The Rise of the Strongman

“Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines, Xi Jinping’s China, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, Viktor Orban’s Hungary, and even Donald Trump’s America”…

Where is Nuttyahoo? He is the model where all are based.

Great post.

Since there’s often some form of puppetmaster behind “us and them”, pulling strings for their own amusement/political gain/diversion from real intentions, the antidote seems to be to reveal the puppetmaster. Especially the strings. As a kid, whenever I saw those strings holding up the fighting puppets I knew who was really causing the fight.

But apparently for some it gets harder when the puppetmaster is on your side, and really hard when he claims to be on a mission from God. As a kid I could never have imagined that I’d be saying that as an adult.

I mostly agree, but disagree on some key aspects. Authoritarian is a label typically applied by one faction of the oligarchy to another as a kind of “shaming” and virtue signaling. Past the lies and self delusion most of them, maybe 70% or more, are authoritarians. Rigging primary votes, crushing protests, whether its Trump bashing SJWs cheering for antifa or Nazis sympathizing right-wing “freedom” groups they are all different sides of the same coin. That applies to the general public, in D.C. I would be surprised if 1% would oppose authoritarianism. It has no meaning in regards to politics world wide or locally as everyone wants some form of it or another.

Capitalism is the Authoritarians older brother, but so is Communism. Anything outside of a small tribe develops a hierarchy. Democracies are authoritarian when enough of the citizens chose so (such as the senate body giving power to the executive singular president). The Constitution or magna carta or what have you are about the only things in our society that are anti authoritarian. In theory they limit the powers that can be imposed on the citizenry. Our institutions and other social constructs largely encourage it (because of the hierarchy, -fiefdoms- imposed). While Ian is right in most part, the measure of authoritarianism is not the size of the group that controls things. Rather its in our ability to tolerate differences, and share the yoke of power fairly. When our country was populated by “gentlemen farmers” who were largely in charge of their own lives, or in small populations that depended on each other, it was easy to recognize and condemn authoritarian tendencies. That’s an impossible life now. How many can be their own boss, mush less afford to not have work for more than a couple of weeks?

I think it is about kleptocracy, class war, and wealth inequality. Kleptocracy is how the rich and elites run their looting operation. Class war, setting the many–us–against against each other, instead of against them–the few–is how they defend and maintain the wealth they loot. And massive wealth inequality is the result. This system is unsustainable. Kleptocracy is not a parasite which bleeds its host. It is a disease which kills it. It has no brake or off-switch. It is relentless. It loots to a crash, loots the crash, and then loots the response to the crash. Rinse and repeat until the system implodes or explodes. Global climate change and overpopulation simply increase the disintegrative forces exponentially.

Authoritarianism is just one of the tools in the toolbox of class war, a way to suppress and/or redirect popular rage. But authoritarianism too becomes increasingly unstable. The classic case is Putin. Russia currently is a one-man show, and the question we should be considering is what happens to Russia when Putin’s gone as in dead. An inherent flaw in authoritarianism, one man rule, is that there is no line of succession. Any possible heir is or will become a rival and must and will be eliminated. The longer one-man rule persists the worse the problem gets. The likelihood is chaos as oligarchs, the intelligence agencies, and the military vie for power. In Erdogan’s Turkey, I expect the replacement contenders would be someone in family. The problem is that the knack for dictatorship is not always genetically transmissible, the Assads in Syria versus the Kims in North Korea, for example. China’s Xi-di is the newest member of the club. If he falls down a flight of stairs in the next 5 years, the damage of his one-man rule will be limited to the political system, but still large in terms of the time wasted not addressing climate change and overpopulation.

Ian, how many times does it need to be pointed out that Erdogan is not jailing Journalists solely for journalism, but because they committed an actual crime of aiding and abetting terrorists who were killing Turkish Citizens. Also I should point out that HDP has not been outlawed, with Erdogan only arresting those members who were caught on camera assisting the PKK to kill Turkish Civilians. Even you have to admit those are legitimate reasons to toss someone in jail pending trial.

Thousands of Turkish Journalists in Turkey are critical of Erdogan on a daily basis, especially for overturning cultural restrictions on Kurds and returning Armenian Property back to Armenians, and are not in prison. Nor is Erdogan an authoritarian by any stretch as he runs a coalition government and uses referendums to make major changes.

By all respects, Turkey is the only functioning modern democracy with near 90% turnout on elections and referendums with all major parties banding together when Turkish Interests are threatened.

The US can’t even be said to be a democracy at all and is rapidly turning into a failed police state.

“Fear, as FDR understood, is at the heart of all authoritarianism.”

A very important point. As one of the “isms” authoritarianism has no single definition. Its usage in political science and in psychology are related, but not exactly the same. The authoritarian followers of a strongman (who might be a woman) are generally conformists with an Us vs. Them, ethnocentric/racist mentality who tend to place those in authority above the law who believe that force is justified against the Others. All of these traits may be viewed as fear reactions to perceived threats. Even people who are not authoritarian may exhibit authoritarian reactions in the face of fear.

Fear mongering is a tactic of authoritarian leaders and enablers. Trump, along with his enablers has consistently used it by constructing a myth of an invasion from Mexico by violent criminals and rapists. He portrays his political opponents as threats to the nation. Even the chaos and turmoil into which he has plunged the White House and the executive branch serves to induce fear, even among those closest to him (family aside, perhaps). Their only hope lies in unquestioning loyalty to him. The press also gets caught up in the chaos, broadcasting a message of fear to the populace. The media are also wedded to an Us vs. Them message, because conflict sells.

The US has always had a baked in authoritarian government tendency. Nasty as the Trump version is, there have been worse periods of authoritarianism and demagoguery in our history, worse eras of fearmongering, and far worse consequences for designated Others. Chattel slavery, lynching, and genocide are among those consequences.

Trump gets the lion’s share of opprobrium because he’s in office now. It’s true that his predecessors were not saints themselves, but I would argue that they were criticized rightly and righteously when they were in office. Their failings will continue to be fodder for scholarly and occasionally political criticism far into the future. Much as we might desire a great man (or woman) to ride in on a white horse to correct all the errors of the past and present, it’s not going to happen. Even Napoleon, brilliant as he was, was deeply flawed and ultimately defeated. A case can be made that France and Europe has never fully recovered.

The consequences for the Little People are always horrible when the crisis reaches the point of structural collapse. To see so many eagerly calling for –and some working for — the collapse of US hegemony/empire without consideration of the consequences to the masses is deeply troubling to me.

