Why and how is the U.S. being slow-walked toward a fascist rightwing dictatorship?

[lostnfound]

Ludicrous governors blatantly ignore sane public health reality…the test of loyalty for GOP politicians demands that they submit to the public humiliation of endless lying and professing absurdities… Rightwing politicians call for second amendment remedies.. Dumbed down and ready to believe those absurdities - this describes a wide swath of the American public. People so stupid they scream at school board hearings against masks in schools or saying that vaccines are poison. Certain policemen willing to participate in an insurrection. Politicians who supported the insurrection not on trial six months later.

News about a Trump DOJ official acting to facilitate an actual coup is an outrage that fades from the news. But the “important” story on TV is about one democratic politician with a sexual harassment habit — which gets days of airtime. There are easily 500 politicians across the country still in office despite having sexually harassed and intimidated female subordinates (or hired teenage prostitutes or assaulted journalists or stalked and abused ex-girlfriends or pretended to think their dead hit-and-run victim was just a deer etc etc). Energy that can be directed against any transgressing democratic politician is endless.

I can’t help but feel pessimistic. MSNBC feels like only a pressure-relief valve on a slow-cooker — preventing an explosion, we are ALLOWED to talk around the problem, sit in our separate camps, but make no progress. Will voting rights actually get protected? Will anything be done to stop the crippling flood of disinformation? Will those who are on the take for promulgating lies — perhaps bribed or extorted — be punished or muted?

I cannot even convince a friend to get the vaccine, because the You-Tube disinformation has been so effective. First she was convinced to be suspicious of Mainstream Media (she loved Al Franken, by the way, but also Nader), then become suspicious of institutions and successful individuals (CDC, WHO, Gates, Fauci, etc), and then a flood of You-Tube videos have persuaded her that the vaccine is dangerous and that unseen powerful people want population reduction.

We are surrounded by overlapping cults. I try to imagine explanations for why this is happening. A dumbed down public will be more pliable. But how did “evildoers” get so powerful, or unified? How do they cooperate so much? Are they intending to create a Naked and Afraid / Survivor world?

Are we being slow-walked not only toward a fascist rightwing dictatorship but toward a more pliant, smaller and more desperate population whose expectations have been greatly lowered? Maybe they do want population reduction, and democratic leaders replaced by “strongmen”?

Why are they abandoning democracy worldwide? Is it perceived that climate change will make western democracy too expensive for the richest?

How did they collaborate enough for this to become so widespread?

[GPV]

1. Yes, it's about climate change.

[lostnfound]

10. Wow that's astonishing

Did you get to that conclusion through logic, process of elimination of other possibilities, or was there some evidence? Or some book?

I’m just guessing when I say “climate change”. I was hoping that wasn’t the reason.

[GPV]

12. I've read many articles that lead me to think that many rich powerful people

see the writing on the wall and are shoring things up in their favor.

[Auggie]

17. I'm thinking the same thing: shoring things up for a feudal, authoritarian society.

They'll own the richest farmland and the water to irrigate it. They'll own the energy. The military and police. The weapons of mass destruction. They and their descendants will be The New Lords.

George Carlin:

“But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education sucks, and it’s the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It’s never gonna get any better. Don’t look for it. Be happy with what you got. Because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now, the real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.

Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations.

They’ve long since bought and paid for the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear.

They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don’t want: They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests. Thats right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table to figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that.

You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you, sooner or later, 'cause they own this fucking place.

It's a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club. And by the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head in their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people -- white collar, blue collar, it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on -- good honest hard-working people continue -- these are people of modest means -- continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them.

They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don't care about you at all -- at all -- at all. And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. That's what the owners count on; the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that's being jammed up their assholes everyday. Because the owners of this country know the truth: it's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.”

[GPV]

18. Exactly

[lostnfound]

20. A good tangent there

Oldie but painfully good

[lostnfound]

21. Ten years ago rich people would mention their intent to move to New Zealand

With a knowing, expectant look. Always made me wonder why I hadn’t gotten the memo. Only recently have I seen that NZ is one of the places expected to be relatively better off when the rest of the world is suffering from climate change or food shortages or sudden migration patterns.

[GPV]

22. Yep. It wouldn't surprise me if somedays the rich lived off-planet, should

we develop the tech to do so.

[Auggie]

23. Well, it is a big club (the one you and I ain't in)

Guarantee memos have been flying around for DECADES!!!

[brooklynite]

2. I don't have much use for "we're doomed" threads...

[ananda]

4. Why bother having use anyway if we're doomed.

Still ....

[PortTack]

6. Agree.. we need to be aware, but this element has been with us since the civil war and

It rears it’s ugly head....it’s up to us to VOTE, DONATE and VOLUNTEER.

There are also a lot more of us than them!

[lostnfound]

11. You're a smart one in spite of your intolerance for my gloom...therefore I'd love to know

What motivations do you think are behind the recent waves of authoritarian strongmen and anti democratic movements not only in the US but elsewhere?

Doom and gloom aside, WHY is it happening?

