Autocracy vs Democracy

[BillStime]

1 hour ago, All_Pro_Bills said:

I love the Hitler/Trump analogies because Trump killed how many millions of people and took away exactly what freedoms and rights? And sent thousands to concentration camps like the COVID camps polls suggest Dems are okay with sending people to "voluntarily" quarantine.  Oh yeah, none of that happened right?  But he tried to take over the government and turn it into a dictatorship.  And there's like billions of pieces of evidence to support this.  Or at least that's what you believe.  But let the drama continue.  Lots of cute pictures and misrepresentations of facts and events. 

 

I understand that communists/socialists like Stalin and Mao are upset that Hitler gets all kinds of recognition.  They are upset because they want everyone to know they killed many more people than he did.  And want some recognition for their nefarious acts too.

 

On a side note, I saw a great quote about socialism.  "You can vote your way into socialism but you'll have to shoot your way out".  That sums it up quite nicely.  

Socialsm is only acceptable when bailing out Corporate America - right?

[B-Man]

 

 

1. Government does something unpopular to a sizable percentage of the public.

2. Public organizes a protest; people join and Assemble to express their displeasure.

3. Government cries out that the assembly is an insurrection and uses subterfuge and violence to punish the people.

 

Welcome to the 21st century.

 

Demonstrations are only for establishment-approved groups.

That is, demonstrations are only okay when they’re used to cow people who oppose the establishment, not when they’re used to challenge the establishment itself.

 

by Sarah Hoyt

[BillStime]

 

[B-Man]

 

 

ROGER KIMBALL: The Oligarchy’s Response to the Freedom Convoy Bodes Ill for Them.

 

As I write, Canadian police, many dressed in military garb and supported by armored vehicles and snipers(!), are moving in to enforce several court orders and demands of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, and others that the “Freedom Convoy” of Canadian truckers stop blocking the Ambassador Bridge, the major artery between the United States and Canada, and disperse. Some of the protestors are leaving while many others are standing their ground.

 

Will the heavy hand of the state succeed in crushing the protest? In the short term, perhaps.

 

On Friday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson presented a montage of Canadian and American officials berating the truckers and threatening all sorts of dire retribution should they fail to obey their masters. Carlson was right: the hysterical squeaking of Justin Trudeau, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and the other political mannequins was pathetic—a sign of impotence, not strength.

 

But impotence comes in long-term and short-term varieties. Long-term, I think Carlson is right. Officialdom’s response to the Freedom Convey is a desperate effort to put the genie of liberty back in the bottle. Ultimately, it will not work. But on the way to that failure there will be plenty of opportunities for the coercive power of the state to manifest itself.

 

A rat is most dangerous when it’s cornered, a state most dangerous when it’s failing. Plus:

 

For another thing, the trucker protest has been conspicuous for its pacific nature. Unlike the riots that raged across the United States in the aftermath of the death of career criminal George Floyd, no police stations were torched, no property was destroyed, no one was killed or maimed. And yet the truckers get the armored vehicles, the SWAT teams, the snipers.

 

Who rules? The hissing sound you hear is the sound of political legitimacy escaping from the institutions that, bloated with too much power and too little accountability, are beginning to deflate in the face of widespread popular unrest. At this point, it is not clear what will happen to the truckers in Ottawa.

 

Perhaps the regime will manage to disband this upsurge of discontent. But if so, the discontent itself will not dissipate. It will fester and spread. Preposterous beta males like Justin Trudeau are happy to bluster and threaten. For now the military and security services (most of them) remain loyal. I recommend Fidel fils read up on the fate of the Ceaușescus. The deposition of Canada’s prime minister is unlikely to be so sanguinary, granted. But I suspect it will be no less definitive.

 

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/12/oligarchys-response-to-the-freedom-convoy-bodes-ill-for-them/

 

 

 

[BillStime]

That's right gf... we must eradicate Putin (and Trumpism)... the destiny of democracy is at stake.

 

 

[BillStime]

🎯

 

 

[BillStime]

 

[BillStime]

🎯

 

 

[BillStime]

 

[All_Pro_Bills]

7 hours ago, BillStime said:

 

So ignore 40 years of judicial activism from liberal judges and pretend it somehow just started with the current Supreme Court? Got it.

[BillStime]

Bingo

 

 

 

[Tiberius]

1 hour ago, BillStime said:

Bingo

 

 

 

Yup. Hitler ran against democracy, also. 

[Wacka]

The lefties are spinning out of control and  you aint seen nothin' yet.

[BillStime]

Gotta love Texas...

 

 

[BillStime]

 

[BillStime]

🎯

 

 

[All_Pro_Bills]

37 minutes ago, BillStime said:

🎯

 

 

Isn't Orban serving his 3rd consecutive term as the democratically elected PM of Hungary.  And can Joe Walsh still play Rocky Mountain Way? 

 

Also, what do you call a political system of a country that elects somebody President who later proves to be clearly mentally incompetent and unable to perform the duties of office.  And rather than replace the incapable President a cabal of insiders secretly rule from the shadows?  Is that a democracy or an autocracy? 

[BillStime]

 

 

58 minutes ago, All_Pro_Bills said:

 

Also, what do you call a political system of a country that elects somebody President who later proves to be clearly mentally incompetent and unable to perform the duties of office.  And rather than replace the incapable President a cabal of insiders secretly rule from the shadows?  Is that a democracy or an autocracy? 

We vote them out like we did Conald.