These sorts of things can be engineered through populist “uprisings” (as we saw with the engineered “color revolutions” in Eastern Europe and we’re now watching unfold in Venezuela) but almost always it’s not a movement from below. It’s the product of an elite faction using the discontent of the masses for their own benefit. Tant pis for everyone else.

I suspect the US will become more authoritarian, not less, post-Trump, and its imperial sway over its dominions and colonies will be further tightened and consolidated. There may be fewer wars of choice in the future, but that won’t necessarily mean less fearmongering, scapegoating, and divisive politics at home. It’s how our elites maintain their power and authority.

And I suspect the yearned for collapse is still quite a ways off. When it comes, though, it won’t be pretty.

I strongly recommend Bob Altemeyer’s book, The Authoritarians, laying out his research on authoritarian personalities. The website has an interesting take on Donald Trump’s followers.

@nihil obstet
I can’t speak for the book but the article on the website was rubbish. Intellectually lazy and without the slightest bit of irony. The author states “The very sizeable number of authoritarian followers in the United States have, in my view, joined together three times in recent history to endanger our democracy. They supported the war in Vietnam as it tore the country apart long after it was clearly lost. They supported Richard Nixon to the very end of Watergate and beyond. They will support Donald Trump long after it becomes indisputable that he is a felon and should be removed from office.”
See any patterns there? What about all the acts pointed out by Ian and previous commenters: What about the violent quelling of Occupy? What about the AUMF, the Patriot Act, the collusion in the Democratic primary in 2016, the bailing out of the criminal banksters, the lack of Accountability for Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and so many others?

A broken clock is right twice a day, but that’s not it’s distinguishing characteristic. It always thinks it has the right time, and smugly notes all the other clocks are wrong 99% of the time.

Ponderer appears to have no experience or wisdom when it comes to the social dynamics behind “strongman”. I don’t think this should be rocket science. I’ll try a simple, currently relevant example:

Elizabeth Warren is getting hammered by fans of “Team R” for having lied about being a native American sometime in the 1980’s. Yet, Trump is given a pass for his well-proven, well-known lifetime habit of chronic lying.

That tiny paragraph alone should be more than enough to describe the dynamics of strongman politics.

Bruce Wilder: “The analysis in Altemeyer’s book suggests something his essay did not: which is that the danger from authoritarian followers to democratic/republican politics arises from isolating them in one political faction or party or movement. When you put them all together in one room so to speak, without much of anyone present who is not an authoritarian follower in their political attitudes and outlook, that is when the explosive political chemistry starts. It is the party purely of authoritarian followers that is the danger.”

I have not read his essay, I did read the book some time ago. I don’t think that things are quite so bad when authoritarians get together. I grew up in the deep South, surrounded by a sea of authoritarians, so I have a lot of experience in authoritarian groups. As I recall, the research indicates that for a gathering of authoritarians to become dangerous, you also have to have one or more instigators. A few bullies will do. In my experience, a leader can counteract the bullies, even if the leader has an authoritarian personality. Such a leader can do that if the bullies flout convention. (Authoritarians are conventional and conformist.) Authoritarians in the Republican Party have broken with Trump, or not gone along with him, because Trump has no regard for convention. He breaks norms right and left.

Pathologizing authoritarians goes back to the Nazis. (As far as I know.) Anti-Semitism was nothing new to Europe, but the fever pitch it reached in Nazi Germany, the widespread violence, and the enthusiasm on parade in the Nuremberg rallies, convinced a lot of people, during and after the fact, that a kind of psychological plague had swept Europe, leading to totalitarianism under both Fascism and Communism. One antecedent of Altemeyer’s research was an personality test called the F test (not to be confused with a similarly named statistical test). The F stood for Fascist.

Moi, I never bought the idea of a Fascist personality and never heard about it after the 1960s. But I have witnessed the dangers of authoritarians in groups. I was therefore surprised by how quickly most Whites in the deep South adjusted to desegregation. The reason, I came to believe, was their conformity. Desegregation had become the norm, so they went along and even supported it.

Bruce Wilder: “It follows, it seems to me, that the danger is precisely from righteously trying to isolate them and out-vote them as if they are the other. The political danger arises from making people fearful and politically impotent, denying them effective political leadership from people who actually care.”

I agree that demonizing Trumpists is counterproductive. To hear Hillary Clinton calling such people deplorables was a shock to me. I know she lived for some time in Arkansas, but Jesus! Many in the left seem to be self righteous, a different pathology. But putting your political opponents down does make them fear your political victory. Especially if they accept the idea of politically motivated violence. Your win could put them in danger.

However, they are already fairly isolated geographically. And they already identify as the Other. Us vs. Them mentality is part of their makeup. IMO, the best thing to do is to do what happened with the Civil Rights movement, beat them politically. They respect authority, remember? And then treat them right. Then their fears will abate. As happened with desegregation.

@Billikin

maybe what follows is based on quibbles and maybe these are useful analytic distinctions.

first and foremost, “authoritarian followers” are followers. it is right there in the term Altemeyer used for his book, in everything except the book’s title.

I suppose we can imagine that authoritarians, possessed of the dread authoritarian personality, can be either leaders or followers, but authoritarian followers are followers — not leaders — by definition. Being a leader or becoming a leader, seeking power in a leadership role marks an individual’s political psychology in ways that take the individual out of the category of “authoritarian follower”.

Altemeyer, in his book, made the point that groups of authoritarian followers are particularly prone to follow and believe in certain styles of demagogic or populist appeal. The people who make such appeals are not followers and may not share much of the authoritarian’s outlook or attitudes, except on key points of expressiveness. Among those most willing to make those kinds of effective appeals are some people whose political psychology Altemeyer typed as Social Dominance Orientation (SDO). (There’s a bit of inside baseball involved in this stilted way of talking, since Right-wing Authoritarian Follower can be operationalized with one survey instrument and Social Dominance Orientation operationalized with a different but similar instrument and scale.) People with an orientation toward seeking social dominance do not share the political attitudes of authoritarian followers but are well-equipped to make the kind of demagogic appeals that seem to work remarkably well with groups of authoritarian followers. There is a resonance between the attitudes of the SDO and the authoritarian followers. Both, as Altemeyer observed, are likely to be highly prejudiced regarding race, ethnicity and religion and full of resentments that may call out markers of race, ethnicity and so on. The follower, Altemeyer asserts, is likely to read the dominator’s hatreds as of a piece with the follower’s fearful prejudice and bigotry and see the dominator as “like” himself.

