Thank you Brady. This is indeed a very thoughtful piece. Usually, when someone talks about tyranny in the US, it's some wingnut talking about how a military exercise is really a cover for a coup or other such nonsense. However, this essay is an excellent academic study of the current state of american politics and the extreme risk that we face.
Well done.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html
Democracies end
when they are too democratic.
And right now, America is a breeding ground for tyranny.

Andrew Michael Sullivan is a British author, editor, and blogger. Sullivan is a conservative political commentator, a former editor of The New Republic, and the author or editor of six books.

Last edited by Goose (5/02/2016 11:04 am)

Although there are many similarities to other tyrannical peoples rise to power, EVEN IF Mr Trump does achieve the POTUS status, the US system does only allow him limited powers. It is not like other systems where the rise of such a man lead to disaster. 

The real issue IMHO and the main thing that has propelled Trump to the forefront is that we have a very large class of people (middle and lower class) who see fewer and fewer options for them to increase their status in life (and many have seen their lifestyle changing for the worse). Where people feel that they have been dealt a bad hand then the easiest solution is to BLAME someone or something and that is Mr Trump's best skill along with his notion (as described in the article) from his Art of the Deal book to promise instant success. If you notice most of his claims are pretty much just trust me and we will have success very quickly on (you can pick the issue). Almost entirely his promises are void of details. But that does not matter to people who see their futures fading. Therein lies his success. The biggest problem, however, with all his promises, is that they are pretty much mirages. 

 

Last edited by tennyson (5/02/2016 11:10 am)

Good question, flowergirl.

They wait for their next demagogue to come along.  The conditions that the writer describes that makes the possibility of this happening will still be present (unless the economy gets rolling again the working class benefits from it).

Trump is just the person taking advantage of the conditions set forth.  Even if he loses, those conditions will still be around.

I do disagree with the author when he says we have had a long history of democracy in this country, that is incorrect.  The founding fathers established a representative republic, because they feared what might come of true democracy (mobocracy).  This election cycle makes me think they were very wise.

Flower, IMO Trump cares about Trump.

It's about his ego.

The author offers a counter argument to the concept of oligarchy and "big money" which is a very interesting read.

"Many contend, of course, that American democracy is actually in retreat, close to being destroyed by the vastly more unequal economy of the last quarter-century and the ability of the very rich to purchase political influence. This is Bernie Sanders’s core critique. But the past few presidential elections have demonstrated that, in fact, money from the ultrarich has been mostly a dud. Barack Obama, whose 2008 campaign was propelled by small donors and empowered by the internet, blazed the trail of the modern-day insurrectionist, defeating the prohibitive favorite in the Democratic primary and later his Republican opponent (both pillars of their parties’ Establishments and backed by moneyed elites). In 2012, the fund-raising power behind Mitt Romney — avatar of the one percent — failed to dislodge Obama from office. And in this presidential cycle, the breakout candidates of both parties have soared without financial support from the elites. Sanders, who is sustaining his campaign all the way to California on the backs of small donors and large crowds, is, to put it bluntly, a walking refutation of his own argument. Trump, of course, is a largely self-funding billionaire — but like Willkie, he argues that his wealth uniquely enables him to resist the influence of the rich and their lobbyists. Those despairing over the influence of Big Money in American politics must also explain the swift, humiliating demise of Jeb Bush and the struggling Establishment campaign of Hillary Clinton. The evidence suggests that direct democracy, far from being throttled, is actually intensifying its grip on American politics".