[Irish_Dem]

3. Easy answer: Who benefits? What is the prize?

Who benefits from the destruction of western democracies?
Who benefits from the destruction of the world's biggest superpower, the USA?
What is the end goal?

When you have answered these questions, you will have answered your own question.

[Initech]

5. Social media brought this on.

They're doing it all for the likes.

[csziggy]

15. I thinik social media is just a useful tool for authoritarians

Unlike other kinds of media, there are fewer public controls over social media so the field was wide open for them to sway people's minds.

The "likes" provide an addictive method of keeping people on those platforms. I don't have the references here but it has been discussed here on DU that garnering "likes" is just as addictive as some drugs.

[Hoyt]

7. First, trump was defeated. Second, he would not have been elected in 16 except for some foolish Dems

who were ticked off because their candidate got beaten in the 2016 primaries.

You are correct that there are a lot of stupid, deplorable people in this country, but that's another issue.

[ymetca]

8. Yeah, I'm going with the idea

that this is humanity's "adolescent phase". The "Chapel Perilous" chapter, in which we decide whether we want to play Global Hunger Games any longer.

We got a new toy (social media), and the first thing we do is misuse it.

Let's hope most of us get through this awkward phase, and start to put away our childish things, eh?

[winetourdriver01]

9. Why and How

For me the "why" is easy. The right (republicans) haven't been able to win free and fair elections for some time. Rather than making policy that appeals to more people, they've decided to do away with democracy. There is a play book that has been worked out that has been used to bring down more than a few democratic republics, and they are using it here now. It should be exciting. God save the Republic.

[lostnfound]

13. Why is it including a walk through a nihilistic denial of the pandemic?

And the shift toward violence — few republicans have objected or labeled it correctly.

Their playbook to retain power includes ICU’s overflowing with very sick people.

[wnylib]

19. Like true fascists, they are willing

to sacrifice lives for their end goal of power. If people die as a result of encouraging opposition to everyone that the fascists oppose, they don't care, so long as they can blame the deaths on their opposition through spin.

Regarding how they do it, I look to history. In the current Information Age of the Internet and social media, everyone with an opinion, whether substantiated or not, can gain a following. It is so quick and easy to do that they can compete with each other on the basis of sensational appeal regardless of factual credibility. This has the result of breaking down previous norms of rational discussion and consensus on geniuine knowledge. It creates division into emotionally heated tribalism. Anyone can claim to be an expert on anything and gain followers without the need for credentials due to easy access to information and the ability to "tweak" it for agendas.

Around 500 years ago, a similar age of access to information and breakdown of established norms and authority occurred with two things that happened almost simultaneously - the Protestant Reformation and the invention of the printing press.

The Reformation challenged the status quo political power and authority of "the Church" into several churches, each with their own interpretations and views. This was accelerated by the availability of pamphlets and books due to the printing press.

Initially, the nobility and clerics were the educated people with the money and education to read the proliferation of printed material. Newer ideas and ways of doing things started with the nobility and educated classes. For many of them, it became politically expedient to oppose the status quo authority, especially of the church.

But the increase of merchant and middle classes after the Renaissance increased the need for literacy in business and in the increasingly complex business of government, requiring more literacy. Ambitious families sought education for their children to rise in society. Dissenting religious groups encouraged literacy for their members to read and study the Bible and religious pamphlets.

Two directions developed. People with higher levels of education were prepared for the intellectual developments of that new Information Age and the exchange of ideas that it brought in science, philosophy, law, and politics. The Enlightenment was born, replacing set beliefs with rational thought.

Meantime, at lower levels of literacy, people could read what others had published on various religious and political views, but without training in critical evaluation of what they read. They could be - and were - persuaded to align with various groups and leaders for political movements and religious wars based on the emotional appeal of what they read and heard.

For a number of years in various European countries, chaos, wars, nationalism, and various movements followed the availability of information and news that was often very biased.

But after the chaos was sorted out, new norms and social stability evolved. Ordinary people, regardless of literacy level, learned to advocate for themselves and not be as easily led.

(Yes, I know that there is oversimplification in my description, but this is not a history text.)

I think we are in a similar period of chaos following our new information age burst of access to ideas and self-publication. We, too, have people taking advantage of it for their own agendas, with divisions among followers.

It's up to us to influence how we sort it out among ourselves.

[lostnfound]

25. That was actually quite a history text..

Thank you very much for your excellent post. You made some interesting connections for me. You pointed to the invention of the printing press as a parallel and then to the susceptibility of the less educated to being persuaded to align by emotional appeals made through those mew channels. And the ensuing wars chaos and nationalism. Fascinating.

[abqtommy]

14. sPUTIN wanted to create division/chaos among and within the western powers. It's

unfortunate that he succeeded so easily. But it's not over yet.

[Kaleva]

16. You may be allowing yourself to be slow walked but I'm not coming along.

[Johonny]

24. Congress for fifty years has surrendered more and more power to the executive branch

With an ever growing factional congress which over supports a small minority of the population, it's almost inevitable that the executive branch will assume and accumulate more and more power.