But, the differences are also telling and important.

High scorers [on SDO] are inclined to be intimidating, ruthless, and vengeful
They scorn such noble acts as helping others, and being kind, charitable, and
forgiving. Instead they would rather be feared than loved, and be viewed as mean,
pitiless, and vengeful. They love power, including the power to hurt in their drive to
the top. Authoritarian followers do not feel this way because they seldom have such
a drive to start with.

Authoritarian followers place a high value on loyalty to the group; social dominators tend to place a high value on the loyalty of the group to themselves, but do not return the favor. Followers tend to be religious, in a non-hypocritical way. Dominators do not tend to be religious at all, and when they are religious, their religion is highly cynical and hypocritical, intended for a manipulative show.

Social dominators . . . admit, anonymously, to striving to manipulate others, and to being dishonest, two-faced, treacherous, and amoral. . . . Furthermore, while the followers may feel admiration bordering on adoration of their leaders, we should not be surprised if the leaders feel a certain contempt for their followers. They are the suckers, the “marks,” the fools social dominators find so easy to manipulate.

It is interesting that you should cite Martin Luther King’s strategy of civil disobedience. The spectacle of manifestly unfair violence is one thing that will reliably separate the authoritarian follower from the malevolent social dominator. The follower is capable of empathy and can be profoundly affected seeing unrequited violence from authority figures.

And, the long-followed strategy of making “rights” and high liberal “principles” conventional standards of morality, backed by ritual honoring of the Bill of Rights and so on, is clearly a way of co-opting the follower’s conventional morality in favor of more idealistic and democratic government.

@ nihil obstet

You make an excellent point about the decline of membership organizations into mailing lists. Outstanding observation.

. . . people who operate on poor information and ideological reasoning pathways

Wouldn’t that be pretty much everyone?

Honestly, I think the vast majority of people in the U.S. vote and opine at random.

To do something else requires a great deal of organization from the bottom-up that simply does not exist in 21st century America.

Bruce Wilder: “The spectacle of manifestly unfair violence is one thing that will reliably separate the authoritarian follower from the malevolent social dominator.”

As a rule, perhaps so. That certainly seemed to be the case for the British with regard to India, the French with regard to Algeria, and most of the US with regard to African Americans in the South. That has not been the case with the US public with regard to Muslim refugees or US right wing authoritarians with regard to detainees at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo who have been tortured or with regard to African Americans who have been mistreated, tortured, or killed by police. Even the American Psychological Association, hardly a hotbed of reactionaries, failed to condemn the assistance of their members in torture. (They may have changed their policy by now, I don’t know.) In debates for the nomination of the Republican Party for President, candidates to a man and woman refused to condemn torture. It is as though we had been sent back in time to Elizabethan England!

My nephews wedding reception had many guests from a wide variety of backgrounds and beliefs. In groups, family would catch up with family, teens with teens, musicians with musicians, etc. From the conservative evangelical clique the name “Trump” could be heard (it hadn’t been an unusual Trump news week). It sure seemed like tribal virtue signaling to me. Members continuously reassure other tribal members that they’re still one of them, with the unconscious motive of wanting to be entrusted with more power and influence by the clan.

I’ve personally witnessed that corporate SDO authoritarians will take advantage of their given situation as much as they’re allowed to. They are after all, in the small minority. But they’re always compelled to find a way, some way, to take whatever power and influence for themselves wherever they can.

I’m wondering if the very high percentage of authoritarian followers in the general population could be why far left and far right mass movements usually wind up disastrously authoritarian. The more extreme the mass movement, the more AFs want to prove their value by shunning, then eventually removing “the others”. With authoritarians only happy to oblige, a pathological power dynamic ensues.

Let me be clear that I am not trying to cast blame on non-violent authoritarian followers. After all, I grew up amongst them. And, as I tried to indicate, their traits are useful for group survival under threat. But that does not diminish the danger they pose to democratic and republican societies under current circumstances in many countries.

I don’t think liberalism knew it was failing. Wealthy authoritarians have many tricks.

Well, I’m glad to hear the book may be more nuanced than the article. The key point being that we live in a society of followers by necessity and that is rigged to encourage these outcomes. I just didn’t see than in the article. It’s no different domestically than what our elites want in the rest of the world, a “tamed” democracy where it can be achieved, and complete despots everywhere else.

Trump embarrasses the elites, and I wouldn’t argue against him being a strongman, personality wise. I think he is the only strongman in the offing that will receive any checks on his power though. The extreme danger in our unitary executive is bad enough when the borg fights every inclination of the POTUS. He’s pretty meek in some things, what would Stalin do if he ordered withdrawal from Syria and the army instead increased its numbers there 50% following delay after delay? I fear for the day the next strongmen comes to power. I can’t imagine a scenario where we wouldn’t be in a warm or hot war with Russia if Hillary had won. The Trump / Russia connection was set up well in advance. That was a coming playbook, not a hasty contingency plan, IMNSHO.

Speaking of followers, especially in the South. Charlottesville, populated by “people who were alive during lynchings” arranged a violent confrontation between (larger) antifa and right wing groups as punishment of said right wing groups legal protest. We were treated to pictures of hordes of Nazis overrunning a small American town. The left’s followers freaked out. Even Naked Capitalism had article after article shrilly condemning Southern Racists as an imminent threat to our Democracy. This monumental gathering of right wing groups from all over the country produced by some gradiose estimates 10k people (probably closer to 5k). Population of the south east, about 110 million. The middle class and higher education are no refuge from follower mentality, especially during a slow news cycle.

They’re just thugs in suits. The world economy floats on the products of Gore Capitalism: prostitution, drugs, weapons, and other sundry practices of the criminal class. When the planet runs on these things you can only have a criminal class in charge. The lunatics have taken over the asylum. But please, both sides if you must. If that makes you feel better about what’s going on.

. . . people who operate on poor information and ideological reasoning pathways

Wouldn’t that be pretty much everyone?

Well, yes. I should have expressed it as a matter of degree, though, as there seems to be a spectrum. Ian, for example, does not seem to be particularly deep in the spectrum of being poorly informed and ideological.

But my point was that I don’t buy the idea that Trump’s support can be meaningfully explained by the “take a chance” hypothesis. It’s a really interesting idea, but it seems to only apply to a small minority of Trump supporters.

