Scott Boehmer

Tag: Autocracy

  • It’s Not Coming, It’s Here

    This clip is from the beginning of the month, but I didn’t see it until this week. In it Rachel Maddow explains how we’ve crossed the line into the United States being an authoritarian country with secret police, concentration camps, intimidation of companies and universities, and the military being turned against residents. The time since the video was made just makes the argument stronger with the National Guard deployed in D.C. and threats to move them into Chicago and New York next.

    Maddow: U.S. profoundly changed by authoritarian leader; ‘We’re beyond waiting and seeing now’ (YouTube – MSNBC)

  • The President’s Police State

    “This is liberation day in D.C.,” Trump said. Nothing says liberation like deploying hundreds of uniformed soldiers against the wishes of the local elected government. District residents have made clear that they would prefer greater autonomy, including congressional representation, and they have three times voted overwhelmingly against Trump. His response is not just to flex power but to treat the District of Columbia as the president’s personal fiefdom.

    David A. Graham

    The President’s Police State (The Atlantic)

  • Why They Hate Education

    In their quest to destroy democracy, Trump, Vance, and their cronies are intent on shutting the American mind.

    Robert Reich

    Why They Hate Education (Robert Reich)

  • The American System of Democracy Has Crashed

    As Donald Trump’s imperial presidency rolls forward across the wreckage of Congress on tank treads greased by the Supreme Court, there’s scant evidence of a legal movement for limited government or states’ rights. Trump is not the useful tool of an aggressive right-wing movement. Why look for complex explanations when there is a very simple one at hand? He is the king they serve enthusiastically, a leader whose lies and lawlessness they both enable and mirror.

    Elizabeth Lopatto & Sarah Jeong

    The American system of democracy has crashed (The Verge)

  • The Tyrant Test

    It would be absurd to say that American presidents have always been principled defenders of freedom and democracy, but their long-shared, bipartisan definition of tyrant is one who oppresses his own. So it’s striking that these warnings about tyrants in distant lands, who were supposedly the opposite of the kind of legitimate, democratic leaders elected in the United States of America, now apply to the sitting U.S. president, Donald Trump. It is a simple but morally powerful formulation: A leader who uses military force to suppress their political opposition forfeits the right to govern. You could call this the “tyrant test,” and Trump is already failing it.

    Adam Serwer

    The Tyrant Test (The Atlantic)

  • 20 Lessons on Tyranny

    A video of John Lithgow reading the 20 lessons about tyranny from Timothy Snyder’s 2017 book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.

    20 Lessons on Tyranny: by Timothy Snyder / read by John Lithgow (PoliticsGirl – YouTube)