John G. Messerly's Blog, page 85

Marcus Aurelius On Getting Out Of Bed

(Statue of Marcus Aurelius in the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome. The piazze was designed by Renaissance artist and architect Michelangelo Buonarroti in 1536–1546.)

My brief summary of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations was one of my most popular posts last year with over 30,000 views. While re-reading it I was struck by the relevance to modern life of the first paragraph of Book V. Here is a modern translation:

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I am rising to do the work of a human being. What do I have to complain about, if I’m going to do what I was born for—the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?” — But it’s nicer here …

So were you born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands? — But we have to sleep sometime… Agreed. But nature set a limit on that — as it did on eating and drinking. And you’re over the limit. You’ve had more than enough of that. But not of working. There’s still more of that to do.

You don’t love yourself enough. For if you did, you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat. Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver does for engraving, the dancer for the dance, the miser for money or the social climber for status? When they’re really possessed by what they do, they’d rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts. Is not then your labor in the world just as worthy of respect and worth your effort? (Book 5, Paragraph 1)

Brief Analysis – If we love life we will do what’s necessary to preserve our lives, and that includes working. This isn’t meant exclusively in the modern sense of going to a job—although that’s part of it. Rather it implies that living demands physical activity; if you slept all the time you wouldn’t be living. And if you resist activity you act contrary to your nature, which is to say you don’t love yourself. Moreover, if you work hard you will experience what modern psychology calls flow.

An objection to Aurelius’ line of thinking is that some work is too demeaning, boring, harmful, etc. as to align with our natures. I’ve written previously about doing what you love as an ideal, and clearly some work is so harmful to society that Aurelius wouldn’t recommend it. But I think he would say that most work is sufficient. The key for him is that we work with others, as he writes later:

When you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, remember that your defining characteristic — what defines a human being — is to work with others. Even animals know how to sleep. And it’s the characteristic activity that’s the more natural one — more innate and more satisfying. (Book VIII, Paragraph XII)

Another objection is that Aurelius’ advice doesn’t help, for example, the clinically depressed. I think this is a valid objection. If he is just saying ‘get up and get going,’ that is bad advice for those suffering from diseases of the brain and body. On the other hand, a friend of mine who is a psychiatrist once told me that people do better if they can cease ruminating and just do their work. For some this is impossible, but being focused on something other than introspection is a strategy for fighting depression. I’m not saying it’s the best or the only strategy, but sometimes you might just be better off going to work.

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(Translations by George Long, available online from the Internet Classics Archive of MIT. These would be closer to the original Greek.)

In he morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present- I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bed-clothes and keep myself warm?- But this is more pleasant.- Dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure, and not at all for action or exertion? Dost thou not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees working together to put in order their several parts of the universe? And art thou unwilling to do the work of a human being, and dost thou not make haste to do that which is according to thy nature?- But it is necessary to take rest also.- It is necessary: however nature has fixed bounds to this too: she has fixed bounds both to eating and drinking, and yet thou goest beyond these bounds, beyond what is sufficient; yet in thy acts it is not so, but thou stoppest short of what thou canst do. So thou lovest not thyself, for if thou didst, thou wouldst love thy nature and her will. But those who love their several arts exhaust themselves in working at them unwashed and without food; but thou valuest thy own own nature less than the turner values the turning art, or the dancer the dancing art, or the lover of money values his money, or the vainglorious man his little glory. And such men, when they have a violent affection to a thing, choose neither to eat nor to sleep rather than to perfect the things which they care for. But are the acts which concern society more vile in thy eyes and less worthy of thy labour? (Book 5, Paragraph 1)

When thou risest from sleep with reluctance, remember that it is according to thy constitution and according to human nature to perform social acts, but sleeping is common also to irrational animals. But that which is according to each individual’s nature is also more peculiarly its own, and more suitable to its nature, and indeed also more agreeable. (from Book VIII, Paragraph XII)

Social Media and Personal Connection

I had a conversation today a friend who claimed that “social media creates a false sense of connection and drives us further apart.” First of all, I’m not sure what counts as social media. For example, some argue that blogs count as social media, while others disagree. But if social media are “computer-mediated technologies that allow the creating and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks,” then blogs are social media. And I do think that I connect with others through my blog.

At any rate I wouldn’t say that social media create a “false” sense of connection, but rather a “different” sense. We know others to varying degrees. A connection with someone on Facebook or Twitter may typically be shallower than a connection between people who know each other personally, but that doesn’t mean the connection is bad or false. After all, you can have face-to-face relationships which are terrible. Maybe what we should say is that modern technology allows you, in general, to communicate with vastly more people than in the past, but that with the increased quantity probably comes a loss of quality.  On the other hand, your social media acquaintances aren’t as likely to kill  you as your friends or family!

What all this got me to thinking about was the role of older technologies in mediating human connectivity. (Disclaimer, I know nothing about communication theory.) If I Skype or talk on the phone, read about someone in a history book or watch a movie about a historical figure, I am connecting with those people. I know you somewhat through email, and a bit more when I hear your voice or see your face.

And I know Bertrand Russell a little bit from reading his books. I’m not saying this is as deep of a connection as if I had known him personally, but I don’t think we should call this a false connection. In fact, if I have read his philosophical writings, I am more connected to him in some sense than people who knew him personally but never read one of his books.

Or think of letter writing. There was a time not that long ago when many people had “pen pals,” yesterday’s equivalent of email friends. Email makes such communicative connections easier and faster than letter writing, but both allow people to connect in ways that were impossible before we had computers or paper. In fact, I often feel that I communicate and connect better with others through writing rather than verbally. Using the written word allows me to be more clear and precise than oral communication, and eliminates the apprehension that often accompanies direct human interactions.

Thinking about communications reminded me that in graduate school I was fortunate enough to work in the same building with, and read some of the writing of,  Walter Ong SJ (1912 – 2003). Ong was an American Jesuit priest, humanist and communication theorist, and professor of English literature at St. Louis University for many years.

Ong’s  major interest was in exploring how the transition from orality to literacy influenced culture and changed human consciousness. He argued that the invention of writing played a major role in the emergence of individualism by providing the technology to think alone and to pursue intricate studies impossible in oral cultures that rely solely on face-to-face communication and memory. Ong claimed specifically, that the technologies of writing and printing created a new individualistic character, the private author who addresses an indefinite population. Paradoxically, he notes, “there is an inverse relationship between the number of people you are addressing and how alone you have to be.”

So I was introduced long ago to the sense that while technology changes communication, it doesn’t necessarily undermine it and may, in other ways, enhance it. You can easily imagine future technologies that would allow us to communicate even better, perhaps by being able to really feel what it is like to be the other. Now I’m not saying that Facebook is anything like what I’m imagining, and on the whole it may not be beneficial. But I reject the idea that technology necessarily leads to a decrease in the quality of human connectivity.

Nonetheless, I am sympathetic with the sentiments Andrew Sullivan expresses in “I Used To Be A Human Being,”

Every minute I was engrossed in a virtual interaction I was not involved in a human encounter. Every second absorbed in some trivia was a second less for any form of reflection, or calm, or spirituality.

So in the end, I’m just not sure about social media and personal connection. Perhaps some readers have more ideas.

Can We Evolve Fast Enough to Survive?

In response to my post, “Yes, America Is Descending Into Totalitarianism,” the computer game designer Chris Crawford, shared some good news—Trump may be impeached. Later he shared his bad news:

The species Homo Sapiens was shaped as a hunter-gatherer creature in the savannah and mixed forest of Eastern Africa. We are optimized to perform well in such circumstances. We have not an iota of civilization in our genes; that’s a cultural overlay.

One of the important factors in the establishment of human dominance over other creatures is its cultural plasticity. Culture can be adapted to the specific needs of a particular environment, permitting humans to live in places radically different from the grasslands and open forests of Eastern Africa. Too cold? No problem — let’s wrap ourselves in furs!

Now, genes are capable of adapting to new environments, but generally they take about 10,000 generations to pull off a significant change. That would be about a quarter of a million years for Homo Sapiens. Our reliance on culture permitted much faster adaptation, but even culture can’t turn on a dime. It typically takes a few generations before a culture can adapt to new circumstances. Any serious environmental change that takes place in less that 50 years is probably too fast for human culture to handle.

Now let’s throw in the idea of progress. We didn’t even notice that civilization was progressing until a few centuries ago, and by the 19th century progress was all the rage, an infatuation that only grew in strength with time.