This, of course, nails the situation:

“People are scared. They have good reason to be scared, because their leaders despise them and want to hurt them. And whenever they find someone they think is strong and on their side, they will flock to that person. They will usually be wrong to do so, but abused people usually make bad decisions.”

But the source of the problem transcends any possible legal, political or philosophical discussion because it’s genetic. Any social power-pyramid worth dominating will, sooner than later, see psychopaths infesting its top, simply because psychopaths are “blessed” with the toolkit necessary for duping/ conquering competitors. To be able to lie and even kill (directly or from an administrative distance) without a twinge of remorse: what decent, empathetic, self-doubting executive or candidate can possibly hope to compete against such abilities? If psychopath-driven media weren’t busy delivering psychopath-flattering distortions of Reality every millisecond of every day, Billary, BHO, Trump, Jobs, Soros, Buffet, Bush, et al, would be easily and immediately identifiable as psychopaths inhabiting the spectrum of the predatory-charm scale (with Bill and Hillary, humorously, inhabiting opposite ends of this scale).

Capitalism/ Communism/ Socialism/ Anarcho-Syndicalism… all could/would, with tweaks and patches, work in good-faith, psychopath-free environments. A System itself is neither the problem nor possible cure. The structural logic of the inevitability of the psychopath-governed herd is infinitely scalable and hideously ironclad and the only possible cure must lie somewhere in pharmacological advances… in a hypothetical future in which Big Pharma isn’t run/ directed by… psychopaths. Mooting various grassroots this or that is, in the end, futile until psychopathy is medicated from the face of the Earth. Good luck trying to have them arrested.

@ Bruce Wilder

“The whole world is festering with unhappy souls.
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles,
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch,
And I don’t like anybody very much.”
— The Kingston Trio

Racial/ethnic (identity) strife is nothing new, OC. The idea of an Aryan race was a trigger for WWII, and the idea of pan-Slavism was a trigger for WWI. And let us not forget the Hutu vs, Tutsi bloodbath in Rwanda. US vs. Them thinking is characteristic of authoritarians and frequently takes the form of racism. Racism is a virulent form of it because racists believe that racial stereotypes are inherited and ingrained. And a rhetorical defense against charges of racism is to claim that we now live in a post racist society. I.e., not that there are not some racists left, but racism is not a society wide problem. That is not so, and we must confront racism in general and the racism of authoritarianism in particular. (Before I forget, we need to point out that White identity politics is the major problem in this regard.)

However, confronting Us/Them rhetoric with Us/Them rhetoric is not the solution. As the Dhammapada points out, hatred does not cease by hatred, hatred ceases only by love. The demographic argument is counterproductive, to say the least. Telling White people that they will be a minority soon enough only stokes their fears and makes them resistant to non-White immigration. At some level Whites know how bad minorities are treated in the US and fear that that will be their fate if they become a minority. Not too long ago I saw on one of the political shows on TV a confrontation about language. It was not about one of the usual racial slurs, which everyone now agrees are taboo, but about something else that is considered politically incorrect. A White guy was defending the language against everyone else. The demographic argument came up, and a Black academic ended the debate with a statement to this effect: “That means that a White man like you will not be able to say something like that.” Well, I am old enough to shout at the TV, and I did. I said, “Don’t you know that you are simply feeding his fear that you will take away his freedom of speech?!”

Also before I forget, what was Elizabeth Warren thinking about with her DNA test? Yes, a lot of people still believe that race is inherent in our DNA, but surely not a Harvard academic. In the 1980s it was excusable to believe that race is partly genetic, partly socially constructed, but not now. Genetically, there are kinship groups, but there is only one human race. When I was growing up there was a very popular book called “The Family of Man”, popular even in the racist, authoritarian South. We need to stress our human kinship over our ethnic differences.

Then there is the question of White privilege. This is something that working class or underclass Whites object to, understandably so. One way to keep people down is to get them to fight amongst themselves. In the antebellum South the slaveholders, who fancied themselves to be aristocrats after the fashion of the Bourbons in France, used slavery to oppress poor Whites (mud sills) economically. Racism allowed poor Whites to believe themselves to be superior to Blacks, despite their low estate. Things are not so bad now, but the strategy is the same. Use racism to keep people down.

Adam Carolla has a video on You Tube in which he supposedly “destroys” the idea of White privilege. He relates an exchange on NPR with a Black academic who said that Carolla had White privilege. Carolla responded with his experience as a high school graduate struggling economically who applied to become a fireman and was told that he might have to wait 6 or 7 years. In fact, he was contacted 6 years later and, out of curiosity at that point, went to take the test. He asked a young non-White woman who was also taking the test when she had applied, and she replied, Tuesday. So Carolla said that he had not experienced White privilege, and the academic replied, you have, but you just don’t know it. That apparently ended that exchange.

Carolla’s experience highlights a problem with the idea of White privilege. (Aside from the wording.) Whites who do not have a privileged position in society do not think that it applies to them, and resent the implication that it does. Like the mudsills of the Old South, they may have a point. Certainly they do not experience much in the way of privilege. The other thing is that we have not made a good case for systemic racism. A lot of people think that racism it simply about individual beliefs and feelings. One fact that Trump and others state, patting themselves on the back, is that minority unemployment is at historic lows. That is true, but I am aware of only one political pundit, Kevin Drum of Mother Jones, who has pointed out the flaw with that statistic. Over the past four decades, ever since such statistics have been kept, Black unemployment has been approximately twice that of White unemployment. That ratio has been remarkably constant in the US, regardless of which political party has been in power. So yes, unemployment is low, but economic racism is alive and well. In a post racist society that ratio should be 1. And there is the answer, such as it is, to Carolla. The fire department may have had hiring practices that favored ethnic minorities and women, but Carolla still got work, and had an easier time finding a job than a young Black man. There is White privilege, such as it is. Not much privilege, but not nothing, either.

Anyway, it is important to confront racism without falling into the trap of Us vs. Them mentality, because racism is a major problem when confronting the rise of authoritarianism and of strongmen. Military coups and conquest aside, it is authoritarians who put strongmen in power. IMO, attempting to appeal for the vote of authoritarians on the other side is usually a losing tactic. They already identify us as Them, and we still have to confront racism, which is likely to put them off, especially if they are in denial. Also, as I observed in the South, beating them politically and then treating them right can sway them to your side. Despite its flaws, something like that seems to be happening with Obamacare.