[SoCal Deek]

14 minutes ago, BillStime said:

 

 

We vote them out like we did Conald.

I like to think that we should vote FOR somebody and not simply AGAINST somebody….which is exactly how we got ourselves into the current mess. 

[ChiGoose]

1 hour ago, All_Pro_Bills said:

Isn't Orban serving his 3rd consecutive term as the democratically elected PM of Hungary.

 

Hungary is an illiberal democracy. Essentially, a one party state with a quasi-dictator that has the trappings of democracy.

 

How Victor Orban Hollowed Out Hungary's Democracy

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"A king”, Bruce Springsteen has pointed out, “ain’t satisfied ‘til he rules everything.” It was to thwart this route to royal satisfaction that 18th-century thinkers such as Montesquieu and James Madison came to prize the separation of powers. If the setting of policy, the writing of laws and the administration of justice were the preserve of different people, absolute power could not end up in one set of hands. This was especially true if the different branches of government had some degree of power over one another. Now it is accepted that a certain amount of friction is the guardian of freedom in a democracy.

 

Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, has other ideas. In the place of such strife, he and his colleagues in Fidesz, the governing party, have over the past nine years sought to align the executive, legislative and judicial powers of the state. Those branches now buttress each other and Fidesz—sometimes unobtrusively, sometimes blatantly. Mr Orban refers to the result of these efforts as the “system of national co-operation”. He used to speak more openly of an “illiberal democracy”.

 

Through this systematic entanglement of powers Mr Orban and his associates have turned Hungary into something akin to a one-party state. They have done so with no violence at all and broad public support. The achievement is bad for Hungarian liberty and its long-term prospects—and an object lesson in what is possible for autocrats and would-be autocrats elsewhere.

 

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Having gerrymandered the single-member districts after winning power in 2010, the party continues to win almost all elections. In 2011 Mr Orban granted voting rights to some 2m ethnic Hungarians who are citizens of neighbouring Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine, and who overwhelmingly plump for Fidesz. They are allowed to vote by post. The roughly 350,000 Hungarian citizens living in the West are much less likely to support the party. They have to vote in person at embassies or consulates.

 

This all explains how, in the general election last year, Fidesz won 67% of the parliamentary seats—maintaining its supermajority—while taking just less than half of the popular vote. With the system so well re-designed, the party has no need to stoop to voter fraud, as cruder autocracies do. But the “system of national co-operation” is nothing if not thorough. In 2018 the National Election Office ruled thousands of postal votes invalid because the tamper-proof tape on the envelopes had been opened. In response, the government revoked the law requiring tamper-proof tape.

 

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The country’s biggest opposition newspaper, Nepszabadsag, was bought out and shuttered in 2016 by a company thought to be linked to Lorinc Meszaros, a boyhood friend of Mr Orban’s who is now the country’s second-wealthiest businessman. Lajos Simicska, a member of Mr Orban’s school and college cohort, built a large business and media empire that supported Fidesz in the 2010s. In 2015 he fell out with Mr Orban and lost most of his companies, but held on to Magyar Nemzet, another newspaper. After Fidesz’s overwhelming election victory in 2018, though, he closed it. Independent media are now confined largely to websites read by a few people in Budapest’s liberal bubble.

 

Content is controlled, too. After taking power in 2010, Mr Orban’s government began transforming mti, the country’s public news agency, into a propaganda organ. In 2011 parliament made mti’s wire-service free, driving competing news agencies out of business. Regional newspapers that lacked reporting staff became channels for mti’s pro-government messaging, and it is from those newspapers that Mr Orban’s rural base gets its news. The government uses its advertising budget, which has quadrupled in real terms to more than $300m per year, to bring any rogue newspapers in line.

 

The country’s domestically owned television and radio stations are nearly all pro-government. Last November the owners of 476 media outlets, including some of the biggest in the country, donated them free of charge to a new non-profit foundation known as kesma, whose goals include promoting “Christian and national values”. When opposition groups challenged kesma for violating the country’s media law, Mr Orban declared the foundation vital to the national interest, removing it from the media authority’s jurisdiction.

 

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When control of parliament, the legal system and the media do not suffice, the government has other tools. Before the 2018 general election, the biggest threat to Fidesz came from Jobbik, originally a far-right party. It had moved towards the centre in a bid to go mainstream, and at times polled more than 25%. Enter the State Audit Office, headed by a former Fidesz mp who enjoys an election-proof 12-year mandate. In 2017 the audit office accused Jobbik of receiving illegal in-kind financing, and fined it 663m forints ($2m). In 2019, in the run-up to the European election, it tacked on another 272m forints, leaving the party close to insolvency. Two new liberal parties, Momentum and Dialogue for Hungary, as well as the Socialists, Democratic Coalition and the lmp (Green) party, were fined or investigated. Only Fidesz has been left untouched.

 

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Balint Magyar, a sociologist and former education minister who is now at the ceu, argues that the state under Fidesz is essentially a vehicle for capturing the economy and distributing its revenue streams to allies. Unlike communist parties, which had real titles of office and rule-governed internal hierarchies, Fidesz is an ideologically flexible vehicle that can be reorganised as the inner circle wants. Mr Magyar calls Hungary a “mafia state”, run by a clique whose main creed is loyalty. Kim Scheppele, a political scientist at Princeton University, notes the cunning deniability of the “system of national co-operation”. No country’s separation of powers is complete. Most of Fidesz’s arrangements can be found in one country or another. It is the cumulative effect all in one place that makes Hungary special.