How Tyranny Takes Over a Democracy
We’ve seen it before, so it’s easy to recognize for people who have studied history. Yesterday, Robert Reich rang in the New Year on Facebook by posting the 15 warning signs of impending tyranny. It sent cold chills up my spine. Here it is in it’s entirety:
What are the 15 warning signs of impending tyranny? As tyrants take control of democracies, they typically:1. Exaggerate their mandate to govern — claiming, for example, that they won an election by a landslide even after losing the popular vote.
2. Repeatedly claim massive voter fraud in the absence of any evidence, in order to restrict voting in subsequent elections.
3. Publicly criticize anyone who criticizes them, labeling them “enemies.”
4. Turn the public against journalists or media outlets that criticize them, calling them “deceitful” and “scum.”
5. Hold few if any press conferences, preferring to communicate with the public directly through mass rallies and unfiltered statements.
6. Tell the public big lies, causing them to doubt the truth and believe fictions that support the tyrants’ goals.
7. Blame economic stresses on immigrants or racial or religious minorities, and foment public bias and even violence against them.
8. Attribute acts of domestic violence to “enemies within,” and use such events as excuses to beef up internal security and limit civil liberties.
9. Threaten mass deportations, registries of religious minorities, and the banning of refugees.
10. Seek to eliminate or reduce the influence of competing centers of power, such as trade unions and opposition parties.
11. Appoint family members to high positions of authority.
12. Surround themselves with their own personal security force rather than a security detail accountable to the public.
13. Put generals and other military commanders into top civilian posts.
14. Make personal alliances with foreign dictators.
15. Draw no distinction between personal property and public property, profiteering from their public office.
Be warned. 20 days to go. And a Happy New Year.
El Jefe, some battles are waged toe to toe. Resistance to Donnie will come one fact at a time. #NotMyPresident. Donnie lost to Hilz by nearly 3 million votes. My gal won. Donnie’s claim of an EC ‘landslide’ is a far cry from his claim in the simple math of the matter. Sorry Donnie, but a few counties and 80,000 votes is not a mandate by any definition.
Item #2, sons Uday and Qusay are what they are killing defenseless animals in a game preserve. At least man up and go hunting with Dick Cheney, boys.
Pimping out Ivanka to ‘display’ the softer side of Donnie. Riiiiiiiiight. Take a close look at what she is proposing in the way of child care credits. If you are about to place your child or grandchild in a $56,000 per semester pre-school, you might find some benefit in her plan.
1Excellent read from Job’s Anger site- http://jobsanger.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-united-states-has-become-illiberal.html
2We yelled ourselves hoarse during the campaign spotlighting all the points Rob R. made, but the roar of the crowd drowned us out. We have to get our voices back and keep yelling. Right now, it looks as if CJ’s “people” are rather cautious about him considering some of these things he has already said and done. As for the military chiefs, the R’s have always had a simpering hang up about them. Best bet yet, don’t cut CJ any slack at all. His actions and mouth are his responsibility and the buck stops with him and no one else.
3WSJ states they will not call Drumpf’s lies-lies. They will let their readers decide what is truth or not. As if their readers know what truth is.
Drumpf has some of the press tyrannized already.
4Melanoma Drumpf wants to end cyber-bullying-as soon as she gets done suing people for tweeting the truth about her.
5We feel impotent in the face of the destruction of our democracy. This election was illegitimate. We should not accept The Trump Circus as our government. The Rethugs will now dismantle every good thing our government offered, every safety net for our citizens and then steal what’s left for themselves. The country and world will be left in turmoil.
6My only comforts are that things hardly ever turn out as bad as the opposition thinks they will– e.g. Obama did not confiscate everybody’s guns and send us all to the smoking Hell whence he came– and my faith in GOP incompetence over time. But I’m touching wood just in case.
7Rhea- no offense, but, we have never had a dumbass this dumb in the White House ever. My fear is Drumpf will ignore Congress until it is time to sign stuff into law. Hang onto to that wood forever.
8Second Amendment solution sounds likely…wait until there’s a mass shooting by a Mooslem and Donnie goes for gun registration.
9epo, Warren Harding didn’t have a clue but he admitted it, at least privately. Donnie’s problem is that he combines arrogance and incompetence. (If anyone else remembers Babylon 5, “Arrogance and stupidity in one package– how efficient of you!” And that package started a genocidal war that nearly wiped out every human on earth.) My greatest concerns are climate change and environmental destruction, because the effects of those will last for millennia. And lack of birth control choices helping to swell the human population further.
10In one of their first moves of the new Congress, House Republicans have voted to gut their own independent ethics watchdog — a huge blow to cheerleaders of congressional oversight and one that dismantles major reforms adopted after the Jack Abramoff scandal.
Despite a warning from Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), House Republicans on Monday adopted a proposal by Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) to put the Office of Congressional Ethics under the jurisdiction of the House Ethics Committee.
The office currently has free rein, enabling investigators to pursue allegations and then recommend further action to the House Ethics Committee as they see fit.
Now, the office would be under the thumb of lawmakers themselves. The proposal also appears to limit the scope of the office’s work by barring them from consider anonymous tips against lawmakers. And it would stop the office from disclosing the findings of some of their investigations, as they currently do after the recommendations go to House Ethics.
11epo–I wondered when I heard about Melania’s campaign speech where she promised to wipe out cyberbullying if she had met CJ. Of course, with his record on truth, I don’t suppose we should expect her to understand it, either.
12EPO, honey, could you kinda let go of that Melanoma thing? My husband died of cancer and I would bet there are a lot of other posters here who have had experience with that disease.
13My sincerest apologies to you and your late, Hubby, Maggie. For you I will try to remember to not say that word on this site and I try to be an onion of my word.
14EPO, many thanks! And Happy New Year!
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