Showing posts with label Autocratic Government. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Autocratic Government. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Authoritarianism: Two Podcast Episodes To Help In Better Understanding

"Authoritarianism and autocracies take many forms. So how do you know it when you see it? Our guide to the erosion of choice, rights, truth and power is Anne Applebaum, author of several books including, most recently, Autocracy, Inc."


"We’re in strange times. In the U.S., we’re finding ourselves in a situation in which the possibility of genuine democratic retrenchment and some version of presidential authoritarian dictatorship is a real possibility. There’s a lot to consider as the liberal democracy we’ve become accustomed to could erode right before our eyes in the near future. Steve Levitsky is a professor of government at Harvard and serves as the director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. Levitsky is also a New York Times bestselling author of numerous books including, “How Democracies Die” and “Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point,” which he co-authored with Daniel Ziblatt. He joins WITHpod to discuss entering into a new era, the uncertainty of this moment, the process by which a democracy might backslide into something that's less democratic and resisting the erosion."


Thursday, September 26, 2024

Beware Of The Powerful With Money

"Elon Musk poses a clear and present danger to American national security. The sooner the U.S. government revokes his security clearance, terminates its contracts with him and the entities he controls, and builds our own alternatives to Starlink and Space X, the safer we will be."

One of the goals of corporate elites is to be the ultimate power in society. Click on this link for the scary actions and rhetoric of one of the most dangerous of them.

Wednesday, May 22, 2024

Putin & Russian History

"The political tension in Georgia and the devastating war in Ukraine share a common point of origin: Vladimir Putin’s determination to deny them democracy and integration with Europe while also expanding Russia's sphere of influence. The Washington Post's David Herszenhorn, a specialist on the region's politics, spearheads the Post's “Russia, Remastered” series. He joins Hari Sreenivasan to explore the dramatic domestic transformation of Putin's Russia."

Click on this link for a video presenting Russian history and how Putin is looking back to recover the worst of it:

Sunday, May 19, 2024

RAGA: Flying Under The Radar To Overthrow Democracy In The USA

"The Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) is a United States national political advocacy group that focuses on electing Republicans as state attorneys general. Its Democratic counterpart is the Democratic Attorneys General Association.

"RAGA operates The Rule of Law Defense Fund, which became the center of controversy following revelations that it had sponsored mass robocalls urging recipients to support President Donald Trump's rally in front of the Capitol on January 6; the rally resulted in the 2021 United States Capitol attack.[4] The robocall did not advocate for violence or storming the Capitol complex.[4]" (link)

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"If you sit down and talk with Republicans, which I advise against doing, you will notice that they justify nearly every one of their awful policies with a call to states’ rights. They say they want to take power away from national representatives in Washington, D.C., and redistribute it to state and local governments, which, they claim, are best equipped to determine the best policies for their constituents’ particular, parochial concerns. They use this appeal to 'federalism' to shield them from moral accountability for their disastrous actions. Republicans will say, for instance, that their intention is not to take away abortion rights but merely to let the states decide when a person can be forced to give birth against their will."

Click on the link below for more:

Meet RAGA—One of the Scariest GOP Groups You’ve Never Heard Of

Friday, May 17, 2024

The Battle Between Democracy & Autocracy Is Not New, But - - -

"This week, we’re sharing a recording of an event hosted at the Center for Brooklyn History where Chris interviewed author Ari Berman. Berman is the national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones and has written numerous books including his latest, “Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It,” which is the subject of this conversation. They discuss parallels between founding fathers’ ideologies and contemporary figures, threats to our democracy, and the movement to counter regressive efforts."

Click on the link below for a podcast comparing the historical struggle against autocracy in the USA with the state of politics presently:

The Right-Wing Attack on Democracy 

Monday, March 18, 2024

The Republican Party: A Puppet On Many Strings

"Republicans have been trending toward Putin fandom for more than a decade but with each passing year the stakes get higher, the propaganda gets more brazen, and what they're willing to support gets more grotesque."

