The next stage of our democracy crisis: competitive authoritarianism

The mainstream American news media have failed as an institution to properly confront the country s worsening democracy emergency in the Age of Trump He is America s first elected autocrat His appetite for unlimited power is growing It will likely never be satisfied In one of the majority new examples Trump lately stated NBC News Kristen Welker that he does not know if he is obligated to uphold and obey the United States Constitution In response to a question about the constitutionally-guaranteed right of due process and the settlers and others deported to the infamous foreign prison in El Salvador Trump announced I don t know I have to respond by saying again I have brilliant lawyers that work for me and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court revealed What you noted is not what I heard the Supreme Court say They have a different interpretation Trump s declaration that he does not know if he is obligated to obey and uphold the Constitution should have dominated the news coverage for the foreseeable future Moreover Trump s repeated hostility and disregard towards America s democratic norms should be the master narrative frame that structures the news media s coverage of him and his administration Instead Trump s unprecedented message what should be treated as a national exigency was lost in the churn of the news media and the bottomless maw of the attention market and distraction experience machine Conservative legal scholar and former judge Michael Luttig stated MSNBC s Nicole Wallace that Trump s answer is perhaps the greater part pivotal words ever spoken by a president of the United States Luttig warned that this is one of the preponderance critical stories of our times He continued I m quite confident that the president was saying what is on his mind and that is that he the president of the United States doesn t necessarily believe that he is obligated to uphold the Constitution of the United States as it is interpreted by the Supreme Court Related How the Supreme Court enabled Donald Trump s mile high bribe In another escalation in their campaign against American democracy and the rule of law Trump and his agents are now signaling that the constitutionally guaranteed right of habeas corpus may be suspended to facilitate Trump s mass deportation campaign against illegal aliens and other undesirables Such an extreme action must be approved by Congress The right of habeas corpus has only been suspended four times in American history These threats to take away a foundational civil right were mostly treated as a curiosity by the mainstream news media As with Trump s newest comment about disregarding the Constitution these threats to take away a foundational civil right were mostly treated as a curiosity by the mainstream news media For example a basic search of The New York Times and The Washington Post show that the Trump administration s threat to end habeas corpus did not receive sustained featured coverage Donald Trump and his agents have made various such threats against American democracy and its institutions and norms during the campaign and his second term in office various of these threats have been fulfilled The Democrats and the so-called Resistance are celebrating how the courts and civil society organizations appear to be blunting Trump s shock and awe and shock therapy campaign against American democracy and the American people However these celebrations are premature and ignore how the Trump administration is disregarding numerous of these rulings by the courts There has been grave damage already done by Trump during these first days of his return to power that cannot be easily remedied In all too various observers are confusing particular selective momentary pauses by Trump and his MAGA forces to consolidate their gains regroup resupply and reassess how to best continue their campaign against democracy and civil society Donald Trump s power and willingness to punish and train the news media to serve his agenda through various means both legal and extra-legal has created a state of anticipatory obedience aka surrender collaboration and a collective chilling effect across the news media The American mainstream media has also been rolled over by Donald Trump and his forces deft use of the propaganda technique known as flooding the zone where so much happens so swiftly that the target does not know where and how to focus Kenneth Lowande a professor of political science and population initiative at the University of Michigan explained how this a large number of years-long pattern of failures by the American news media is collectively enabling Donald Trump and his MAGA movement s authoritarian agenda The Trump administration is extremely effective at playing to the weaknesses of news organizations like the New York Times Wall Street Journal and Washington Post They are being taken advantage of From Day of the Trump administration they have written relentless daily headlines that announce President Trump s executive actions as if they are new laws When readers see these they give the President credit They see it as an accomplishment This has been a trouble for decades I show in my book that news coverage of executive action is shallow brief and very positive for the President The media might as well be allowing the White House to write its own coverage What can be done The press necessities to treat each new executive action for what it is an order to bureaucrats Nothing more nothing less These orders are remarkably contingent The majority of them don t produce the success they promise In short if people do not want the residents to get used to having a dictator then the media need to stop covering his actions as if he already is one We need your help to stay independent Subscribe the present day to patronage Salon s progressive journalism As an institution the American news media supposed that the rule of law was sacrosanct in the United States democracy was a settled matter the Constitution was respected by Americans and the American people would never put an authoritarian or other demagogue in the White House On the other hand Black