Progress changes our environment. If our environment changes, our culture needs to change to adapt to the new circumstances. But culture can’t turn on a dime; it takes a few generations to work out an appropriate change.

Our base of scientific knowledge is growing faster every year. The technology that this scientific knowledge inspires is also progressing faster every year. And that means that we change our environment faster every year.

Unless we stop this process, we will inevitably reach a point at which the environment is changing faster than we can adapt to it. At that point, we will no longer be adequately adapted to our environment. And Darwin is unforgiving: any species that cannot adapt to its environment always goes extinct.

Here’s a small bright note: I don’t think that we’ll actually go extinct. I think that we’ll only destroy our civilization and then regress to our hunter-gatherer roots. But we’ll never be able to repeat the success of current civilization, because it has already consumed all the easily reached resources such as fossil fuels.

Getting back to Gloom and Doom, I think it safe to say that civilization must collapse. Indeed, there’s a solid argument that we are already seeing the first seeds of an inability to adapt in the matter of anthropogenic climate change. Here’s a very real threat to our civilization, and we’ve got a president-elect who denies the very existence of the threat. The March to Doom may well have already begun.

Will Trump Be Impeached?

Yesterday’s post, “Yes, America Is Descending Into Totalitarianism,” elicited a thoughtful response from Chris Crawford. I will publish his reply in two parts.

As always, I agree entirely with your pessimistic assessment of the state of the country. And your suggestion that Mr. Trump will start down the path to fascism by pursuing revenge against those who cross him is right on the mark; I came to the same conclusion a few days ago. I can contribute two ideas to the discussion, the first heartening and the second disheartening.

On the sunny side, we have a strong likelihood that the Republican Congress will impeach and convict Mr. Trump. I realize that this sounds absurd, but here is my reasoning:

1. The Republican Party was dead-set against Mr. Trump throughout the primaries, because they recognized just how destructive he could be. Now they all claim to support him, but how sincere do you think that those proclamations are? My guess is that the average Republican is willing to give Mr. Trump the opportunity to demonstrate some statesmanship, but expects Mr. Trump to fail horribly — at which point the Republicans will impeach him. I suspect that many Republican Congresscritters have already discussed this possibility among themselves.

2. The Republicans need to protect their brand. If Mr. Trump triggers a sequence of scandals — say, grabbing Ms. Merkel by the pussy — the Republican brand will be so discredited that it will lose elections for a generation. In the Republican view, Mr. Trump will surely be gone in four years, and they’ll need to be able to continue to function as a party. They may well conclude that dumping Mr. Trump is the only way.

3. There is also the very real possibility that Mr. Trump intends to replace the Republican Party with The Gold-Coated Donald J. Trump Party. Why else would he be conducting a victory tour of the country, going to his most enthusiastic supporters? He already won the election! What’s the point of further campaigning? And note that he continues to spew Tweets to his followers. Is this merely a continuation of an old habit or does he intend to develop this new channel so that he can bypass the Republican Party in four years? Indeed, during the primaries he threatened to run as an independent if he lost the primaries. When the Republicans realize that Mr. Trump is a direct threat to their existence, they’ll surely dump him.

4. Here’s my weakest argument: the Republicans decide that Mr. Trump is harming the country as a whole and conclude that, for the good of the Republic, they must impeach Mr. Trump. Yeah, I know, it sounds absurd, doesn’t it?

Moreover, from the Republican point of view, impeaching and convicting Mr. Trump will put Mr. Pence into the Oval Office, and while they may find him too far to the right, he’s still a regular Republican politician and won’t go around grabbing women by the pussy.

I’ll post his bad news tomorrow.

Yes, America Is Descending Into Totalitarianism

“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. … Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie … The totalitarian … leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that … one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism. Instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.” ~ Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

For weeks now, I have been reading and blogging about dozens of articles from respected intellectuals from both the right and left who worry about the increasing authoritarian, totalitarian, and fascist trends growing in America. Interestingly, when I tried to escape my scholarly bubble by looking for voices arguing that we are NOT heading in this direction, I came up empty. I can find partisans or apparatchiks who maintain that all is good, but I can’t find any really informed people arguing that we have nothing to worry about. I know there must be such people, but if there are they must be a tiny minority.

Now I do find informed voices saying that, in the long run, things will be fine. That the arc of justice moves slowly forward, that we take 1 step back but will then take 2 steps forward. Now thinking about things from a larger perspective resonates with me. I write about big history and believe there may be directionality to cosmic evolution! I’ve argued that the universe is becoming self-conscious through the emergence of conscious beings, and I’ve even hypothesized that humans may become post-humans by utilizing future technologies. So I can hardly be accused of ignoring the big picture.

However such concerns feel obtuse and esoteric at the moment. Yes, it may be true that things will slowly improve, and that consciousness and the cosmos evolve in a progressive direction, but that’s small consolation for the millions who suffer in the interim. When people don’t have health care; when they are deported, tortured, falsely imprisoned, or killed in wars; when they live in abject poverty surrounded by gun violence and lack educational opportunities; when they suffer in a myriad of other ways because of corrupt government, this isn’t ameliorated by appeals to a far away future. Even if the world is a better place in a thousand years, that’s not much comfort now.

What is almost self-evident now is that government is becoming more corrupt now, and at a dangerously accelerating rate. (However in many other ways the world is getting better—less poverty, less war, etc.) In response we must resist becoming like the those of whom Yeats said: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” So I state unequivocally that I agree with the vast majority of scholars and thinkers—the USA is becoming more authoritarian, totalitarian, and fascist with each passing day.

Of course I could be mistaken. I am not a scholar of Italian history, totalitarianism, or the mob psychology that enables fascist movements. But I do know that all human beings have a human genome, making them much more alike than different. We are capable of racism, sexism, xenophobia, cruelty, violence, religious fanaticism and more. We are a nasty species; we are modified monkeys. As Mark Twain said: “Such is the human race … Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.”

Thus I resist nonsense like, “this can happen in Germany or Italy or Russia, but not in the United States.” It can happen here, and all signs point in an ominous direction. Moreover, the United States was never a model of liberty or justice. The country was built on slave labor and genocide at home and violent imperialism abroad. It is a first world outlier in terms of incarceration rates and gun violence; it is the only developed country in the world without national health and child care; it has outrageous levels of income inequality, few opportunities for individuals to climb the socio-economic ladder and it is consistently ranked as the greatest threat to world peace and the world’s most hated country.

Furthermore, signs of its dysfunction continue to grow. If authoritarian political forces don’t get their way, they shut down the government, threaten to default on the nation’s debt, fail to fill judicial vacancies, take away people’s health-care and family planning options, conduct congressional show trials, suppress voting, gerrymander congressional districts, support racism, xenophobia and sexism, and spread lies and propaganda. These aren’t signs of a stable society. As the late Princeton political theorist Sheldon Wolin put it:

The elements are in place [for a quasi-fascist takeover]: a weak legislative body, a legal system that is both compliant and repressive, a party system in which one party, whether in opposition or in the majority, is bent upon reconstituting the existing system so as to permanently favor a ruling class of the wealthy, the well-connected and the corporate, while leaving the poorer citizens with a sense of helplessness and political despair, and, at the same time, keeping the middle classes dangling between fear of unemployment and expectations of fantastic rewards once the new economy recovers. That scheme is abetted by a sycophantic and increasingly concentrated media; by the integration of universities with their corporate benefactors; by a propaganda machine institutionalized in well-funded think tanks and conservative foundations; by the increasingly closer cooperation between local police and national law enforcement agencies aimed at identifying terrorists, suspicious aliens and domestic dissidents.

Now with power in the hands of an odd mix of plutocrats, corporatists, theocrats, racists, sexists, anti-modernists, egoists, psychopaths, sycophants and the scientifically illiterate, there is no reason to think that they will surrender their power without a fight. You might think that if income inequality grows, or individual liberties are further constricted, or millions of people are killed at home or abroad, that people will reject those who enact such policies. But this assumes we are all playing by democratic rules. A compliant and misinformed public cannot think, act or vote intelligently. If you control your citizens with sophisticated propaganda and mindless entertainment, you can persuade them to support almost anything. With more sophisticated methods of controlling and distorting information, will come more totalitarian control over the population. And, as long the powerful believe they benefit from an increasingly totalitarian state, you can bet they will try to maintain it. Most people like to control others; they like to win.

