Friday, September 26, 2025

America’s Zombie Democracy

 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/09/america-authoritarian-regime-ai-suicide/684350/

We are living in an authoritarian state.

These are the features of the modern authoritarian state. Every one of them exists today in this country. Checks on President Donald Trump’s power, whether in the framework of law and constitutional government or in the broader society, have grown so weak that he can do pretty much what he wants. He sends masked police to pick people off the streets without probable cause for arrest, disappear them into secret prisons, and ship them off to random countries. He fires experienced, patriotic civil servants and replaces them with unqualified toadies. He takes open bribes from foreign countries and American business interests in the form of a luxury jet or a meme coin. He tells media companies to stop criticizing him, or else—and many of them do.

Yet the Founding Fathers warned over and over about the arrival of an authoritarian demagogue. They wrote a Constitution that they thought would be the best defense against one. In 1838, a young Abraham Lincoln said that the republic would never be overthrown from abroad: “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” How did it come to this? How have we let it come to this? Because it’s not just being done to us. We are doing it to ourselves.

7 comments :

  1. Another leading lie.
    If America was authoritarian, the order to fire Kimmel would've come from the government, not the head of the network and he'd had been put in prison, not reinstated a few days later.
    If America was authoritarian, we'd read about elections being cancelled, instead of efforts to ensure voters show ID to reduce the chance of fraud.
    If America was authoritarian, The Atlantic would never have been allowed to write this article along with all the other lying, hateful trash they write about Trump and the Right.
    It's true we have seen governments demand that media and social media censor posts or face penalties. That government was Democrat, reminding us that Kol haposel, b'mumpo posel.

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    1. Compare and contrast to Turkish dictatorship

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    2. The first sign you're not in an authoritarian state: You can openly complain that you're in an authoritarian state.
      Wait, Erdogan opposes Trump. So we like him now?

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    3. First sign of being brainwashed is to insist nothing is happening

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    4. Again: authoritarian states don't allow the publishing of anti-government material. This article is proof that it's lying.

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    5. Look at turkiye for example. Insulting the president is a crime. Journalists are jailed even for having democratic views.

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    6. It's the cowardice of the Left. Just like the gays don't try to have a parade in Medina or Moscow because they know the local police will shut it down violently so instead they parade through New York and Jerusalem shouting about how bravely they resist oppression. Same thing here - we're fighting fascism. Buddy, if you were doing that, you'd be getting tortured in a secret jail right now.

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