Over at Salon Dean Obeidallah has a podcast with Ben Rhodes, author of After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made. He says that he "was kinda knocked on my back after the 2016 election." We are now like Hungary.
Hungary has gone from being a democracy to a single-party autocracy in a decade. And I said, "Hey, how did this happen? How did Viktor Orbán, your prime minister, do this in 10 years?" And he said, "Well, it's simple. He got elected on a right-wing populist backlash to the financial crisis. He redrew the parliamentary districts to entrench his party in power. He changed the voting laws to make it easier for his supporters to vote. He packed the court with far-right judges. He enriched some cronies who then bought up the media and turned it into a right wing propaganda machine. And he wrapped it up in a national us vs. them message. Us, the real Hungarians, against them — Muslims, immigrants, liberal leaders, George Soros."
So, he concludes, "I can understand not just why democracy is threatened globally, but why it's threatened in the United States[.]"
On the other hand, at UnHerd.com, Joel Kotkin says the Dems are all fascists, and he is writing about
the alarming transformation of the US Democratic Party, the putative “party of the people” , now increasingly a subsidiary of the corporate elite. Among financial firms, communications companies and lawyers, Biden outraised Trump by five-to-one or more. Today’s oligarchs are particularly keen on the progressive non-profit sector, which provides important support for their political and social advocacy — a means for them to make politically correct statements about climate change, gender and race, while still obtaining enormous profit margins and unprecedented wealth.
So everyone reckons that they are the real democrats and the other guys are the eevil fascists. Living on different planets, you might say. Or maybe different sides of the same planet. Or maybe right next door on the same planet but interpreting the world in radically different ways.
Actually, let's get real here. If Democrats like Ben Rhodes -- who is supposed to be one of the smart ones in the room -- got blindsided by Trump, then how come he's in the executive suite with Obama?
Or is Ben Rhodes just shoveling ruling-class narrative at the progressive rubes at Salon? That's one of the interesting things in politics. Do the partisans really believe their partisan talking points? I guess it doesn't matter. The narrative is everything. But let's just analyze this paragraph from Deah Abeidallah:
Rhodes also detailed how other authoritarian regimes, such as Russia and China, mandate teaching students not the accurate history of their nation but a mythology that helps them remain in power. This should sound familiar, since Republicans have recently been enacting laws to ban "critical race theory," but what they're truly doing is copying the Chinese Communist Party tactic of only allowing the teaching of "history" that helps them politically.
"Accurate history of their nation?" But it is lefties that say that everything is narrative, a ruling-class narrative, that marginalizes the poor and the oppressed. Wow. You think maybe that the recent Democratic embrace of the "1619 Project" is accurate history? Or do you think it, and "critical race theory," is all about "teaching of 'history' that helps [Democrats] politically?"
I know. How about we agree that the "1776 Project," that America is a "city on a hill," and the "1619 Project," that America was founded on slavery, are both mythologies advanced by different factions of the ruling class. That is what critical theory is all about. That there is no such thing as "absolute truth" or "accurate history." It is all narrative. The point of critical race theory is to debunk the Whiteness narrative that the United States is the "last best hope of earth" -- said by President Lincoln in a message to Congress on December 1, 1862 -- and to substitute another narrative, that the United States is and was all about white supremacy and slavery and exploitation and imperialism. The point of conservatism is to debunk the leftist narrative that FDR was a light unto the nations and the century of the welfare state is the most progressive and just and equitable political movement ever. Yeah, it's a narrative.
Just a thought here. If Trump represents an anti-democratic, authoritarian movement, then how come his administration was confronted by an 18 month special prosecutor investigation, by non-stop media attacks from top media like The New York Times and The Washington Post and popular cable news like CNN and MSNBC. And how come he was impeached twice in the House of Representatives? How is it possible that an authoritarian president would put up with such attacks? Wouldn't a real authoritarian just put his opponents in jail?
As you know, my analysis of politics says any movement that says: "OMG the orcs are taking over the world" is in fact a failing movement that is facing a "failure of prophecy." And typically, when religious cults or political movements sense that something is wrong -- because the world is not turning out as they confidently predicted with their narrative -- they lash out, detecting conspiracies and reds under the bed.
But I get our lefty friends and their push to force their "critical race theory" into the schools. Heck, if I had political power I would be inclined to force my "critical woke theory" on the kiddies. How everything that lefties have ever said and done, since Marx, is a lie, including "and" and "the." And how pretty much everything that lefties have advocated and implemented "makes things worse."
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