@ Stirling S Newberry

In theory trade is a win-win, positive sum game, and economic activity produces overall gains. But the experience of the average American (an the average person in a number of economies) over the past four decades is one of treading water. For White working class males in the US, it is an experience of loss. Like Carolla, they see others on their level making gains. Those people are the ones favored by Democrats, ethnic minorities and women. As authoritarians, they generally accept the gains of the rich and powerful and regard the Democrats as their enemies. By contrast, in the wake of the Great Depression Whites may still have been racist, but they knew that those at the top needed to be reined in.

@Billikin

Privilege was a poorly chosen word, but I don’t think its use is accidental. The truth you touch on is that in some way we are all “privileged”. It might be by time, by familial contacts, really any time you share the same qualification as someone else but don’t get “chosen” the other was privileged in some way. It’s treated as a systemic issue though I’m not sure that makes sense in many cases. On the other hand it seems logical that there could be so there is always this uncertainty surrounding the issue.

So you brought up that the unemployment rate for blacks is twice the rate for whites and has been consistently. Was that adjusted for location and market? There are some areas that are predominately white that couldn’t normally hire minorities, they just don’t exist to be hired. Likewise there are places that are predominately black that would have a similar though inverted skew. Unemployment itself is heavily manipulated, but I wouldn’t expect such a large discrepancy. It would be interesting if there were regional numbers. Then the question becomes is it systemic, or can some bad actors be found. That seems to be where the mainstream stops. They identify it as a problem with an entire race of “privileged people”, regardless of whether those people make hiring decisions or do anything other than try to put food on the table. The solution is touted as “equalizing” various minority victims with the “privileged”. There no search for bad actors or further understanding the data. There certainly is no discussion of class with privilege.
I think the reason is to divide people along any line but class. As long as they are competing with each other they aren’t redistributing wealth. It was the Irish before the Blacks. Well, it was really everyone before, it just so happened that Blacks were the most economical at some point. The same old story of the have’s and the have not’s that’s repeated throughout history. Unfortunately, it still works. Privilege, for the poor, is such a condescending word, I think that’s why it’s used. It stirs up emotional reaction just by its usage. Us versus them as you say.

I differ from you in solutions. I think that instead of trying to win them over or “beat them politically”, you should focus on fairness for all people. We should endeavor to represent all people, especially the ones we don’t like and the one’s that don’t exist yet. That means carving a space for so called racists, along with everyone else. We do this already with Freedom of speech and association, but it’s under attack by certain corners not, i think, for racism as purported, but to shut down protests that might some day change to protests about class. That’s the reason for my long winded introduction. The divisions in our society are real, but i think they are propagated by something totally unrelated, class interests. When the Democrats are virtue signaling, I think that’s what they are saying to their donors “everything is all good here, they may be miserable but look how pissed they are at each other, let the money flow”. Republicans do the same. I don’t think this can be fixed until we can can agree to support each other interests for our interests. Certain basic guarentee’s are a step in the right direction (health care, income), but the demonizing must be stopped. Angry, scared, people who are uncertain about their future (standard FUD) can’t work together effectively.
I also think it would be good to get politicians out of political parties. They should be tools, not dictators.

Not a fan of Paul Volcker, but “There is no force on earth that can stand up effectively, year after year, against the thousands of individuals and hundreds of millions of dollars in the Washington swamp aimed at influencing the legislative and electoral process.” might be something the rest of us can all agree on.

Can people suspend their tribal conditioning to unify and fight that?

erratum: “formulation”

@steven augustine

Is browsing at a boutique, privilege? What is your friend is Hispanic but looks “white”? What are these difficulties and what fault does your white friend have in them? It probably wasn’t just you in 1964, it was probably poor whites, latinos, native americans, and assorted others.

There is nothing about this life that is fair, you can’t choose the situations you are born into or the period you are born into. In some areas there are places where white people don’t go, not without knowing someone from there. You might not have any trouble there, or you might depending on your dress and mannerisms. The opposite is true of course and could be the case in hispanic or other communities. I know of white area’s that aren’t safe for whites, if you aren’t with a local or look like one, you’re rolling the dice. That said, being treated fairly regardless of tribal identity is not a privilege, its basic human right that everyone should respect. Some call that manners or decency. If you treat is as a privilege you do yourself a disservice.

If I go into that boutique and record the whole thing and get into “difficulties” and you go, who’s video is going viral? Is that privilege? By your own reasoning your actually privileged for being born when you where in the country you were and the time you were. Is your privilege compared to whites, greater or less than compared to Somalis compared to you? You’re privileged for being in the good years for the working class, we could go all day with the “privilege” you have that others don’t. Some of it on age, some on skin color, some family, community and so on. That’s before we get into me in blue jeans and an old t-shirt in the same boutique. The point isn’t who’s feelings get hurt, its recognizing tribal whistling and the resulting cascade of us versus them. If it cuts 40% of the population off from supporting your position, is it still worth it? So far D’s and R’s have been answering yes. They would rather fail in their comfort zone than win out of it.

@ ponderer

I think we agree that we need to confront the Us vs. Them mentality. I just think that we have to defeat that mentality at the polls.

@ ponderer

Are we winning against neoliberalism and plutocracy at the polls? Not yet. But I am talking about winning against authoritarianism, which is the urgent necessity at the moment. It is authoritarian followers who can put strongmen in power without military coup or conquest.

After Obama won in the wake of the financial crisis, despite the elation of many, I said that it would take us 30 years to recover lost ground. This was before the Tea Party backlash, which I did not expect would be so soon or so strong. For the strength of the backlash I blame Obama and the Democrats. We could have had a strong economic recovery, but they settled for saving Wall Street and Big Finance. But, in the words of Albee, that’s blood under the bridge. We still have a long row to hoe, but the first step is defeating authoritarianism, both by overcoming Us vs. Them mentality and by winning at the polls.

Are we winning against neoliberalism and plutocracy at the polls? Not yet. But I am talking about winning against authoritarianism . . .

If I only paid attention to your argument Billikin, without even considering what others have said, I would think you had convinced me you are wrong. You argue that we can and should adopt an us v them mentality to defeat them. It is a glaring contradiction.

And, you seem to think neoliberalism and plutocracy are not the prime motivators of working class discontent and disaffection. ???

@steven augustine

Dismissal is a standard response when one has been told they are privileged. You might even say they were crazy or other Ad hominem attacks. Hopefully you will reflect on your response and understand it is exactly the same as those laid out in different comments here about those with less “negative privilege”, that you criticized for being “touchy” about it. If you understand, and you seem to now, that some words can be used as a tool to inflame and divide, you’ll be better prepared when someone who claims to be in your tribe uses them to cut you off from what you deserve.

