Welcome to the U.S. of A where we used to be a democracy until about 3 weeks ago.
Or maybe we haven’t been a democracy since 2000 and the powers that be have just taken the gloves off (be it the boxing gloves or the velvet glove that hides the iron fist)
I guess like any good argument the first step is to define terms. The current president, Trump 2.0 has made his dictatorial intentions clear. The actions by Elon Musk to invade various departments with his small band of goons and lock out the employees and congress match the action to intent. The signalling from the VP that the admin will ignore court orders, well three is good enough for going on with. So that is why I say we used to be a democracy.
So why now? What is different than 2016? Or 2000?
First, letting a would be dictator, and certainly Jan 6, 2020 (and related actions to stay in power despite losing an election) showed Trump had dictatorial intent. And leaving someone like that with a power base is rarely a good idea. Much is made of Hitler going to prison and coming back to rule Germany. Napolean returned from Elba to take over France once again. Like famously said in the wire, if you come for the King you better not miss.
So Trump and co. had four years, after hallowing out the guard rails in the first term, to think about how they would implement an authoritarian regime in 2024. The corollary being Biden had four years to put in new guard rails and make the U.S. democracy institutions strong once more. He of course, did no such thing. He didn’t even fire DeJoy, destroyer, I mean post master of the U.S. mail.
But why not earlier. The forces in the Republican camp behind Trump are not new. The concentration of wealth might be. The billionaire class came out of Covid with more wealth than going into it. And with a grudge at a working class who plainly weren’t willing to die for the privilege of earning money for their masters.
So there was a desire for a president who would crack the whip, put an end to remote work, and tell the plebes they had no rights. Perhaps the grudging bending of the knee by Bezos and other billionaires wasn’t so grudging as it appeared.
I don’t know, but when the wealthiest of the wealthy start agreeing with each other about big ideas it rarely goes well for the working class.
But why do I say half assed dictatorship? Because it seems Elon Musk, genuinely dithered about buying Twitter. Once he had it, he hallowed it out, weaponized it against free speech and used it as a megaphone to deliver the election to Trump and along with a piddling 280 million buy himself a co-presidency.
But along with his billions, his ownership of twitter truly makes him a power in the information space, and he tried to get out of buying it. That’s like Caesar getting halfway across the Rubicon and stopping to think it over.
That says to me there wasn’t a plan to take over the U.S. government, but when he blundered into the tool by mistep and spent 40 billion more than he meant to, he might have said to himself well I can at least get something of value out of this like running the U.S. government or something.
And hence our half-assed dictatorship is here.