Americans as a voting bloc have been described as the miners canary in American society In that role Black Americans were consistently sounding the alarm about how Donald Trump s return to power would imperil American democracy and society In keeping with a common theme in American history white Americans as a whole ignored those warnings and wisdom to their own and the country s extreme detriment So what happens when a people vote for an autocratic authoritarian and against their own democracy This is a tension and obstacle that the American mainstream news media and the country s other elites have been mostly afraid to confront Why Because it is an indictment of their legitimacy It is also an indictment of the character and values of the American people To boldly confront the latter is almost verboten among the American mainstream news media and others who maintain the limits of the approved inhabitants discourse and the consensus I requested historian Timothy Ryback one of the world s leading experts on the fall of Germany s democracy and the rise of the Nazi Party for particular historical context I am not one to draw straight lines from a historical figure or event in the past to present-day political figures or events History doesn t repeat itself We are all unique individuals in unique settings and situations With that commented I think we can speak about resonances and modalities Adolf Hitler and his closest lieutenants understood democratic structures and processes as well as anyone in the era and set about disabling then dismantling the Weimar Republic The Hitler acolyte Joseph Goebbels once explained that the big joke on democracy was that it provided its mortal enemies with the means of its own destruction This meant gridlocking legislative processes with obstructionist voting using free speech guarantees to sow hatred and mistrust and exploiting and abusing the judicial system in every way attainable Hitler s chief legal strategist Hans Frank boasted that every time Hitler appeared in court his polling numbers surged To that point polling and other research from PRRI shows that a large percentage of Americans have an authoritarian personality A account from PRRI details how W hile bulk Americans do not hold highly authoritarian views a substantial minority does of Americans figure high on the Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale RWAS while amount high on the Child-Rearing Authoritarianism Scale CRAS Two-thirds of Republicans outcome high on the RWAS compared with of independents and of Democrats Republicans who hold favorable views of Trump are percentage points more likely than those with unfavorable views of Trump to amount high on the RWAS vs This political personality type and its social dominance orientation is overrepresented among right-wing Christians PRRI continues White evangelical Protestants are the religious group majority of likely to amount high on the RWAS followed by smaller majorities of Hispanic Protestants and white Catholics A majority of weekly churchgoers count high on the RWAS compared with of Americans who attend church a meager times a year and of those who never attend church services A series of polls and other research has revealed that Republicans and Trump followers specifically are more likely than Democrats to want a leader who is willing to break the rules and disobey the law to get things done for people like them Research also shows that Republicans and MAGA followers embrace authoritarianism including ending American democracy if white people like them are not the largest part powerful group A poll from the Pew Research Center identified that a strong majority of Democrats believe that voting is a foundational and inalienable right By comparison two-thirds of Republicans believe that voting is a privilege that can be restricted Those who sponsorship voting restrictions are more likely to be older white and less well-educated This is the profile of the average Republican voter America s democracy is rapidly collapsing But what is its present state The American news media the Democratic Party civil society the country s other elites and everyday pro-democracy Americans will not be able to effectively respond to the worsening situation if they do not have the correct concepts and language to properly understand it Via email Jake Grumbach who is the faculty director of the Democracy Guidelines Lab and associate professor at the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Society Guidelines offered this clarification The US is now in a new regime competitive authoritarianism There is political competition between parties but the distinctions from liberal democracy is that the ruling authorities routinely violates the Constitution and statutory law and uses the state apparatus as a tool to tilt the political playing field especially by punishing political enemies Under competitive authoritarianism the ruling party typically comes to power through electoral achievement Under competitive authoritarianism and even under fully autocratic totalitarianism ruling leaders often carry a lot of sponsorship from the mass constituents Democracy involves both majoritarianism governance that is responsive to the people and the rule of law that everyone is accountable to the rules Trump won the popular vote though not an electoral majority which gives him more democratic legitimacy than he otherwise would have However Trump s electoral margin of success was very small and his masses backing has dropped dramatically since taking office Susan Stokes who is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago and the Faculty Chair of the Chicago Center on Democracy echoes Grumbach s warning about how America is succumbing to authoritarianism In this email Stokes offers certain explanations for why people in democratic societies embrace authoritarianism Majorities of people in preponderance democracies consistently say they prefer democracy to other forms of administration There are several people who really favor authoritarian rulers They view democracy as messy and slow and like the idea of a single person or small group imposing decisions on others A multitude of people don t have