An outline of how we might quickly descend into madness was highlighted by David Frum, the conservative and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. Frum envisions the following scenario which is, I believe, as prescient as it is chilling:

1) …  I don’t imagine that Donald Trump will immediately set out to build an authoritarian state; 2) … his first priority will be to use the presidency to massively enrich himself; 3) That program of massive self-enrichment … will trigger media investigations and criticism by congressional Democrats; 4) ….Trump cannot tolerate criticism. He … always retaliating against perceived enemies, by means fair or foul; 5) … Trump’s advisers and aides share this belief [they] … live by gangster morality; 6) So the abuses will start as payback. With a compliant GOP majority in Congress, Trump admin can rewrite laws to enable payback; 7) The courts may be an obstacle. But w/ a compliant Senate, a president can change the courts … 8) … few [IRS] commissioners serve the full 5 years; 9) The FBI seems … pre-politicized in Trump’s favor … 10) Construction of the apparatus of revenge and repression will begin opportunistically & haphazardly. It will accelerate methodically …

Let me tell a personal story to help explain the cutthroat, no holds bar political world that is rapidly evolving in America today. Years ago I played high-stakes poker. It started out innocently, a few friends having a good time playing for pocket change. Slowly the stakes got bigger, forcing me to study poker if I didn’t want to lose money I didn’t have. My studies paid off, and I soon won consistently. Great.

Then I start playing with people I didn’t know, assuming my superior poker skills would prevail. But soon I started losing; finding out later that I was being cheated! (I was being cold decked.) I found out that my opponents played by a different rule—I was not leaving the game with money if I played by the rules! Later I found out that some people will rob you at gunpoint of the money you had won honestly. (This actually happened to me.) So once the gentleman’s rules of poker no longer applied, nothing was off-limits. Similarly, once the agreement to play by democratic rules is violated, all bets are off. You can ignore the other parties Supreme Court nominees, or threaten to default on the nation’s debts. This is a sign of amoral world. The ultimate end of this game is violent struggle.

This describes the current political situation. The US Congress was once characterized by comity, but is so no longer. From the period after World War II to about 1980, the political parties in the USA generally compromised for the good of the nation. But by the mid 1990s, with Republican control of the House of Representatives, the situation deteriorated into a no holds bar world. One side was determined to get their way and wouldn’t compromise.

In other words, US politics has entered a situation that game-theorists call the prisoner’s dilemma. A prisoner’s dilemma is an interactive situation in which it is better for all to cooperate rather than for no one to do so, yet it is best for each not to cooperate, regardless of what the others do. For example, we would have a better country if everyone paid taxes, but it is best for Trump or others not to pay taxes if they can get away with it. In other words, you do best when you cheat at poker and can get away with it.

At that point you are winning in what the great philosopher Thomas Hobbes called, a state of nature. Hobbes said in such a state the only values are force and fraud. If you can dominate, enslave, incarcerate, or otherwise eviscerate your opponents, then you win. The problem, Hobbes thought, was that people are “relative power equals.” That is, people can form alliances to take back the power that their oppressors had usurped.

But if we live in a country where people are radically unequal in their power—Democrats vs. Republicans; unions vs. corporations; secularists vs theocrats; African-Americans vs. white nationalists—then those in power aren’t likely to compromise with the less powerful. When the powerful few, imbued with the idea that they possess a monopoly on the truth and are superiors human beings, you can bet that the rest of us will suffer.

It is after all a centuries old struggle. Some seek wealth and power for a few, others want a decent life for everyone. Right now the few are winning.

American Authoritarianism, Coming 2017

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. Power is not a means; it is an end … The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power”~ George Orwell

I’d like to provide a summary of the main ideas from the many articles I’ve reviewed over the last few weeks about the growing American authoritarianism. And in my next post I will, finally, publically reflect on what I’ve learned. First, we might recall our definition:

In government, authoritarianism denotes any political system that concentrates power in the hands of a leader or a small elite that is not constitutionally responsible to the body of the people. Authoritarian leaders often exercise power arbitrarily and without regard to existing bodies of law …  Authoritarianism thus stands in fundamental contrast to democracy … ~ Encyclopedia Britannica

In short, authoritarianism describes a government with a large amount of control over the population, using coercive threats, suppression of a free press, as well as propaganda and disinformation to manage the people it rule. Totalitarianism is an extreme version of authoritarianism, and is usually associated with a charismatic leader, while fascism brings ultra-nationalism, corporatism, and racism into the mix. I will let the experts decide which definition best fits Trump and his associates, although all of them fit pretty well.

We began our discussion with the insights of the artificial intelligence and decision theory expert Eliezer Yudkowsky who described “how there’s a level of politics that’s theater and a level of politics that’s deadly serious.” This was meant as a warning for those willing to gamble on choosing unstable, unqualified leaders with authoritarian tendencies. We must remember that bad things can happen in the USA and there are no “nebulous forces” that will come to our rescue.

In “The Rise of American Authoritarianism,” Amanda Taub reports on the political science research which converges on the idea that support for Donald Trump correlates almost perfectly with having an authoritarian personality. Support for authoritarian rule derives from the desire of peoto be protected from dangers real or imagined.

In “America, The Disgraced Super-power: The America we have known and imagined is ended. It never will return,”  Michael Brenner argues that the USA has taken a cataclysmic turn, and it is slowly becoming a failed state.

… the America we have known and imagined is ended. It never will return …. the choice of Trump reveals most Americans as immature and prone to juvenile behavior.

And he expands his analysis in “How Autocracy Will Come To America,”

The unpalatable truth is that authoritarian movements and ideology with fascist overtones are back … Against this historical backdrop … we … see … the attitudes, the rhetoric and the inspirations that marked Fascism’s rise 80 or 90 years ago … racist hate; scapegoating of the alien “other;” mounting feelings of insecurity … ; frustrated feelings of lost prowess; the scorning of elected democratic leaders condemned … as “weak” … and overbearing …

Brenner connects his insights with those of Umberto Eco (1932 – 2016), the Italian novelist, literary critic, philosopher, semiotician, and university professor. In 1995, Eco penned an essay in the New York Review of Books entitled “Ur Fascism.” (Eternal fascism) Each of the 14 features of fascism that Eco described parallels the words and actions of Trump.

All this got me to thinking that we shouldn’t be surprised that forces within the USA continue to undermine democracy. After all, it is no secret that the USA has attempted to suppress democracy many times around the world. So if the military and covert forces of the USA willingly overthrow (especially) democratic/populist governments around the world, why wouldn’t they participate in undermining democracy at home? Voter suppression, gerrymandering, propaganda, and all the rest may just be the beginning. From there it is but a short step to using anything, including violence, to get your way.

Such thoughts led me to Henry Giroux’s, “Orwell, Huxley and America’s Plunge into Authoritarianism.” Giroux outlines how technology aids authoritarian regimes in tracking and distracting their citizens into accepting a totalitarian state:

The authoritarian nature of the corporate-state surveillance apparatus and security system … can only be fully understood when its ubiquitous tentacles are connected to … security-patrolled corridors of public schools, the rise in super-max prisons, the hyper-militarization of local police forces, the justification of secret prisons and state-sanctioned torture abroad, and the increasing labeling of dissent as an act of terrorism in the United States.  … Alongside efforts to defund public and higher education and to attack the welfare state, a wide-ranging assault is being waged across the culture on all spheres that encourage the public to hold power accountable

To add to these concerns, Jason Stanley’s “Beyond Lying: Donald Trump’s Authoritarian Reality,” offers perceptive commentary on our current, frightening political situation. His key idea is that authoritarian propaganda creates a false reality in order to gain power.

… Trump is trying to convey is that there is wild disorder, because of American citizens of African-American descent, and immigrants … The chief authoritarian values are law and order. In Trump’s value system, nonwhites and non-Christians are the chief threats to law and order. Trump knows that reality does not call for a value-system like his; violent crime is at almost historic lows in the United States. Trump is thundering about a crime wave of historic proportions, because he is an authoritarian using his speech to define a simple reality that legitimates his value system, leading voters to adopt it .

In “An American Authoritarian: The Republican presidential candidate is not a Fascist, but his campaign bears notable similarities to the reign of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.” the historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat points out the similarities between Trump and Mussolini. It is a terrifying read:

Trump … has created a one-man-led political movement that does not map onto traditional U.S. party structures or behave in traditional ways. This is how Fascism began as well … The authoritarian playbook is defined by the particular relationship such individuals have with their followers. It’s an attachment based on submission to the authority of one individual who stands above the party, even in a regime.