I’m with Bruce Wilder on this one.

I would add you aren’t defeating Authoritarians at the polls, in fact, you are much worse off than if you had targeted Neo-liberalism. Authoritarian followers are the majority in both political parties. Sticking with a particular political party, that continues to show doesn’t operate in your interest is pretty much the definition of partisan i.e. followers. As long as you focus effort on trying to reform solely within a particular party (full of saboteurs I might add), you are following the playbook from the last 200 years. The left’s values don’t just appeal to democrats and you don’t have to change your policy to appeal to others. You do need to discourage them from voting for others just because they (rightfully) fear your policies or want to punish you for lack of progress, like with … Trump. Healthcare, economics, justice these should appeal to everyone. Hillary didn’t lose just because she was tone deaf and insulted half the country, not to mention the mass murdering. Twenty years ago it got fixed in cross-over country that HRC was someone you couldn’t trust unless you lived in a big city, belonged to a certain tribal group, etc. If she had spent the next twenty refuting that by proving she would be fair instead of proving what kind of elitist she was, we could have had … another Obama probably, plus maybe nuclear winter to cool the earth. Saying you need to win at the polls before you prove to the populace your not Fascist, is putting the proverbial cart before the proverbial horse.

Bruce Wilder: “You argue that we can and should adopt an us v them mentality to defeat them. It is a glaring contradiction.”

We are engaged in a contest. Recognizing that is not the same as adopting an Us vs. Them mentality. I do not claim that we need to adopt that mentality to prevail. I do say that we need to defeat that mentality at the polls. Eisenhower did not wage war against the people of Arkansas or the South when he forced desegregation in the Little Rock schools. And even though the US did wage war against Germany and Japan in WWII, having won the war we worked to help them rebuild afterwards. We did not regard Germans or Japanese as inferior or evil. Now we are seeing the results of letting the people with an Us vs. Them mentality win the presidency. We cannot just say too bad so sad, we have to defeat that mentality at the polls. (Not that that is all we need to do, but that is a necessity. OC, if the Republicans have a change of heart, things are different.)

Bruce Wilder: “And, you seem to think neoliberalism and plutocracy are not the prime motivators of working class discontent and disaffection. ???”

That is a message that we should carry to the working class. But have not neoliberalism and plutocracy infected both major political parties in the US? If you believe that we will have the opportunity in 2020 to defeat neoliberalism and plutocracy at the polls, more power to you. I think it will take more time than that. But we can and should defeat US vs. Them-ism.

@ ponderer

I disagree that authoritarian followers are the majority in both major political parties. I am not even sure that they are in the majority in the Republican party. But they are a visible force and presence within the Republican Party. Violence is close to the surface at Trump’s rallies. Republicans pursue racist policies while declaring that racism is a thing of the past.

BTW, I am not a Democrat. But right now the Republicans at the national level are a danger to the republic.

@ Billikin

“I disagree that authoritarian followers are the majority in both major political parties. ”

Then you missed Iraq and Afghanistan. You missed Occupy, 2016.. I would have trouble saying what in the last 30 years you paid attention to in either party. Sorry to be blunt, but that’s why John Bolton appreciates Pelosi’s support on Venezuela and she continues to be elected. Whether they are intelligent and self aware enough to realize it, I can’t say. They support authoritarians, who suppress dissent and prey on the weak, and they do so at their own cost so I think the follower label applies.

@ponderer

“Maybe its because I’m from a mixed race family, or my egalitarian upbringing.”

Welcome to the club. And what’s your argument again…? Or do you simply enjoy arguing?

My first two comments in this thread were not aimed at you; the second comment was an empirical rebuttal to the strange tendency among (“egalitarian”?) Americans to deny the existence of “white”-relative-to-“black” privilege; a tendency manifestly absurd on its face yet there you have it. Popular as ever.

My Life is fantastic (esp. since I was smart enough to leave the USA thirty years ago); that has nothing to do with the question of the manifest existence of “white”-relative-to-“black” privilege.

You talk about “unity,” but you seem to want this unity on your own terms, stipulating implicitly that all us Serfs can come together as long as nobody is rude enough to mention the society-distorting existence of “white” privilege. Sorry: no can do. You can keep your delusions, wherever they spring from. I’ll post a link to evidence of MY mixed family if you post one to yours.

“You are entirely wrong about Germany btw.”

You like to argue from the “heart,” I see… light on facts but full of conviction. I speak/ read German and have lived here thirty years. The “I’m sick of that holocaust stuff” meme is not rare around here though, still, this city is better for me than any American city I’ve ever lived in (welcome to complexity). I’m curious as to where you think your authority (on matters about which you know little or nothing) comes from?

@gnokgnoh

We’re using the common definition of Authoritarian and Neo-liberal. So if you check Wikipedia you’ll see Authoritarians have certain common characteristics. One is suppression of dissent by force. If your boss beats you for slacking off then he’s an Authoritarian. Otherwise, he may just be a jerk, or justified depending on the situation.

It’s not necessary to “parse” the motivations of minorities. To me its just a little high-brow discussion of why there is a “struggle to elect leaders and politicians” who will serve the common interests when a majority of people agree. So I don’t like the use of “majority” because that can be code for white in certain contexts. Clearly the majority we discuss is not tied to racial or tribal boundaries, though some may. The attempt to use precise language is just to avoid ambiguity, to not fall into the standard stereotype language traps. I’m no word smith myself so I understand your reluctance, but how do we describe the group of people who support certain bad behavior? Some label is needed.
It’s interesting you like Willy’s comment. You mention it is now Neo-liberal (he doesn’t) yet you don’t seem to like the labels “authoritarianism, neoliberalism, privilege, and plutocracy.”

