Misconception about Authoritarianism Many assume that democracy is safe as long as elections occur and criticism isn’t outright banned. However, political scientists define a process called democratic backsliding, where authoritarian tendencies gradually erode democratic norms without fully abolishing elections. This can lead to competitive authoritarianism, where elections exist but the ruling party heavily suppresses opposition through institutional control.
Examples of Trump’s Authoritarian Moves (July 2):
- Targeting a Political Opponent: Trump publicly suggested arresting Zohran Mamdani, a NYC Democratic mayoral candidate, attacking his political beliefs and falsely implying Mamdani is an illegal immigrant.
- Threatening Media Prosecution: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, supported by Trump, threatened to prosecute CNN for reporting on an app helping users alert ICE activities and for covering intelligence related to Iran’s nuclear program.
- Financial Threats Against Critics: Trump threatened Elon Musk with economic retaliation (halting rocket launches, satellite production, and electric car production) for Musk’s criticism of Republican legislation.
Actions Beyond Words:
- Appointment of Controversial Figure: Jared L. Wise, charged for inciting violence during the January 6 Capitol attack and later pardoned by Trump, was appointed to the Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group.
- Seizure of Congressional Funds: $7 billion appropriated by Congress for education programs was impounded by the administration, violating constitutional budgetary authority.
- Legal Pressure on Media Companies: Trump filed a baseless lawsuit against CBS’s 60 Minutes, which was settled—potentially to influence government approval of a corporate acquisition.
Broader Implications:
- These actions form part of a pattern in Trump’s second term, undermining democratic checks and balances.
- The administration empowers supporters of the January 6 insurrection while punishing opponents.
- There is an ongoing concentration of power in the presidency, with potential future risks including suppression of opposition and domination over media, business, and academia.
Explanation of Concepts
| Democratic Backsliding |
Gradual erosion of democratic norms and institutions without outright abolition of democracy. |
| Competitive Authoritarianism |
Elections are held but are heavily skewed by ruling party control of institutions and laws. |
Conclusion
The described behaviors indicate a shift toward authoritarian practices within a system that still outwardly appears democratic. The presence of elections alone does not guarantee democracy if the ruling party uses state power to intimidate opponents, control institutions, and undermine independent oversight.
Solurce: Jonathan Chait in the Atlantic, with a little summarizing help from AI.
| Betteridge’s Law of Headlines |
Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word “no.” |
If the journalist had proof, they wouldn’t need to ask. |
| Brandolini’s Law |
The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it. |
Gish Gallop; Steve Bannon “flooding the zone with shit”; Tucker Carlson |
| Cunningham’s Law |
The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer. |
People love correcting others more than helping them. |
| The Dilbert Principle |
Companies promote their least competent employees to management to minimize the damage they can do. |
Unlike the Peter Principle, this suggests incompetence is rewarded with power. |
| Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect |
You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. You read the article and see it’s wildly wrong on facts or issues. But you read the rest of the paper as if it were accurate. |
Do you really need an example? |
| Givens’ Observation |
If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole. |
Agencies, Military leaders, etc. who disagree with Trump are all “losers” |
| Godwin’s Law |
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1. |
Bonus points if someone declares the conversation over once Hitler is mentioned. |
| Godwin’s Law Corollary |
The first person to mention Hitler automatically loses the argument, regardless of context. |
… because they’ve obviously run out of actual arguments. |
| Hanlon’s Razor |
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. |
Most screw-ups are just incompetence, not conspiracy. (Like the time I was an Orderly and didn’t notice at the end of a shift that a patient had soiled himself and needed a cleanup.) |
| Hofstadter’s Law |
It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law. |
|
| Iron Law of Institutions |
Those in control of institutions prioritize maintaining their power within the institution above all else, even the institution’s success. |
From political blogger Jon Schwarz |
| Murphy’s Law |
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. |
And it’ll happen at the worst possible moment. |
| Occam’s Razor |
The simplest explanation is usually correct. |
But humans love complicated conspiracy theories instead. |
| The Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule) |
80% of effects come from 20% of causes. 80% of your problems come from 20% of your customers, 80% of your work gets done in 20% of your time, etc. |
|
| Parkinson’s Law |
Work expands to fill the time available. |
Give someone a week to do a task, and they’ll somehow need the full week. |
| Poe’s Law |
Without clear indicators like emoticons, it’s impossible to distinguish extreme views from parodies of those views in online text. |
|
| Rule 34 |
If something exists, there’s inappropriate internet content about it. |
|
| The Streisand Effect |
Attempting to hide or censor information only makes it spread more widely. |
Named after Barbra Streisand’s failed attempt to suppress photos of her house. |
| Sturgeon’s Law |
Ninety percent of everything is crap. |
Named after science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, who was defending his genre against critics. |
| Wadsworth Constant |
The actual content of any YouTube video begins at the 30% mark. |
Everything before that is fluff. |
I plan to update this from time-to-time as more wry observations come to my attention again.