In his 2008 book, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, [image error]the late Princeton University political theorist Sheldon Wolin explained how the United States would fully devolve into authoritarianism. His vision of the future was clearly bleak.

The elements are in place [for a quasi-fascist takeover]: a weak legislative body, a legal system that is both compliant and repressive, a party system in which one party, whether in opposition or in the majority, is bent upon reconstituting the existing system so as to permanently favor a ruling class of the wealthy, the well-connected and the corporate, while leaving the poorer citizens with a sense of helplessness and political despair, and, at the same time, keeping the middle classes dangling between fear of unemployment and expectations of fantastic rewards once the new economy recovers. That scheme is abetted by a sycophantic and increasingly concentrated media; by the integration of universities with their corporate benefactors; by a propaganda machine institutionalized in well-funded think tanks and conservative foundations; by the increasingly closer cooperation between local police and national law enforcement agencies aimed at identifying terrorists, suspicious aliens and domestic dissidents.

Similar themes are highlighted in Bob Cesca’s, “Autocratic for the people: As Donald Trump’s populist wave recedes, an authoritarian regime in the making is revealed.

… your fears about an autocratic strongman Trump presidency are entirely reasonable … we can expect Trump supporters to vigorously defend him every step of the way, no matter how far he goes … we should look for attacks on religious minorities and immigrants; scapegoating the media; attacks against “un-American” behavior; use of the words “traitor” and “cancer” to characterize dissenters; and then large-scale rallies by Trump loyalists, followed by populist “referendums” to circumvent Congress … Whatever you might be thinking … it can absolutely happen here …

Simon Maloy’s, “The slow-motion decline: Resisting the gradual erosion of democratic institutions under President Trump,” agrees that our current situation is precarious:

It’s bracing to read political scientists and people familiar with autocratic rule write about the parallels they see between the America that elected Donald Trump and the undemocratic regimes they study. Scholars and academics have been writing about this degradation of norms ever since it became clear that Trump was emerging as a potent political force.

Andrew O’Hehir also agrees with the above in, “It can happen here: But has it? The 1933 scenario is no longer hypothetical.”

… We don’t know whether the Trump election marks a fatal tipping point for the American experiment in popular self-government … But history demands that we take that possibility seriously … I think we have to behave … as if our democracy has been irreparably damaged … We don’t know whether the election of Trump is an American echo of the winter of 1932-33 in Germany, when a fragile democracy collapsed into tyranny and an infamous demagogue rose to power on a promise of economic renewal and restored national pride, with an unmistakable racial subtext …

The mathematician and blogger Doug Muder tells us what to look for in, “The Trump Administration: What I’m watching for.” Specifically, Trump and his administration: 1) Taking credit for Obama’s accomplishments; 2) Taking credit for averting dangers that never existed; 3) Profiteering; 4) Changing the electorate; 5) Winking at right-wing paramilitary groups; 6)Subverting government agencies for political advantage; and 7) Paying Putin back.

An author who predicts that most of what Muder worries about might happen is David Frum, the conservative and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, in “David Frum Predicts the Dark Course of Trump’s Impending Authoritarianism.” Frum envisions the following scenario which is, I believe, as prescient as it is chilling:

1) …  I don’t imagine that Donald Trump will immediately set out to build an authoritarian state; 2) … his first priority will be to use the presidency massively to enrich himself; 3) That program of massive self-enrichment … will trigger media investigations and criticism by congressional Democrats; 4) ….Trump cannot tolerate criticism. He … always retaliating against perceived enemies, by means fair or foul; 5) … Trump’s advisers and aides share this belief [they] … live by gangster morality; 6) So the abuses will start as payback. With a compliant Gop majority in Congress, Trump admin can rewrite laws to enable payback; 7) The courts may be an obstacle. But w/ a compliant Senate, a president can change the courts—as happened in Poland & Hungary; 8) … few [IRS] commissioners serve the full 5 years; 9) The FBI seems already to have been pre-politicized in Trump’s favor … 10) Construction of the apparatus of revenge and repression will begin opportunistically & haphazardly. It will accelerate methodically …

Finally, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, professors of government at Harvard University, offer a most sober analysis of our situation in,  Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?”

Donald J. Trump’s election has raised a question that few Americans ever imagined asking: Is our democracy in danger? With the possible exception of the Civil War, American democracy has never collapsed … Yet past stability is no guarantee of democracy’s future survival …

The clearest warning sign is the ascent of anti-democratic politicians into mainstream politics … indicators include a failure to reject violence unambiguously, a readiness to curtail rivals’ civil liberties, and the denial of the legitimacy of elected governments.

Mr. Trump tests positive … The risk we face, then, is not merely a president with illiberal proclivities — it is the election of such a president when the guardrails protecting American democracy are no longer as secure … We must be vigilant. The warning signs are real.

Finally I reiterate my debt to all the other aforementioned authors for their perceptive insights. Unlike many of fellow citizens, I’m impressed when people actually know something, and I’m happy to benefit from their expertise. If that makes them elite, then so be it. “Intellectually elite” shouldn’t be a pejorative term.

In my next post, I will reflect on what I’ve learned about our current crisis.

Articles About American Authoritarianism

“Is ours a government of the people, by the people, for the people, or a kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?” ~ James Russell Lowell

For the past few weeks, I have been reviewing  articles about the trend toward authoritarianism in the USA. Unfortunately, articles appear faster than I can read and review them, so I’ll have to stop and move on soon. With this in mind, I list a few of the pieces I won’t get to, followed by excerpts from some other good ones.

Paul Krugman – “How Republics End,” The New York Times.

Charles Blow – “This Is Not Normal,” The New York Times.

Henry A. Giroux  – “The Authoritarian Politics of Resentment in Trump’s …,” Truthout.

Ben Fountain – “Welcome to the Reign of King Trump,” The Guardian.

Steve Denning – “Trump And Authoritarian Propaganda,” Forbes

Jonathan Chait – “The GOP’s Age of Authoritarianism Has … Begun,” New York Magazine.

Adam Liptak – “Donald Trump Could Threaten U.S. Rule of Law …,” The New York Times.

Robert Creamer – “Can Fascism Triumph in America?” The Huffington Post.

1) Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” (The New York Times, December 16, 2016 by

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, professors of government at Harvard University.)

Donald J. Trump’s election has raised a question that few Americans ever imagined asking: Is our democracy in danger? With the possible exception of the Civil War, American democracy has never collapsed … Yet past stability is no guarantee of democracy’s future survival …

The clearest warning sign is the ascent of anti-democratic politicians into mainstream politics … indicators include a failure to reject violence unambiguously, a readiness to curtail rivals’ civil liberties, and the denial of the legitimacy of elected governments.

Mr. Trump tests positive. In the campaign, he encouraged violence among supporters; pledged to prosecute Hillary Clinton; threatened legal action against unfriendly media; and suggested that he might not accept the election results …

Many Americans are not overly concerned about Mr. Trump’s authoritarian inclinations because they trust our system of constitutional checks and balances to constrain him. Yet the institutional safeguards protecting our democracy may be less effective than we think …

Democratic institutions must be reinforced by strong informal norms … Among the unwritten rules that have sustained American democracy are partisan self-restraint and fair play … Such practices helped to avoid a descent into the kind of partisan fight to the death that destroyed many European democracies in the 1930s.

Yet norms of partisan restraint have eroded in recent decades … Norms of presidential restraint are also at risk … Although executive power has expanded in recent decades, it has ultimately been reined in by the prudence and self-restraint of our presidents.

Unlike his predecessors, Mr. Trump is a serial norm-breaker. There are signs that Mr. Trump seeks to diminish the news media’s traditional role by using Twitter, video messages and public rallies to circumvent the White House press corps and communicate directly with voters — taking a page out of the playbook of populist leaders …

An even more basic norm under threat today is the idea of legitimate opposition. In a democracy, partisan rivals must fully accept one another’s right to exist, to compete and to govern … Governments throughout history have used the claim that their opponents are disloyal or criminal or a threat to the nation’s way of life to justify acts of authoritarianism.

The idea of legitimate opposition has been entrenched in the United States since the early 19th century, disrupted only by the Civil War. That may now be changing, however, as right-wing extremists increasingly question the legitimacy of their liberal rivals …

Such extremism, once confined to the political fringes, has now moved into the mainstream … leading Republicans — including the president-elect — endorsed the view that the Democratic candidate was not a legitimate rival.