a strong sense of the importance of due process or the rule of law these are abstract concepts of curriculum until people themselves face arbitrary rule or have friends and family members who do Majority of help for authoritarians greater part votes for leaders who have shown themselves to be anti-democratic has other motives in particular economic factors Countless voters practice what political scientists call retrospective economic voting if economic conditions have been good in the year or so leading up to an electoral process they will vote for the incumbent if not they will vote for a challenger That s a lot of what the electoral contest in the U S was about One could argue about how good or bad economic conditions were but inflation was a new phenomenon for several people and very frightening The cost of living was a real challenge for multiple Americans given high food and housing costs This type of political reasoning often backfires As Stokes explains The trouble is if electing autocratic leaders means that voters gradually lose the ability to vote incumbents out when times are bad then this strategy becomes self-defeating for voters In my research I find that income inequality is a big predictor of democratic erosion The more unequal the distribution of income in a democracy the more likely it is to experience erosion Under vast inequality it s easier to persuade people that elite institutions are against them Inequality also contributes to partisan polarization And the more polarized a polity the better for autocratic leaders Even voters who would prefer to preserve democracy say to themselves This guy s not perfect but if the other side wins ' A series of fresh polls have shown growing levels of anger and discontent among wide swaths of the American citizens towards Donald Trump and his administration s policies and the harm they have caused the financial sector the regime and the American people s overall sense of normalcy safety and prevention These polls have also shown that a large percentage of Democrats and a not insignificant percentage of Republicans and independents are also deeply concerned about Trump s abuses of power and obvious contempt for democracy and the rule of law Donald Trump has repeatedly referenced President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as being his model for expansive authority and power and why such power is legitimate necessary and good Stephen Skowronek who is a professor of political science at Yale University explained that such indicates and comparison s are ahistorical and serve authoritarian goals Progressives have long lamented that Roosevelt was stopped by a bi-partisan coalition of southern reactionaries and Republican conservatives But now that progressivism has been sequestered in one of the major parties and Trumpism reigns supreme in the other the costs of eroding all back stops are on full display Trump has opened his second term with a drive toward presidentialism that apes Roosevelt s and the fate of multi-part power-sharing arrangements again hangs in the balance In this development however the courts are already packed the party has already been purged of internal opposition and the incident for the president s sole control over the executive branch is well advanced Roosevelt s New Deal transformed America but it was nothing compared to transformation now in view Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer Subscribe to our morning newsletter Crash Module The polls given chosen hope to those who believe that Donald Trump and has autocratic plans and MAGA movement will exhaust itself by overreaching and that the American people assuming there are in fact free and fair elections in and will discipline correct by voting the MAGAfied Republicans out of office I would suggest that such hopes are very premature The compulsion and attraction towards Trump MAGA and authoritarianism are very deep if not inexorable for several tens of millions of Americans Joe Walsh is a former Republican congressman and conservative talk radio host who led a GOP primary challenge against Donald Trump in He is at this time the director of The Social Contract and host of the White Flag with Joe Walsh podcast Walsh maintains his connections to TrumpWorld and the MAGAverse IHe explained that there is almost nothing too extreme and authoritarian to make Trump s MAGA supporters abandon him Trump s base wants him to be an authoritarian That s inevitably been his appeal to the base That he will be a strongman and do what he has to do to get them back the America they believe we once were So nothing he does as an authoritarian will bother them no unconstitutional move will bother them that s what they want him to do The only thing that will move part of Trump s base from him is economic pain Losing their job disappearing their ks paying way too much for that next truck or pair of shoes Real economic pain that personally hits them is the only way they turn on Trump in any meaningful numbers That s why his tariff madness is so politically dangerous for him It s bad program and it will lead to bad economic results Trump will have a much tougher time trying to lie about the market because his base lives the financial system So when Trump lies and says that Haitian asylum seekers are eating cats and dogs Trump s base eats it up But when Trump says your k is doing just great and your k has authentically lost of its value his base won t believe that lie because they know it s not true The Age of Trump will last decades not a sparse electoral contest cycles The benchmarks and landmarks of normal politics in America have been radically shifted and changed if not demolished Ultimately authoritarianism e g herrenvolk democracy and white racial authoritarianism is a feature and not a bug in America s history and present Denial and avoidance will not change our reality Read more about this topic Conspiracy theories Warning lights on the dashboard of democracy A free fall not seen in modern history days of destruction How conservatives became radicals and learned to love big administration The post The next stage of our democracy problem competitive authoritarianism appeared first on Salon com