“I see some hope in the latest crop of Democratic representatives. I see a huge shift in what is permissible to discuss. This comes from winning elections and voting for politicians that are addressing the issues most Americans care about. ”
It’s the failure of Democrats to address issues that that put Trump in power. You don’t know enough rich, white, racists Republicans who can do that. There’s no there there as they say, if a majority of people who voted for Trump where that well off, our economic situation would have to be different. Also New York doesn’t matter if they are a winner take all state (I don’t know personally). In those states your vote for the losing party is nullified. There’s no way Trump won’t win Tennessee, so my vote doesn’t matter either. That’s just math.
None of that explains why the “blue wave” accomplished so little hence our discussion. Your enthusiasm for things that haven’t been discussed before, probably only goes back in your life time. It may be due to your youth, nothing wrong with that. I remember reading with wonder at families in the 1800’s discussing socialism, bolsheviks, concepts I had no idea about where by my time the FBI and CIA pretty much had those discussions removed from possible conversation. You have optimism which is good, but you need realism to turn political ideas to policy to meaningful change. That means understanding the people and structures in place that prevent what you are after. It may be hard to understand now but if you consider a lot of young people had similar optimistic feelings about Obama, about Clinton, and on and on back in time.

@ponderer

It’s amazing how many Alt Right talking points you can extract from *any* comment by misreading it.

“Also, a little known fact about the Holocaust, apparently, is that some of those Jews were in fact German.”

Eh… huh?

“Movies have been made about the attempts on Hitlers life. Also, books.”

Sure. Your point being…?

“As you know its possible to opine about a place you don’t live.”

It’s also possible to pick a faulty, ill-informed POV and stick doggedly to it despite mountains of contradictory data. Because: Internet.

Once every three or four weeks I find myself dogshit-stepping into some comment thread kerfuffle with a delusional Alt Righter (many of you guys tend to hide your stripes, initially) and the experience is not only reliably unedifying but also eerily like arguing with exactly the same character, every time it happens! Clinically fascinating on one level but also an utter waste of pixels. Passionately clueless and Reality-contradicting rhetoric is the privilege you seem to be making the most of. Go for it.

@Rostale

“That the discussion centers around “checking privilege” is telling”

Where in this thread is that happening? I’d be quite happy to see a few Alt Righters acknowledge “white” privilege at all; also, Alt Right reading skills could be leveled up a bit… that would be nice.

My needs are modest.

@Rostale

“The problem with “white privilege” is most of what the term is used to describe isn’t privilege at all, but simply treatment that would extended to everyone in a fair society.”

Which is what the complaint about “white” privilege is all about: an unfair society. If the “treatment that would extended to everyone in a fair society” is only extended to a portion of that society, the beneficiaries of said treatment can be said to be privileged (in that way). The hypotheticals-signalling “would” in your sentence points to the fact that said “treatment” does *not* extend to everyone and, therefore, society is *not* fair. How you can confirm that the disparity exists, therefore, yet attempt to refute it, on the other hand, *in the same sentence* , is the kind of cognitive dissonance social scientists (and MK Ultra enthusiasts) get giddy over.

Which reminds me of arguing with Scientologists, Papists, Zionists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, so-called Black Israelites, Flat Earthers and Michael Jackson fanatics: the human capacity to come up with preposterous work-arounds for Reality is infinite. If only that energy could be harnessed to *improve* Reality instead of negating it.

“I actually feel a little bad to manipulate you into a response even I was shocked by.”

I would love to be pointed to the shocking bits, Pondy, you little mastermind, you. I suspect they’re tucked away in the parallel anti-universe in which I advocate lowering Rostale’s boats. I must say I admire how self-contained you and Rostale are: you don’t even need enemies to oppose or opposition to overcome because you’re quite good at making it all up! Hat’s off to the Alt Right imagination, gentlemen. And thank you for the demonstration! Highly instructive (and I mean that). This will make for an interesting post on my site.

1) “Your Hitler apologia is straight out of the Alt Right playbook.”

Hitler apologia isn’t an Alt Right thing?

2) “Mixed” family, eh? You mean you’ve got a few Poles skulking in the woodpile? ”

Which bit is shocking? The P-word or “woodpile”? Or is “skulking” a non-no where you’re from?

@Rostale

“There is a disparity in society, but how do you reconcile that, by increasing the rights of the disadvantaged or by stripping away rights from those who currently enjoy them?”

Not really a question, though, is it? Who would prefer the latter (sanely)? In most cases, the disparity under discussion is psycho-social, and down, essentially, to an attitude-shift, no? And the first step toward such an attitude shift would entail having those with an attitude that needs shifting… to face that fact.

How can they change if they don’t know they’re doing something (mildly or less mildly) harmful? Acknowledging the fact of “white” privilege is not about calculating reparations, culpability, magnitudes of evil or punitive redress. It’s just about highlighting a worldview which may be as unconscious a habit as biting ones nails… a small step, really. Not much to ask. I don’t really get the firestorms of resistance the term “white privilege” triggers… especially since I have gone to great pains, in this thread, to distance the term from SJW hyperbole.

I am not a disadvantaged person; I am clearly an ambitious and pro-active participant in “society”. But this biographical aside has absolutely zero bearing on the historical psycho-social artifact we call “white privilege”. I would welcome a trigger-free discussion of the concept. If you look carefully at all of my posts, you’ll see I press my case with humor and nuance and , above all, a sense of proportion. My first post, on the topic, was quite clear, I think.

I would welcome a trigger-free discussion of the concept.

I call b.s.

The concept is itself a trigger, intended to be used in social interaction to humiliate and disable. Of course, its use infuriates the targets of this “analysis” — its use is a deliberate assault.

To assail “white privilege” may be a useful exercise in certain circumstances and work to improve the society and culture, but may be simply obnoxious in others. Pretending that it is not obnoxious when it is, because you sadistically enjoy the discomfort and confusion that it creates, is just another form of trolling. Which is pretty much what has been happening in this thread.

I’ll try to work around your sensitivities. Do you have a note from your doctor?

QED

@ Bruce Wilder

Good point about neoliberalism and plutocracy breeding authoritarianism.

Why do I perceive Republicans to be much more of a threat to democracy than Democrats at this time? I’m working on a reply. But let me say that now an through most of its history, I think the US has had the form of a democratic republic. People in the 19th century even used that term. But if you say that the US is currently a plutocracy, I will not disagree. Just compare the polls of citizens on political issues with the votes of Congress. IMO current Republicans are a threat to the republic.

But the reason I think that we need to defeat authoritarians at the polls is not primarily the threat to the republic, but the extreme degree of political polarization in the US. Us vs. Them mentality is much stronger in authoritarians than in non-authoritarians. In addition, our current polarization is primarily the result of the Republicans becoming more extremely right-wing. They are even more extreme than the conservative adults in the South when I was growing up. The closest thing to the conservatism of today’s Republicans that I can tell is the conservatism of the antebellum South. It is only a little tongue in cheek to say that the modern Republican Party has become the Democratic Party of John C. Calhoun. OC, Calhoun was a rabid racist, while modern Republicans are much less racist, and can even be in denial about racism. Rule by extremists who adhere to Us vs. Them thinking will not make things better, and may well make things worse.