‘Psyop’: How Far-Right Conspiracy Theories About the Minnesota Shooting Evolved to Protect MAGA | WIRED
Summary of Key Points
- Incident: Vance Boelter was named as the suspect in the fatal shooting of Melissa Hortman, a Democratic Minnesota state representative, and her husband Mark Hortman.
- Initial Far-Right Claims: Immediately after Boelter’s identification, far-right conspiracists and Republican influencers falsely labeled him as a violent leftist Democrat.
- Elon Musk’s Post: Elon Musk posted on X claiming “The far left is murderously violent,” which gained over 50 million views.
Facts About Boelter:
- Registered as a Republican in other states.
- Said to have voted for Donald Trump.
- Participated in an evangelical ministry preaching against abortion and demonizing LGBTQ communities.
Conspiracy Theories Evolution:
- After facts emerged, conspiracy theories shifted from blaming leftists to claiming it was a “false flag” operation by the deep state.
- Attempts were made to distance the shooter from Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.
Right-Wing Narratives:
- Claimed Boelter was linked to Minnesota governor Tim Walz and that the shooting was a politically motivated conspiracy.
- “Walz appointee” trended on X despite no evidence of a close connection.
- Influencers like Mike Cernovich, Benny Johnson, and Donald Trump Jr. pushed narratives that Boelter was a Democrat or leftist.
Counter-Evidence:
- David Carlson, Boelter’s longtime friend, confirmed Boelter was a Trump supporter who listened to InfoWars.
- Alex Jones claimed the incident was a “false flag” deep state operation.
Wider Pattern:
- Far-right conspiracists often try to blame violent acts by far-right perpetrators on leftists or Democrats.
- The “deep state” or “psyop/false flag” narrative is commonly used to deflect blame within these circles.
- Public figures like Laura Loomer and Arizona senator Wendy Rogers expressed doubts about official reports, further fueling conspiracy theories.
Analysis
- The shooting suspect’s political identity is clearly aligned with right-wing and evangelical conservative views, not left-wing or Democratic groups.
- Despite evidence, far-right conspiracists maintain false narratives to protect their political base and spread misinformation.
- This case is consistent with past patterns where far-right violence is misattributed to leftist groups by conspiracy theorists seeking to deflect responsibility.
Conclusion
The facts show Vance Boelter was a Trump-supporting far-right individual. Attempts by far-right figures and conspiracy theorists to claim otherwise are baseless and part of ongoing disinformation tactics common in politically motivated violence cases.
Summary of Thomas B. Edsall, Trump Is Daring Us to Impeach Him Again
Key Points:
- President Trump’s second term has been marked by numerous controversial and unprecedented actions compared to his first term.
- Legal scholars estimate Trump has committed 3 to 8 or more impeachable offenses within the first five months of his second term.
- Despite these offenses, impeachment is unlikely under the current Republican-controlled House, which is described as subservient to Trump.
