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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
- Thread starter CdnGuy
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“Every law, either human or divine, was trampled under foot, and as long as the party was successful, its deluded followers appeared careless of private distress or public calamity.”
The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25717/25717-h/25717-h.htm
The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25717/25717-h/25717-h.htm
Twenty-first century authoritarians are against counting votes, but they legitimate themselves through elections. They don’t seem to have any better ideas. Lacking the kind of powerful ideology that fascists and communists once had, they prove their power by faking the vote count and making everyone else go along. President Trump has adopted this approach, and much of the national Republican Party is helping him.
Democracy has trouble with a certain kind of big lie, which is that the best way to give power to the people is to do away with the procedures that make that possible. Contemporary authoritarians have “pretend” voting, which they can never lose. Vladimir Lenin spoke of democratic centralism, the claim that a few men understood history and could direct it for the good of all. Josef Stalin installed governments called “people’s democracies,” the idea being that justice was served when the right people, but not all people, were served by single-party rule. Fascists pushed this thinking to the level of myth, claiming that a leader — “Führer” — mystically embodies the will of the people. These are ideas that have stirred the hearts of millions, people not so different from us, and not necessarily less wise.
It is easy to be tempted by the idea that representing the people means something grander than counting their votes. Americans are not immune to such temptation. Much of our history involves keeping most of our people away from the ballot box. That is the great challenge of democracy, one that is so often not met — to include others rather than claim that only people like ourselves are actually the people.