The risk we face, then, is not merely a president with illiberal proclivities — it is the election of such a president when the guardrails protecting American democracy are no longer as secure … We must be vigilant. The warning signs are real.

2) “David Frum Predicts the Dark Course of Trump’s Impending Authoritarianism,” (PoliticsUSA, November 9, 2016, by Sara Jones.) Bear in mind that Frum is a conservative, and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, a president accused of expanding and abusing executive power. Frum envisions the following scenario which is, I believe, as prescient as it is chilling:

1) …  I don’t imagine that Donald Trump will immediately set out to build an authoritarian state; 2) … his first priority will be to use the presidency massively to enrich himself; 3) That program of massive self-enrichment … will trigger media investigations and criticism by congressional Democrats; 4) ….Trump cannot tolerate criticism. He … always retaliating against perceived enemies, by means fair or foul; 5) … Trump’s advisers and aides share this belief [they] … live by gangster morality; 6) So the abuses will start as payback. With a compliant Gop majority in Congress, Trump admin can rewrite laws to enable payback; 7) The courts may be an obstacle. But w/ a compliant Senate, a president can change the courts—as happened in Poland & Hungary; 8) … few [IRS] commissioners serve the full 5 years; 9) The FBI seems already to have been pre-politicized in Trump’s favor … 10) Construction of the apparatus of revenge and repression will begin opportunistically & haphazardly. It will accelerate methodically. END

3)  “An American Authoritarian: The Republican presidential candidate is not a Fascist, but his campaign bears notable similarities to the reign of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini,” (The Atlantic, August 16, 2016, by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Professor of History and Italian studies at New York University. Professor Ben-Ghiat.)

Trump … has created a one-man-led political movement that does not map onto traditional U.S. party structures or behave in traditional ways. This is how Fascism began as well …

The authoritarian playbook is defined by the particular relationship such individuals have with their followers. It’s an attachment based on submission to the authority of one individual who stands above the party, even in a regime.

Mussolini’s rise to power also exemplifies another authoritarian trait America has seen during this campaign: The charismatic leader who tests the limits of what the public, press, and political class will tolerate. This exploration begins early and is accomplished through controversial actions and threatening or humiliating remarks toward groups or individuals.

… Actions many see as irrational make chilling sense when considered under this framework: the many racist tweets or retweets … His early declaration that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York and not lose any supporters. His extended humiliation of powerful politicians … His attempt to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the American electoral process. His intimation that “the Second-Amendment people” might be able to solve the potential problem of Hillary Clinton

… Authoritarians usually communicate their intentions clearly. Mussolini certainly did. Trump has been frank about his agenda and the groups he’ll target if he’s elected. “The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end. Beginning on January 20, 2017, safety will be restored,” Trump said in accepting the Republican presidential nomination …

4) “Donald Trump’s “inverted totalitarianism”: Too bad we didn’t heed Sheldon Wolin’s warnings” (Salon, November 23, 2016, by Chauncey Devega.)

In his 2008 book, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, [image error]Princeton University political theorist Sheldon Wolin explained how the United States would fully devolve into authoritarianism.

The elements are in place [for a quasi-fascist takeover]: a weak legislative body, a legal system that is both compliant and repressive, a party system in which one party, whether in opposition or in the majority, is bent upon reconstituting the existing system so as to permanently favor a ruling class of the wealthy, the well-connected and the corporate, while leaving the poorer citizens with a sense of helplessness and political despair, and, at the same time, keeping the middle classes dangling between fear of unemployment and expectations of fantastic rewards once the new economy recovers. That scheme is abetted by a sycophantic and increasingly concentrated media; by the integration of universities with their corporate benefactors; by a propaganda machine institutionalized in well-funded think tanks and conservative foundations; by the increasingly closer cooperation between local police and national law enforcement agencies aimed at identifying terrorists, suspicious aliens and domestic dissidents.

Wolin also offered further warnings about American democracy in a 1988 interview with Bill Moyers:

…  I don’t think the idea of democracy and the ideal of a strong state … that those are compatible notions. I think that democracy does imply involvement, shared power, dispersed power and, above all, a significant equality. And I think state power means the opposite of those things. And similarly, I think the democracy clearly is at odds with corporate structures and the power of corporate structures.

Wolin also described the source of much populist outrage:

… I see casualties of all kinds. I see cities that are—many of them are unlivable, as we’ve known for 20 years—and in which the cultural life is on the edge of extinction, in which there is a great deal of class conflict and … distinctions of rich and poor which are beginning to become mind-boggling. I guess one of the things that’s so crucial … is that this innovative society we’re committed to has clearly developed a surplus, superfluous population … A population for whom, if there is work, it isn’t terribly meaningful, and it doesn’t have much of a future to it. And that we as a society don’t really know what to do with that surplus population.

5) “Autocratic for the people: As Donald Trump’s populist wave recedes, an authoritarian regime in the making is revealed,” (Salon, November 20, 2016, by Bob Cesca.)

This is all to say, yes, your fears about an autocratic strongman Trump presidency are entirely reasonable. Making matters worse, we can expect Trump supporters to vigorously defend him every step of the way, no matter how far he goes …

So what do we look for? NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel noted that autocrats have several tells. Engel said we should look for attacks on religious minorities and immigrants; scapegoating the media; attacks against “un-American” behavior; use of the words “traitor” and “cancer” to characterize dissenters; and then large-scale rallies by Trump loyalists, followed by populist “referendums” to circumvent Congress, and so forth.

Whatever you might be thinking to the contrary, it can absolutely happen here …

Anyone expecting business as usual from the Trump White House is begging to be shocked when it doesn’t happen that way. We’ve fallen well outside the mainstream with this election. The timeline is skewed, and what follows won’t be easy to contain or to roll back. Expect the worst, hope for the best, and pray for the timeline to correct itself soon.

6) “The slow-motion decline: Resisting the gradual erosion of democratic institutions under President Trump,” (Salon, November 27, 2016, by Simon Maloy.)

It’s bracing to read political scientists and people familiar with autocratic rule write about the parallels they see between the America that elected Donald Trump and the undemocratic regimes they study. Scholars and academics have been writing about this degradation of norms ever since it became clear that Trump was emerging as a potent political force.

The bulk of Donald Trump’s political life prior to capturing the presidency was devoted to undermining the established institutions of democracy: from the campaign to destroy Barack Obama’s legitimacy as president to his unrelenting hostility towards the press to his pernicious insistences that the election was being “rigged” against him. Now he will have all the levers of the presidency available to him to continue this crusade to erode public confidence in the very political and social institutions that are supposed to keep him in check.

… the body you’d expect to provide a necessary check on a corrupt, illiberal president would be the Congress. But the Republicans … have made clear that they’re more invested in maintaining power than in maintaining democratic institutions. The last eight years have taught Republicans that … persistent violation of governing norms can result in dramatically increased political power. With Trump’s election, the Senate GOP realized an ill-gotten payoff from its unprecedented obstruction of Barack Obama’s nominee to replace the late Antonin Scalia … The entire party is involved in a coordinated assault on voting rights as a means of suppressing Democratic turnout and maintaining its authority by making it harder for the other side to vote.

What reason do we have to think these same Republicans would rise to the challenge of defending democratic institutions against Trump’s depredations? When it comes to the attack on voting rights … Trump presents the congressional GOP with a golden opportunity to implement its agenda, so Republican lawmakers have every reason to simply look the other way as he loots the presidency.

… There’s an understandable urge not to overreact and to maintain faith in the system, … But as Columbia University political scientist N. Turkuler Isiksel wrote … this … blind faith can be incredibly damaging: “It is precisely such overconfidence in the United States’ long and illustrious tradition of liberty that could lull the American public into a false sense of security and facilitate the rapid destruction of that very tradition.”

That brings us back to the question of how best to react to the damage that has already occurred and the destruction that’s yet to come. Obviously those of us who are concerned by the slow-motion erosion of governing institutions run the risk of marginalization by living in a state of constant panic. That redounds to the benefit of the people doing the destruction, who can malign their critics as hysterical and unreasonable. But sitting back and waiting for the right moment also carries risks, as there very well might not be any sort of tipping-point event that screams “AN AUTHORITARIAN IS TAKING OVER” in bright neon lights.