Main Allegations:
Abuse of Power and Violation of Constitutional Norms
- Trump has undermined due process, politicized justice, and overridden congressional authority.
- Examples include:- Revoking law firms’ security clearances without due process.
- Cutting off federal funds to universities and research grants arbitrarily.
- Using military force domestically in Los Angeles, violating the Posse Comitatus Act.
- Usurping congressional spending powers.
Corruption and Personal Profiteering
- Engaged in multimillion-dollar cryptocurrency deals and accepted personal gifts (e.g., an airplane).
- Used presidential powers for personal financial gain, violating the Emoluments Clause.
- Legal experts describe this as the most extensive corruption by any U.S. president.
Violation of Fundamental Constitutional Protections
- Violations of the First Amendment: attempts to silence dissent, punish political enemies, and undermine free speech.
- Violations of due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.
- Pardoning over 1500 January 6 insurrectionists, including violent offenders, is seen as a grave moral and legal outrage.
Experts’ Specific Impeachable Grounds:
- Michael Gerhardt: Multiple impeachable offenses, blatant corruption daily, disregard for Constitution.
- Erwin Chemerinsky: Due process violations, abuse of power for retribution, illegal impoundment of funds, violation of Posse Comitatus Act, Emoluments Clause breaches.
- Amanda Frost: Abuse of office, violation of law for personal gain, absurd legal defenses by Trump, pardoning insurrectionists.
- Jon Michaels: Broad range of offenses linked to personal interests, self-dealing, impoundment of funds, incitement of violence.
- Deborah Pearlstein: Illegal impoundment of funds, potential bribery related to gifts/favors exchanged for official acts.
- Corey Brettschneider: Attacks on political opponents and dissent; inciting/supporting insurrection; impeachment as defense of democracy.
- Samuel Issacharoff: Impeachment as political assertion; possibility of criminal inquiries especially regarding cryptocurrency profiteering.
Political and Legal Context:
- Impeachment is a political process requiring significant consensus.
- Democrats may regain the House in 2026 and could impeach Trump then.
- Senate conviction is unlikely without major political changes.
- Failure to convict does not prevent criminal investigations.
- The Supreme Court’s recent decision limits some criminal prosecutions related to official acts but may not apply to personal financial dealings like cryptocurrency.
Conclusion:
- Trump’s presidency is characterized by what many experts describe as unprecedented corruption, abuse of power, and constitutional violations.
- There is a strong constitutional basis for impeachment according to multiple legal experts.
- Whether justice will be served through impeachment or criminal prosecution remains uncertain.
- Regardless of future outcomes, Trump’s second term will be historically remembered for significant legal and ethical breaches.
We may not be able to communicate that meaning to a world gone insane, but as Orwell knew, simply by staying sane when everyone else is mad, we may hope to convey the human heritage.
Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies
Trumpism can be seen as a giant attempt to amputate the highest aspirations of the human spirit and to reduce us to our most primitive, atavistic tendencies.
David Brooks
[I]f the mainline was merely the DNC at prayer while crossing its fingers even during prayer, then why go?
Low Church in High Places: The Fate and Future of American Protestantism
Most Migrants Deported to Imprisonment in El Salvador Under the Alien Enemies Act Had no Criminal Record and Many had Entered the US Legally.
Well, imagine that! If you scoop up a bunch of brown-skinned people and send them summarily to a hell hole in El Salvador, based on half-assed signs of gang membership like soccer fan tattoos, chances are good that you’re committing a crime against humanity against totally innocent people. Whoever would have suspected that?
For the populists who want, say, WalMart to absorb the higher wholesale cost resulting from Trump tariffs without raising prices, a choice:
- You can have all the imported widgets you want with the tariff increasing WalMart’s retail price; or
- You can have no widgets with WalMart absorbing the tariffs.
Your call.
Fools and fiends
Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, bungled answers on Tuesday about habeas corpus, incorrectly asserting that the legal right of people to challenge their detention by the government was actually the president’s “constitutional right” to deport people.
