- Reactions to yesterday’s NYT piece about Republican plans to make Trump a dictator, abandoning the Founding Father’s idea of a democracy with a balance of powers;
- Climate change as precisely a subject that *should* be politicized, if politics is anything other than enforcing ideology on others.
Several people covered yesterday’s NYT story about the ambitions of Trump and his team should he win back the presidency, using language far blunter than I did, but which I’m using now in today’s title.
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American, 17 Jul 2023:
A story in the New York Times today by Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage, and Maggie Haberman outlined how former president Donald Trump and his allies are planning to create a dictatorship if voters return him to power in 2024. The article talks about how Trump and his loyalists plan to “centralize more power in the Oval Office” by “increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House.”
They plan to take control over independent government agencies and get rid of the nonpartisan civil service, purging all but Trump loyalists from the U.S. intelligence agencies, the State Department, and the Defense Department. They plan to start “impounding funds,” that is, ignoring programs Congress has funded if those programs aren’t in line with Trump’s policies.
“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” said Russell T. Vought, who ran Trump’s Office of Management and Budget and who now advises the right-wing House Freedom Caucus. They envision a “president” who cannot be checked by the Congress or the courts.
Trump’s desire to grab the mechanics of our government and become a dictator is not new; both scholars and journalists have called it out since the early years of his administration. What is new here is the willingness of so-called establishment Republicans to support this authoritarian power grab.
Behind this initiative is “Project 2025,” a coalition of more than 65 right-wing organizations putting in place personnel and policies to recommend not just to Trump, but to any Republican who may win in 2024. Project 2025 is led by the Heritage Foundation, once considered a conservative think tank, that helped to lead the Reagan revolution.
Richardson aligns this with what’s going on in other countries, and the “Christian nationalism” movement in the US.
The party appears to have fully embraced the antidemocratic ideology advanced by authoritarian leaders like Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, who argue that the post–World War II era, in which democracy seemed to triumph, is over. They claim that the tenets of democracy—equality before the law, free speech, academic freedom, a market-based economy, immigration, and so on—weaken a nation by destroying a “traditional” society based in patriarchy and Christianity.
It’s no surprise they think that free speech and academic freedom threaten a society aligned to patriarchy and Christianity, because they do, and they should.
Because all the institutions of our democracy are designed to support the tenets of democracy, right-wingers claim those institutions are weaponized against them.
This makes sense of a sort; if a political movement tries to spread disinformation and break laws, they will insist that any government function that tries to stop them from doing so is “weaponized against them.” Just as street crooks feel about the police.
It has taken decades for the modern-day Republican Party to get to a place where it rejects democracy. The roots of that rejection lie all the way back in the 1930s, when Democrats under Franklin Delano Roosevelt embraced a government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and promoted infrastructure. That system ushered in a period from 1933 to 1981 that economists call the “Great Compression,” when disparities of income and wealth were significantly reduced, especially after the government also began to protect civil rights.
Members of both parties embraced this modern government in this period, and Americans still like what it accomplished. But businessmen who hated regulation joined with racists who hated federal protection of civil rights and traditionalists who opposed women’s rights and set out to destroy that government.
And of course business interests, racists, and traditionalists are those at the core of the Republican party.
\\
Washington Post, Alexandra Petri, 18 Jul 2023: Opinion | But have we considered … tyranny?
Looking out over the presidential field so far, I’m heartened to see that the candidates have their priorities. Some want to fill America with diseases and conspiracies. Some want to return us to a simple time in the vaguest possible terms. Some want to do … whatever it is Marianne Williamson wants to do. And Donald Trump wants to — what’s that? Ah, yes, he wants to … concentrate more power in his own hands, seize control of independent agencies and use the Justice Department to pursue his political enemies! That’s a good, normal thing for a presidential candidate to want, I think. Glad to see that’s an option we have, as a country, and to feel that nice, hot breeze blowing through the Overton window.
When I consider the issues facing our country and wonder, “What pressing problem needs tackling?” I immediately think, “No single individual wields enough unchecked power!” …
Hmm, if only there were a word for this! What’s the word for when, in a departure from precedent, you concentrate a lot of power in a single individual? I’m sure it’ll come to me.
\\
Boing Boing is a tech/geek site that occasionally notes political matters the way alien anthropologists, looking down at those weird humans, would do.
Boing Boing, Mark Frauenfelder, 17 Jul 2023: Trump and his allies plan to make him a dictator, reports NY Times
Donald Trump and his allies are following the fascist playbook to the letter, with plans to undermine democratic checks and balances and “reshape the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands,” reports The New York Times.
If Trump wins the election, independent agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission would come under direct presidential control. Trump would also purge intelligence agencies, the State Department, and defense bureaucracies of officials Trump calls “the sick political class that hates our country.”
\\
In contrast, consider this:
Paul Krugman, NY Times, 17 Jul 2023: Why We Should Politicize the Weather
After officially beginning his presidential campaign, Ron DeSantis was asked about climate change. He brushed the issue aside: “I’ve always rejected the politicization of the weather.”
But we absolutely should politicize the weather. In practice, environmental policy probably won’t be a central issue in the 2024 campaign, which will mainly turn on the economy and social issues. Still, we’re living in a time of accelerating climate-related disasters, and the environmental extremism of the Republican Party — it is more hostile to climate action than any other major political party in the advanced world — would, in a more rational political debate, be the biggest election issue of them all.
I agree with Krugman: things like climate change are precisely what should be politicized. What is politics for? A cultural battle to impose one or another set of standards upon the entire nation? I’d like to think that national politics is the nation’s way to addressing big problems, those that cannot be fixed locally, and finding solutions. Politics should address climate change, should address gun violence, should address immigration.
Krugman goes on to point out how out of step America is compared to the rest of the world.
Which brings me back to the “politicization of the weather.” Worrying about the climate crisis shouldn’t be a partisan issue. But it is, at least in this country. As of last year, only 22 percent of Americans who considered themselves to be on the political right considered climate change a major threat; the left-right gap here was far larger than it was in other countries. And only in America do you see things like Texas Republicans actively trying to undermine their own state’s booming renewable energy sector.
The remarkable thing about climate denial is that the arguments haven’t changed at all over the years: Climate change isn’t happening; OK, it’s happening, but it’s not such a bad thing; besides, doing anything about it would be an economic disaster.
And none of these arguments are ever abandoned in the face of evidence.
Conservatives don’t do evidence, they do ideology, and apparently are willing to install a dictatorship to enforce their ideology, if they can get away with it.
