Originally published at: Paul Krugman in NY Times: "government by the people may soon perish from the earth" | Boing Boing
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Accurate opinion is accurate.
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The crazies like Greene are helping the careerists like McCarthy by pushing the Overton window in their direction. That’s how nonsense like “Biden won through voter fraud” is now a center-right position in the U.S. instead of a far-right position.
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Amen. And may the Democratic establishment somehow find the guts to throw off its corporate shackles and its own enjoyment of power, rise up on its hind legs, and start fucking fighting back.
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I’d say the people have already lost to the corporations and special interests.
Paul thinks he sees the official announcement coming soon.
I’ve got some pig wings that I’d like to sell you.
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Liberal democracy is under threat all around the globe, with the same collections of cowards, opportunists, greedpigs, appeasers, Useful Idiots, and “moderate centrists” (with some help from autocrats) enabling the swivel-eyed lunatics and aspiring dictators. Due to a variety of historical and cultural factors, the U.S. stands out as particularly jarring, but it is by no means exceptional in being susceptible to creeping fascism.
The dying out of the 1930s and 40s from living memory, the end of the post-war economic anomaly, growing inequality, a devaluation of education and expertise, and global warming (and now a pandemic) have combined to allow this situation. To paraphrase the quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin, we in America still have a republic, but only if we’re vigilant enough to keep it.
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or even just a flat-earther position.
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Do you want to save Government by the people? Start teaching that Government is FOR the people again, not just for the victors.
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FTFY.
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That’s what moving the Overton window means: anyone who is farther right than the most progressive wing of the Republican party now espouses positions virtually indistinguishable from the 3am rantings of a lunatic. And they have plenty of company.
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It’s already too late folks. There is no countervailing force pushing back with enough urgency to prevent it. As soon as the GOP win power again on the federal level, that’s it.
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Government by the people may soon perish from the earth
America’s democratic experiment may well be nearing its end
Paulie, buddy, you should look at a map.
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As frustrating as the situation is I’m going to call “defeatist garbage” on that take. It is NEVER too late to push back. Even when the fascists have taken over entirely it’s not too late to push back.
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im not quite willing to accept the hagiography of those times anymore.
there was long equivocating – even praise of the nazi party and eugenics generally – from here in the us before we entered ww2. white americans then used the war with japan as an excuse to seize property and capital from ethnically japanese americans. segregation was so entrenched that almost none of the “post-war boom” reached black american families. regressive social norms swept white women out of the working world and removed the economic power they had been been growing. etc.
i think our understanding of the arc of the last hundred years has to broaden widely to include all americans before we can really see where we’ve been and where we’re going.
some of the anxiety of people like krugman might instead be seen through the lens of what non-cis/white/men have been dealing with in america this entire time.
not that there isn’t a challenge in front of us, but that the challenge has always been there.
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Yes, I know.
To be fair, he’s just referencing the Lincoln quote about the US, but also to be fair, this isn’t the only democracy undergoing this challenge, either. It’s a worrying trend right now…
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I’d say Paul and the New York Times are pretty much ok with that.
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Government by the people, when was that supposed to start?
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