About “White privilege”. I guess I brought it up in this discussion. I agree that the term is a trigger. But I think that the concept is correct. Growing up under racial segregation, White privilege was obvious to everybody, even if nobody called it that. Today it may not be so obvious. And applying the term privilege to people who do not enjoy privileged positions in society is not only inaccurate, it is insulting. But people need to understand that racism is not just about feelings and beliefs, it is about how people are treated or not treated. And in our society, if you are White you are treated better than if you are not.

@ bruce wilder

Yes, a troll, who writes obvious, gushing fan letters to himself because who knows better just how hip one is, than oneself? Most of those pushing white privilege aren’t doing it to compensate for their failed writing careers or to triple their page views though. Watching some of those google “internal” town hall meetings you see privileged white kids falling all over themselves to condemn millions of people who don’t share in their privilege, with no clue how that will play outside their tribe. Those are the people I’d like to reach. It’s impossible to keep trolls out of comment sections whether they are paid operatives or bored malicious malcontents. Hopefully, its possible to keep their archived untruths from turning away the genuinely inquisitive.

Historically, race has been easy bait for authoritarians. Maybe today less so, but there will always be uninsightful fools willing to follow cunning malignant narcissists because they believe it’ll leverage their own mediocre abilities.

Maybe Ian will get into race further in another post. Maybe he already has. I don’t know because there is no easy button and I’m short on the time it’d take to find it.

All I cared about here, is understanding why the dynamics of far left or far right authoritarianism (or any other far-X authoritarianism) seems the same. And then further, how in one’s own personal struggles, you can defeat folly tribalism when it’s been turned by some MN against you.

@bruce wilder

“re: “white privilege” What can be a valid, useful and insightful sociology becomes simply bad manners when the institutional structures of society are made to disappear from the analysis in favor of a transcendent political consciousness. “White privilege” becomes immoral thought processes indelibly inscribed on identity and the troll mind-reads insultingly. Utter crap at that point.”

You might want to try re-writing that in such a way that it makes the tiniest bit of sense? I get that you prefer controlling the conversation but what I don’t get is why you think you can or ought to. Do your control issues perhaps dovetail with your hypersensitivity to the topic of “White Privilege”? Because what else could explain such a bizarre (and eerily puritanical) sentence:

“’White privilege’ becomes immoral thought processes indelibly inscribed on identity and the troll mind-reads insultingly.”

Now, if this site is more naturally Alt Right-leaning than would first appear, I apologize for inadvertently “trolling” a little in-group I have no desire to interact with. I didn’t come here to fuck with Closeted Stormfronters. I came here to make a reasonable comment on a Left-leaning site. Any *sane* reader can go up-thread and see that the points that I make are neither nonsensical nor confrontationally absolutist; they’re quite reasonable, whether you agree with them or not. Perhaps they’re wrong… but demonstrating that would require more than a grammar-raping hissy fit or two, yes?

Now, clearly: you have a serious emotional problem (or two). And it’s not much of a stretch to suggest that there’s a racial component to at least some of that problem.

If this site is an Alt Right playground, I have no problem admitting to inadvertent trolling. But if this site is supposed to be genuinely Progressive, why are you so comfortable acting like a blustering old Antebellum Twat who expects… demands… to be humored? Or butlered, as the case may be.

“Utter crap” indeed.

@ Bruce Wilder

Many thanks, Bruce. You and Adler have given me much to think about. I will be brief, as I have written a lot on this post and Ian has moved on.

In his brief discussion of his paper Adler points out that support for democracy is waning in Europe and the US, and that the conventional wisdom attributes that to “the rise of political extremes.” Then he points out that his research indicates that centrists are the most hostile group to democracy. OC, I cannot explain that, but, at least in the US, many people, myself included, feel that our vote does not count in national elections, because of where we live. I live in California, and if my vote does not count, as a liberal I would rather live here than in Alabama. But because of the polarization of the two main political parties in the US, a centrist whose vote does not count is out of luck. Who represents them? Also, I was fortunate that, despite growing up in the interesting times of the Civil Rights, Anti-War, and Feminist Movement, democracy had a center in the US, and a center that worked. What turned me into an Anti-Republican was Katrina, which revealed a democracy that did not work. If people have grown up in democracies that do not work, why should they believe in democracy?

As for the question of whether the Republicans or Democrats are a greater threat to democracy, Adlen’s figures support the idea that Republicans are. While the greatest antipathy towards democracy is in the center, next comes the far right, i.e., Republicans. The greatest support for Democracy is on the far left, followed by the moderate left, together represented by the Democratic Party. These data suggest that support for democracy would increase if the US moved to the left, which would mainly be by a reversal of the trend of the Republican Party towards the extreme right. They also suggest that it would be a mistake for Democrats to move towards the center, as that would decrease support for democracy. And, IMX with authoritarian followers, beating them in the polls would be likely to get them to move towards the center, which would probably strengthen democracy in the US.

How are Republicans a danger to democracy? I think that there are two main ways. The first has to do with violence. Violence is not a necessary way that authoritarian aggression manifests itself, but in recent decades the main political violence in the US has come from the right. Part of that has to do with the South, which has historically been one of the more violent regions of the US. The Klan is still active, as are other White supremacist groups around the US. The mainstream media mostly reports foreign terrorist incidents in the US, but by far most terrorist incidents in the US come from domestic right wingers, more than 85%. Officially the Republican Party does not condone this violence, but Trump openly encourages these groups, and violence simmers at Trump rallies.

In is possible, but I hope unlikely that we will see a prolonged period of political violence in the US. In that case the polarization of the Democrats and Republicans will probably not do much to reduce it, and the presence of a center that has no faith in democracy could see the election of a strongman, even perhaps a coup to restore order. I think that this scenario has less than a 5% chance.

A much more likely danger to the republic from Republicans is exemplified by Trump’s declaration of a national emergency, and, more tellingly, perhaps, McConnell’s endorsement of that declaration. For decades the presidency has accrued more and more power in the US, and Trump may actually get away with this power grab. “The Imperial Presidency” came out in 1973, but back then the Supreme Court denied Nixon’s claim of executive privilege over the Watergate tapes. Do we think that Justice Kavanaugh would have agreed? Through this accrual of power to the presidency we may end up as a republic in name only.