7) “It can happen here: But has it? The 1933 scenario is no longer hypothetical,” (Salon, November 26, 2016, by Andrew O’Hehir. )

We have crossed the river of history into a new country … Will the presidency of Donald Trump … resemble things that have happened before? Or is it a trip to an unknown planet, where all the things we thought we understood about reality and democracy and the nature of America no longer apply?

… We don’t know whether the Trump election marks a fatal tipping point for the American experiment in popular self-government …

But history demands that we take that possibility seriously … I think we have to behave … as if our democracy has been irreparably damaged and now must be … rebuilt … because that may be the only way of preventing it from coming true.

We don’t know whether the election of Trump is an American echo of the winter of 1932-33 in Germany, when a fragile democracy collapsed into tyranny and an infamous demagogue rose to power on a promise of economic renewal and restored national pride, with an unmistakable racial subtext …

At the very least the Trump election is a moment of unprecedented national emergency and a critical symptom of how badly American political life has decayed. The whole scenario remains deeply ludicrous … A reality TV star and real estate salesman with the demeanor and intellect of a petulant child has been elected president …

… Then there’s the fact that President-elect Trump … has tapped an old-line white Southerner with clear links to Jim Crow-style racism for his attorney general (Jeff Sessions), a defrocked general given to paranoid anti-Islamic tirades as his national security adviser (Michael Flynn) and a millionaire zealot who wants to defund public schools as his secretary of education (Betsy DeVos).

Those who try to assure us that the emergency is not an emergency or to insist that the enduring institutions of democracy will surely triumph over this mass hallucination, are either cowardly or stupid or have their heads buried somewhere that isn’t the sand … At some point, clinging to your broken idols while barbarians ransack the temple just becomes pathetic.

… we should all be afraid. We have good reason to be afraid if we are Muslim, if we are gay or lesbian or trans, if we are black, if we are recent immigrants with or without papers. … We have reason to be afraid if we are Americans who do not define our nationality by looking backward to an imaginary past …

If you had to guess right now, consider who will be remembered as displaying courage and who as a disgraceful chicken shit? Outgoing Senate minority leader Harry Reid, who has excoriated Trump for his hateful and divisive campaign … Or Sen. Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat from West Virginia … who called Reid a disgrace to the party and the nation?

Will it be those members of the panel of New York Times editors and staffers who fell over themselves congratulating Trump for not breathing fire or eating babies after he finally deigned to meet with them? … Or will it be columnist Charles Blow, who could barely conceal his disgust at the craven conduct of his bosses?

… We all have to deal with the altered universe in which Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office as a somewhat legitimate president, even if such a universe makes that office and our entire country look like a bad joke …

It took years for American politics to deteriorate badly enough that Donald Trump could be elected dogcatcher, let alone president … So now we confront a national emergency that must not be denied and an old question out of the history textbooks that cannot be avoided: Whose side are you on?

8) “The Trump Administration: What I’m watching for,” The Weekly Sift, November 20, 2016, by Doug Muder, PhD, Mathematics.) Here are some excerpts from the piece. Muder lists the things those of us worried about authoritarianism should watch for:

Taking credit for Obama’s accomplishments. President Obama has left his successor a country in much better shape than the one he inherited from President Bush. Republicans in general and Trump in particular have refused to give Obama credit for his accomplishments, or even to recognize good news when it appeared …

Taking credit for averting dangers that never existed. This has already started. Trump is taking credit for keeping a Kentucky Ford plant from moving to Mexico, when Ford never had a plan to move it … In the conspiracy-theory swamps where many Trump supporters live, this will be incredibly easy: All they have to do is celebrate the end of things that never existed to begin with: You know those FEMA detention camps where anti-Obama dissidents were going to be sent? Trump closed them! They’re gone.

Profiteering. There will be no distance between Trump’s government and Trump’s profit-making enterprises. What this means is that there is a wide-open door for foreign governments to bribe President Trump … So if you’re competing against a Trump business, you’re competing against the Trump administration. It’s one enterprise now … All this runs afoul of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution …

Changing the electorate. …  the electorate becomes a little less white every year … if you really want to preserve the United States as a white-majority nation, you have to prevent non-whites from voting … That has been the Republican strategy for several years now. As soon as the Supreme Court opened the door, states governed by Republicans began changing election rules to make it harder to vote, especially for blacks, Hispanics, poor people, and college students …

Winking at right-wing paramilitary groups. To be honest, I’ll be relieved if we make it through the next four years with nothing worse than financial chicanery. Much darker stuff is possible … Early on, fascist violence is unofficial: Organized thugs destroy the printing press and send the editor to a hospital, not a jail. Police are not involved, but they show no interest in catching the people who are.

Right-wing violence in America was already a problem before Trump: There are groups that support firebombing abortion clinics and murdering doctors. Hate crimes against blacks, immigrants, or Muslims are usually portrayed as the work of isolated maniacs, but in fact killers like Dylann Roof and Wade Michael Page have had far stronger relationships with organized hate groups than, say, Omar Mateen had with ISIS. The Bundy gang in Nevada has openly challenged the federal government with armed resistance.

Subverting government agencies for political advantage. … I don’t expect Trump to carry through on his promise to appoint a special prosecutor to go after the Clintons … But … FBI Director Comey’s highly unusual commentary on the Clinton email server problem … as well as the leaks from inside the FBI about some nebulous Clinton Foundation investigation, suggests that there has been considerable political corruption of the FBI already … The FBI, CIA, NSA, SEC, IRS, and other agencies all have considerable power to make Trump’s critics miserable, as well as to provide valuable information to his business interests. Will they be asked to do so, and will they give in?

Paying Putin back. Trump and Vladimir Putin both know that Trump could not have won without Putin’s help. The Russian hack of DNC and Clinton campaign emails was a major factor in the campaign. We have since found out that the Trump campaign was in regular contact with Russian officials. This should come as no surprise, since former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had previously received millions of dollars from pro-Russian organizations in Ukraine … Two questions immediately come to mind: Will the Russian government continue committing crimes for Trump’s benefit? And what do they want in return?

I thank all the aforementioned authors for their insights. Unlike many of fellow citizens, I’m impressed when people actually know something, and I’m happy to benefit from their expertise. If that makes them elite, then so be it. I’m glad that we have a few elite thinkers. “Intellectually elite” shouldn’t be a pejorative term.

Michael Brenner’s: “America, The Disgraced Super-power”

Another great piece that conveys the severity of our situation is “America, The Disgraced Super-power: The America we have known and imagined is ended. It never will return,” The Huffington Post, November 16, 2016, by Michael Brenner, Senior Fellow, the Center for Transatlantic Relations; Professor of International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh. Brenner’s thesis is that, although America has always been a seriously flawed nation, the USA has taken a cataclysmic turn, and it is slowly becoming a failed state. Here are a few excerpts:

If truth be told, the America we have known and imagined is ended. It never will return. In terms of relations with others, image is of enormous importance. The United States has gained great advantage from being seen as exceptional. From its earliest days, it fascinated and gave inspiration as the first working democracy, as the embodiment of the hope-filled New World, as the land of the common man and common decency. Later, as it grew into a world power, it held the allure for many as being somehow beyond the world’s pervasive tawdriness. These images held even as contradicted by slavery and racism, by imperial wars of expansion against Mexico and Spain, by signs of hypocrisy …

The resulting “soft power” or “soft influence” has been a unique asset. Already dissipated to a high degree over the decades of the Global War On Terror, it now is destined to fade into a shadow of its former self. A blatantly racist, xenophobic, studiously ignorant, and belligerent country cannot retain the respect of other governments or the high regard of their peoples. A country so feckless as to choose Trump the buffoon as its president is mocking itself. The negative impact will be compounded as the United States is riven by internal conflicts of all kinds, repressive actions and perhaps another serious economic crisis.

The damage to America’s standing in the world should hardly be a surprise; yet many are inclined to underestimate the effect. Walk the streets of cities abroad for unscripted reactions to this historic act of national self-mutilation. We can expect that whoever winds up in senior policy positions in a Trump administration will downplay these intangibles—if they even acknowledge them …

… It is a manifestation of an unwitting coping strategy for coming to terms with the shattering event of his election. Americans in general are pursuing a similar psychological strategy for the sake of preserving the conception of themselves and their country that is a foundation stone of their identity. In this, they will be encouraged by the tradition of self-delusion that has become a feature of American thinking about its place in the world ….

