity even further back if want to look at Johnson’s decision to ignore Kissinger and Nixon’s treasonous scheme to win the the White House with a secret deal with South Vietnam. This would be the same Kissinger that HRC would brag about when she ran in 2016, the guy responsible military Junta’s across the globe from Indonesia to Chile and and Argentina. Nothing says: “democracy” like a military junta after all; ask the Mother’s of the Disappeared in Plaza de Mayo about all the “freedom” they were enjoying while Kissinger turned a blind eye. Shall we talk about all the “democracy” Reagan and North were promoting in Central America in the 80’s with terrorism that was recognized by the world court? Ancient history? OK then let’s talk about the war crime of invading Iraq on false pretexts during the 2nd Bush presidency. Seriously, if you think democracy has just recently fallen into crises you simply have not be paying attention.
I don’t know, but I’m not sure you can redeem yourself now with long over-due hand-wringing about a threat to democracy you’ve been ignoring for decades… but you can try. I guess the real question is what if anything you’re willing to do? Or are we just supposed to sit around and marvel at the paralysis inflicted by a facile narrative of “polarization”?
We can’t really discuss the sorry state of “democracy” without considering the nature of our own criminal regimes. George W. Bush recently uttered a gaffe (Defined by some as an instance when a politician tells the truth) when he accidentally compared his invasion of Iraq with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Jeet Heer discusses the state of democracy Bush’s gaffe reveals in this Nation article: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/george-bush-iraq-war-crime/
Exactly right. You may also be interested in a recent essay by Fintan O’Toole in the New York Review of Books along the same lines, arguing that if the US wants to accuse other leaders of war crimes (which we certainly should) then it is imperative that we accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court for our own country.
A group of liberals get together and declare that democracy around the globe is depressed? Is there some sort of measure to base this claim? Is this even news?
I do see why the author wrote the piece. It somehow involved Trump. Some how. Some way.
Sure Tom, why talk about an ongoing coup attempt as if THAT could have anything to do with threats to democracy?
Paul is right as usual. Most legacy media have been afraid to talk openly about the coup attempt by Democrats after the 2016 election. Time to open up and give back the Pulitzers.
Or perhaps it’s the voter suppression in Georgia with “Jim Crow2.0.” This has resulted in record early voting among minorities. Leftists must be enraged by reality crashing in on their fantasies.
Yeah, nothing says:”coup” like minorities managing to vote in an election.
Even if attempts to suppress the votes of urban constituencies fail, that does not mean they were not attempts to suppress voting. It may be that the “conservative” movement needs to stop doubling down on its (obvious) anti-democratic tactics, but I doubt that is the lesson they will learn.
As for your rather cryptic comment about a Dem “coup” against Trump in 2016, I can only note that his “election” (having lost the popular vote by around 3 million) was certified by the Congress without an attempt by Dems to halt the proceedings. So I assume Ms Wicklow will take you to task for non-factual use of the word “coup” as she is doing with use by liberals of the word “criminal” to describe the (obviously criminal and serially lawbreaking) Trump regime. But I will await her intervention here.
I can only observe, however, that what you are referring to as a 2016 “coup” against Trump must be the post-election revelation that the FBI had opened a counter-intelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, arising out of concerns over its contacts with Russian Intelligence assets. Indeed, both parties (Repubs included; google it) proclaimed their desire to “get to the bottom” of the matter in late 2016. That’s how we got a special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, remember?
Now it is true that Repubs came to understand rather quickly that they didn’t really want to get to the bottom of the, um, massive scandal that Russiagate turned out to be. Nevertheless, the bipartisan effort to name and authorize a special prosecutor (who ultimately found substantial contacts, indeed collusion, with Russians operatives to aid a Trump “election”) can hardly be called a Dem coup…
Global democracy continued its decline in 2020, according to the latest edition of the Democracy Index from The Economist Intelligence Unit. This unit is part of the Economist, a British weekly widely seen as having little reporting bias, and as exercising rigorous fact-checking.
The annual survey, which rates the state of democracy across 167 countries based on five measures—electoral process and pluralism, the functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture and civil liberties—finds that just 8.4% of the world’s population live in a full democracy while more than a third live under authoritarian rule. The global score of 5.37 out of ten is the lowest recorded since the index began in 2006