Click on the link below to get the full picture of what is controlling the US Republican Party presently:




Friday, November 4, 2022

Hitler Used The USA As An Example

"This week on Now & Then, Heather and Joanne discuss the roots, definitions, and echoes of fascism, from the proto-fascism of Southern enslavement, to the fascist playbooks established by Mussolini and Hitler, to the current risks for the normalization of fascist ideology and tropes in the United States."

Click on the link below for a humbling podcast revealing how Hitler actually pointed to the abuse of indigenous peoples, blacks, and other minorities by the USA in formulating Nazi dogma, and how the present Republican Party is reverting back to a similarly dangerous view of consolidating power against "the other:"


Thursday, September 22, 2022

Progress Demands The End Of Monarchies

"Today, we take a look at the history and legacy of British imperialism and slavery through the lens of the divergent views on the passing of Queen Elizabeth II and the growing movement of former colonies to achieve full independence."

Click on the link below for a podcast presenting a history lesson that continues to be ignored under the pressure of pomp and circumstance:


Wednesday, August 17, 2022

As Bad As You May Think It Is, It's Worse

"Today, we take a look at the strategies underway to systematically dismantle democracy in the United States including installing Big-Lie™ believers in elected and poll-working positions, preventing state-level Supreme Courts from holding GOP-dominated state legislators to the state constitutions, and wiping out tens of thousands of career civil servants from the federal government to be replaced by right-wing extremists loyal to the Republican Party."

Click on the link below for a shocking presentation of the treasonous activities that the Republicans are doing now to destroy representative democracy in the USA beginning in the 2022 election:

Installing Loyalists: The Multi-Pronged Destruction of Our Democracy Already in Progress



Tuesday, May 3, 2022

A Different Take On Russia V. Ukraine

"Noting that many democracies—including Brazil, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Mexico, and South Africa—have been reluctant to join the Western campaign to sanction and isolate Russia, CNN's Fareed Zakaria argues it's better to cast Russia's war as a challenge to rules and norms in the global order, not to democracy as a form of governance."

Click on the link below for more:

Don't cast the war in Ukraine as a showdown with autocracy

Wednesday, December 8, 2021

Is THIS At The Root Of The Evil?

It is no secret that the Republican party has gone full bore into nationalism, unsupported Christian dogma, attacking non-binary sexuality, misogyny, racism, libertarianism, autocracy, anti-education, anti-US Constitution, and general magical thinking over science-based thinking. Is there one ideology at the base of it all? Click on the link below for a short podcast presenting a provocative point of view on the matter:

It's Always the Season For Male Supremacy

Monday, July 26, 2021

Authoritarianism In The Guise Of Freedom

Sarah Huckabee Sanders vows not to impose mask, vaccine mandates if elected governor of Arkansas (link). This sounds like "pro-freedom" but is it?. In an authoritarian government, you not only do what the dictator says to do but also don't do what the dictator says you don't need to do. Critical thinking, empathy, and promotion of the general welfare play no role in decisions made by the followers of a dictator. Ironically, the followers think they are acting out of their want for freedom when the government is actually controlling them. Click on the link below for more:

Giving up on freedom 

CNN's SE Cupp (a Republican) also chimes in on the GOP's reluctance to promote Covid-19 vaccinations and its negative consequences for the party (link).

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

How About Administering The Most Appropriate Test To Trump?

One must be careful in accepting the results of Trump's cognitive screening test as reported by the White House physician. The test, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, is quite valid and reliable for "Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Early Alzheimer's disease." However, Trump's issues appear to be more related to OTHER displays of possible mental dysfunction, such as personality disorder(s).

Narcissistic Personality Disorder seems to be high on the list of disorders that may be effecting Trump. 

Speaking of tests for mental dysfunction, this may be the most dangerous flaw in Trump.
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Choose how you look at reality wisely. Yes, it is a binary choice.

Choose how you look at reality wisely. Yes, it is a binary choice.
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SCIENCE JUSTIFIES ITSELF

SCIENCE JUSTIFIES ITSELF
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