These self-delusional practices have prepared the psychological ground for the grand illusion to come in, assuming that the America of Trump will continue to draw the world’s admiration and its deference to American leadership …

… For the choice of Trump reveals most Americans as immature and prone to juvenile behavior. To vote for Trump is the ultimate act of political immaturity. There are … identifiable reasons why many were drawn to the flamboyant candidate, why his demagoguery resonated, why his exaggerated imagery struck a receptive nerve. However, for that emotional response to translate into the actual selection of this man to be president crosses a critical threshold. Children—at times—let emotion rule their conduct. Children only weakly feel the imperative to impose logic and a modicum reason on their impulses. Children disregard consequences. Children overlook the downside in their implicit weighing of the balance in giving in to those impulses or not. Grown-ups do not.

Immediate satisfaction—at all and any cost—does not eclipse other considerations for adults. Even a child’s tantrum usually lasts no more than ten minutes or so. The tantrum of Trump voters has lasted 18 months. That’s pathological …

The shock waves of that vote are being felt around the globe. A crippled America will change the world.

Jason Stanley’s: “Beyond Lying: Donald Trump’s Authoritarian Reality”

“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they’ve been fooled.” — Unknown

“Beyond Lying: Donald Trump’s Authoritarian Reality,” The New York Times, Nov. 4, 2016, by Jason Stanley, Professor of philosophy at Yale. His new book is: How Propaganda Works. I think Stanley offers some the most perceptive commentary on our current, frightening political situation.  The key idea is that authoritarian propaganda disregards truth as a means to gain power. Here are some salient quotes from this chilling piece.

As the Republican candidate for president in 2016, Donald J. Trump has … engaged in rhetorical tactics unprecedented in recent American electoral history. He was straightforwardly misogynistic. He repeatedly endorsed obviously false claims …

… the media lacked the vocabulary to describe what was happening. Trump was denounced repeatedly for “lying” and at times the apparently more egregious “bald faced lying.” But that is not a sufficient description. Neither was the charge by the philosopher Harry Frankfurt that Trump was in fact a master of “bullshit,” which is distinct from lying in that the speaker is not just communicating information he knows to be false, but is unconstrained by any consideration of what may or may not be true. While this description is technically true, it is at best terribly misleading. This presidential campaign has revealed that our academic and media class has insufficiently grappled with the problem of mass communication.

Liberal democratic societies by definition have a pluralism of value systems. This poses a problem for the politician seeking to gain office, just as it does for the advertiser seeking to gain customers. The total audience consists of sub-audiences with conflicting value systems. The problem of mass communication in a liberal democracy is that of creating and conveying a maximally appealing message to an audience made up of groups with conflicting value systems.

There is a familiar way to respond to the problem in United States presidential politics. It is to convey shared acceptance of a value system to one specific group of voters, while concealing one’s commitment to it to other groups in the audience. In the 2012 campaign, the Republican candidate Mitt Romney repeatedly said that President Obama was weakening the work requirements on welfare. The claim was immediately debunked … The goal was to communicate to a certain group of white Southern voters that Romney shared their racial attitudes. But the strategy of communication was sophisticated enough that it provided plausible deniability to the many Republican and independent voters who do not share racist ideology.

Trump has approached the problem of mass communication differently. He has made explicit what was once implicit. Even if America is not really threatened by African-Americans, immigrants, gays, or non-Christians, when these prejudices are made explicit they seem important to the masses who aren’t interested in facts.

The goal of totalitarian propaganda is to sketch out a consistent system that is simple to grasp … It is openly intended to distort reality, partly as an expression of the leader’s power …

… The goal is to define a reality that justifies his [Trump’s] value system, thereby changing the value systems of his audience. Two questions remain: What is the simple reality that Trump is trying to convey? And what is the value system to which this simple story is intended to shift voters to adopt? …

The simple picture Trump is trying to convey is that there is wild disorder, because of American citizens of African-American descent, and immigrants. He is doing it as a display of strength, showing he is able to define reality and lead others to accept his authoritarian value system.

The chief authoritarian values are law and order. In Trump’s value system, nonwhites and non-Christians are the chief threats to law and order. Trump knows that reality does not call for a value-system like his; violent crime is at almost historic lows in the United States. Trump is thundering about a crime wave of historic proportions, because he is an authoritarian using his speech to define a simple reality that legitimates his value system, leading voters to adopt it …

Trump is … certainly openly insensitive to reality. But … It is … bizarre to be satisfied with a description of the rhetoric of a dictator like Idi Amin’s as “insensitive to truth and falsity.” Why have we been satisfied with such descriptions of Trump? Perhaps our media, as well as our academic class, assumes that we are healthy liberal democracy, and not susceptible to authoritarian rhetoric. We now know this assumption is false.

Denouncing Trump as a liar, or describing him as merely entertaining, misses the point of authoritarian propaganda … Authoritarian propagandists are attempting to convey power by defining reality. The reality they offer is very simple. It is offered with the goal of switching voters’ value systems to the authoritarian value system of the leader.

This campaign season has been an indictment of our understanding of mass communication. Either we lacked the ability or concepts to describe authoritarian propaganda, or we lacked the will. Either way, we must do better … It … requires us to confront the failures of elite policy that have led to an erosion of democratic norms, primarily public trust, that make anti-democratic alternatives suddenly acceptable.

I previously blogged about Stanley’s insightful piece, “Democracy and Demagoguery,” which covers related themes.

Major Ideas in Henry Giroux’s “Orwell, Huxley and America’s Plunge into Authoritarianism”

“Orwell, Huxley and America’s Plunge into Authoritarianism,” Counterpunch, June 19, 2015, by Henry Giroux, the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University.

This is a long, complex article—I’ve cut out more than 2/3 of it—yet these salient quotes hit on many of its major themes. The article concerns itself primarily about the means that technology provides authoritarian regimes in tracking and distracting their citizens into accepting a totalitarian state. I think that Giroux’ prose is so good, I’ll let it speak for itself.

… George Orwell and Aldous Huxley shared a fundamental conviction … They both argued that the established democracies of the West were moving quickly toward an historical moment when they would willingly relinquish the noble promises and ideals of liberal democracy and enter that menacing space where totalitarianism perverts the modern ideals of justice, freedom, and political emancipation …

Orwell’s “Big Brother” found more recently a new incarnation in the revelations of government lawlessness and corporate spying by whistleblowers such as Chelsea Manning, Jeremy Hammond, and Edward Snowden. All of these individuals revealed a government that lied about its intelligence operations, illegally spied on millions of people who were not considered terrorists or had committed no crime, and collected data from every conceivable electronic source to be stored and potentially used to squelch dissent, blackmail people, or just intimidate those who fight to make corporate and state power accountable. …

… Huxley shared Orwell’s concern about ignorance as a political tool of the elite, enforced through surveillance and the banning of books, dissent, and critical thought itself. But Huxley, believed that social control and the propagation of ignorance would be introduced by those in power through the political tools of pleasure and distraction … the real drugs and social planning of late modernity lies in the presence of an entertainment and public pedagogy industry that trades in pleasure and idiocy …

Keeping people out is the extended face of Big Brother who now patrols borders, hospitals, and other public spaces in order to “spot “the people who do not fit in the places they are in … or better still never allowing them to come anywhere near in the first place.”

… This is the Big Brother that pushes youthful protests out of the public spaces they attempt to occupy. This is the hyper-nationalistic Big Brother clinging to notions of racial purity and American exceptionalism … in creating a country that has come to resemble an open air prison for the dispossessed. This is the Big Brother … of the 1 percent with their control over the economy and use of paramilitarised police forces … and … their retreat into gated communities manned by SWAT-like security forces.

… it is unfair to view the impact of the rapid militarization of local police on poor black communities as nothing short of terrifying and symptomatic of the violence that takes place in authoritarian societies … “There are more African-American adults under correctional control today—in prison or jail, on probation or parole—than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.”

… Orwell would be astonished by this contemporary, refashioned “Big Brother” given the threat the new surveillance state poses because of its reach and the alleged “advance” of technologies that far outstretch anything he could have imagined …

… “Orwell never could have imagined that the National Security Agency (NSA) would amass metadata on billions of our phone calls and 200 million of our text messages every day. Orwell could not have foreseen that our government would read the content of our emails, file transfers, and live chats from the social media we use.”

… In Orwell’s world, individual freedom and privacy were under attack from outside forces. For Huxley, in contrast, freedom and privacy were willingly given up as part of the seductions of a soft authoritarianism, with its vast machinery of manufactured needs, desires, and identities. This new mode of persuasion seduced people into chasing commodities, and infantilized them through the mass production of easily digestible entertainment, disposable goods … The conditions for critical thought dissolved into the limited pleasures instant gratification wrought … that dampened, if not obliterated, the very possibility of thinking itself …

At the same time, Orwell’s warning about “Big Brother” applies not simply to an authoritarian-surveillance state but also to commanding financial institutions and corporations who have made diverse modes of surveillance a ubiquitous feature of daily life … the surveillance state is one that not only listens, watches, and gathers massive amounts of information through data mining …

The state and corporate cultural apparatuses now collude to socialize everyone—especially young people—into a regime of security and commodification in which their identities, values, and desires are inextricably tied to a culture of commodified addictions, self-help, therapy, and social indifference …

… the right to privacy and freedom have been usurped by the seductions of a narcissistic culture and casino capitalism’s unending desire to turn every relationship into an act of commerce … In a world devoid of care, compassion, and protection, personal privacy and freedom are no longer connected and resuscitated through its connection to public life, the common good, or a vulnerability born of the recognition of the frailty of human life …

Underlying these everyday conveniences of modern life … is the growing Orwellian partnership between the militarized state and private security companies in the United States. Each day, new evidence surfaces pointing to the emergence of a police state that has produced ever more sophisticated methods for surveillance in order to enforce a mass suppression of the most essential tools for democratic dissent: “the press, political activists, civil rights advocates and conscientious insiders who blow the whistle on corporate malfeasance and government abuse.” …

… Aided by a public pedagogy, produced and circulated through a machinery of consumption and public relations tactics, a growing regime of repression works through the homogenizing forces of the market to support the widespread embrace of an authoritarian culture and police state.

Relentlessly entertained by spectacles, people become not only numb to violence and cruelty but begin to identify with an authoritarian worldview … the police “become … obsessive objects of imaginative identification in popular culture… watching movies, or … TV shows that … look at the world from a police point of view.”

… Americans vicariously participate in the toxic pleasures of the authoritarian state. Violence has become the organizing force of a society driven by a noxious notion of privatization … This violence … mimics not just the death of the radical imagination, but also a notion of banality made famous by Hannah Arendt who argued that at the root of totalitarianism was a kind of thoughtlessness, an inability to think, and a type of outrageous indifference in which “There’s simply the reluctance ever to imagine what the other person is experiencing.”

… political rule has been replaced by corporate sovereignty, consumerism becomes the only obligation of citizenship, and the only value that matters is exchange value. Precarity has replaced social protections provided by the state, just as the state cares more about building prisons and infantilizing the American public than it does about providing all of its citizens with quality educational institutions and health care …

The authoritarian nature of the corporate-state surveillance apparatus and security system … can only be fully understood when its ubiquitous tentacles are connected to … security-patrolled corridors of public schools, the rise in super-max prisons, the hyper-militarization of local police forces, the justification of secret prisons and state-sanctioned torture abroad, and the increasing labeling of dissent as an act of terrorism in the United States.  … Alongside efforts to defund public and higher education and to attack the welfare state, a wide-ranging assault is being waged across the culture on all spheres that encourage the public to hold power accountable

Nothing will change unless people begin to take seriously the subjective underpinnings of oppression in the United States … The current regime of authoritarianism is reinforced through a new and pervasive sensibility in which people surrender themselves to the both the capitalist system and a general belief in its call for security …

I want to conclude by recommending five initiatives, though incomplete, that might help young people and others challenge the current oppressive historical conjuncture in which they along with other oppressed groups now find themselves. My focus is on higher education because that is the one institution that is under intense assault at the moment because it has not completely surrendered to the Orwellian state.

First, there is a need for what can be called a revival of the radical imagination. This call would be part of a larger project “to reinvent democracy … if by ‘democracy’ we mean effective popular participation in the crucial decisions affecting the community.” … a challenge to the power of those individuals, financial elite, ruling groups, and large-scale enterprises that have hijacked democracy …

One step in this direction would be to for young people, intellectuals, scholars and other to go on the offensive in defending higher education as a public good, resisting as much as possible the ongoing attempt by financial elites to view its mission in instrumental terms as a workstation for capital. This means fighting back against a conservative led campaign to end tenure, define students as consumers, defund higher education, and destroy any possibility of faculty governance by transforming most faculty into adjuncts or what be called Walmart workers. Higher education … should be a viewed as a right rather than as an entitlement …

… Second, young people and progressives need create the institutions and public spaces in which education becomes central as a counter-narrative that serves to both reveal, interrogate, and overcome the common sense assumptions that provide the ideological and affective webs that tie many people to forms of oppression …

Third, America has become a society in which the power at the state and national levels has become punitive for most Americans and beneficial for the financial and corporate elite. Punishment … now reaches into almost every commanding institution that holds sway over the American public and its effects are especially felt by the poor, blacks, young people, and the elderly … millions of young men are held in prisons and jails across the United States, and most of them for nonviolent crimes. Working people are punished for a lifetime of work by having their pensions either reduced or taken away. Poor people are denied Medicaid because right-wing politicians believe the poor should be financially responsible for their health care … The United States is one of the few countries that allow teenagers to be tried as adults …

… an increasing numbers of youth suffer mental anguish and overt distress even … among the college bound, debt-ridden, and unemployed … Many reports claim that “young Americans are suffering from rising levels of anxiety, stress, depression and even suicide … “One out of every five young people and one out of every four college students … suffers from some form of diagnosable mental illness.” According to one survey, “44 percent of young aged 18 to 24 say they are excessively stressed.” … The war on youth has to be seen as a central element of state terrorism and crucial to critically engaging the current regime of neoliberalism.

Fourth, as the claims and promises of a neoliberal utopia have been transformed into an Orwellian and Dickensian nightmare, the United States continues to succumb to the pathologies of political corruption, the redistribution of wealth upward into the hands of the 1 percent, the rise of the surveillance state, and the use of the criminal justice system as a way of dealing with social problems …

Under the star of Orwell, morality loses its emancipatory possibilities … misery is denounced as a moral failing … the ultimate form of entertainment becomes the pain and humiliation of others, especially those considered disposable and powerless, who are no longer an object of compassion, but of ridicule and amusement. This becomes clear in the endless stories … from U.S. politicians disdaining the poor as moochers who don’t need welfare but stronger morals … In this discourse soaring inequality in wealth and income … and low wages for millions of working Americans are ignored …

So it is…disheartening still to see commentators suggesting that the poor are causing their own poverty, and could easily escape if only they acted like members of the upper middle class….Shrugging your shoulders as you attribute it all to values is an act of malign neglect. The poor don’t need lectures on morality, they need more resources—which we can afford to provide—and better economic opportunities, which we can also afford to provide through everything from training and subsidies to higher minimum wages.

Lastly, any attempt to make clear the massive misery, exploitation, corruption, and suffering produced under casino capitalism must develop both a language of critique and possibility. It is not enough to simply register what is wrong with American society, it is also crucial to do so in a way that enables people to recognize themselves in such discourses in a way that both inspires them to be more critical and energizes them to do something about it …

This is a particularly important goal given that the fragmentation of the left has been partly responsible for its inability to develop a wide political and ideological umbrella to address a range of problems extending from extreme poverty, the assault on the environment, the emergence of the permanent warfare state, the roll back of voting rights, and the assault on public servants, women’s rights, and social provisions …

The darkest side of the authoritarian state feeds and legitimizes not only state violence, the violation of civil liberties, a punishing state, and a culture of cruelty, but also a culture for which violence becomes the only mediating force available to address major social problems. Under such circumstances, a culture of violence erupts and punishes the innocent, the marginalized, and those everyday people who become victims of both hate crimes and state terrorism …

What will American society look like in the future? For Huxley, it may well mimic a nightmarish image of a world in which ignorance is a political weapon and pleasure as a form of control … Orwell … might see a more open future and history disinclined to fulfill itself in the image of the dystopian society … He believed in the power of those living under such oppression to imagine otherwise, to think beyond the dictates of the authoritarian state and to offer up spirited forms of collective resistance … Only time will tell us whether either Orwell or Huxley was right. But … history is open and the space of the possible is always larger than the one currently on display.

This is truly a chilling view of our near future.