As the Trump administration works to carry out its promised mass deportations, efforts that largely fall under Ms. Noem’s jurisdiction, officials have floated the idea of suspending habeas corpus for immigrants being expelled from the country.
At a Senate hearing, Senator Maggie Hassan, Democrat of New Hampshire, asked Ms. Noem about the issue. “Secretary Noem,” she asked, “what is habeas corpus?”
“Well,” Ms. Noem said, “habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their right to—”
“No,” Ms. Hassan interjected. “Let me stop you, ma’am. Excuse me, that’s incorrect.”
New York Times
If human vices such as greed and envy are systematically cultivated, the inevitable result is nothing less than a collapse of intelligence. A man driven by greed or envy loses the power of seeing things as they really are, of seeing things in their roundness and wholeness, and his very successes become failures. If whole societies become infected by these vices, they may indeed achieve astonishing things but they become increasingly incapable of solving the most elementary problems of everyday existence
E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful
Nick Catoggio
Nick Catoggio doesn’t entirely fall into the fallacy of reducing religion to crypto-politics, but he does write for a politically-oriented Dispatch. So it’s no surprise to see him muse about the political implications:
The last thing Leo wants for his papacy, I’m sure, is to see it sucked into the sleazy reality show that is Trump-era American politics, a black hole of shame and nihilism from which no dignity can escape.
In fact, my guess is that he’s less likely to comment on policy in the United States than the other candidates to succeed Francis would have been. Doing so might tempt Catholics here to choose between their loyalty to an American-led church and their loyalty to Trumpism, and not all would choose the church. It would also demean the pontificate, as surely the Holy Father has more exalted business to attend to than serving as the president’s latest foil in America’s degenerate “politics as pro wrestling” populist spectacle.
Most of all, it would show a world that’s been dominated by the United States for 80 years that even the papacy can’t prevent an American from parochially and narcissistically prioritizing his own country’s affairs. In an age of “America First,” where Uncle Sam unapologetically cares only about himself, the so-called Ugly American has never looked uglier. If Leo really does mean to prove that he “cares about the entire world,” the easiest way to do it is to reject that narcissism by ignoring the United States as completely as possible.
Jonathan Last
Catoggio pointed me to another article that’s spicier than his summary:
I expected to see an African pope in my lifetime. I never expected to see an American pope.
Why?
Because the Vatican is dominated by Europeans and they are deeply suspicious of America and American Catholics. To them, we are toddlers with shotguns.
Earlier this week, Bishop Robert Barron explained to a reporter from CBS why the next pope wouldn’t be American:
Cardinal George of Chicago, of happy memory, was one of my great mentors, and he said: ‘Look, until America goes into political decline, there won’t be an American pope.’ And his point was, if America is kind of running the world politically, culturally, economically, they don’t want America running the world religiously. So, I think there’s some truth to that, that we’re such a superpower and so dominant, they don’t wanna give us, also, control over the church.
Barron is one of America’s MAGA priests, so naturally he could not imagine that anyone else in the world might view America as being in decline.
But we are and it’s obvious.
It’s obvious to the people of Canada, who just elected a prime minister exclusively on the grounds that the American century was over.
It’s obvious to the Chinese, who are planning to step into the vacuum and establish their own world order.
It’s obvious to our European allies, who are now making plans for a future in which America is toothless, lazy, and impotent.
And maybe—just maybe—this reality was obvious the College of Cardinals, too.
Maybe they looked at America and realized that it was no longer a colossus bestriding the globe. No longer exceptional. Not just in decline, but deluded about its reality.
Maybe Robert Prevost was elected pope because the Church realized they no longer needed to be concerned about America power.
Jonathan V. Last, MAGA and the American Pope
Ross Douthat
I hoped that someone who doesn’t reduce religion to crypto-politics would write about Pope Leo. Ross Douthat stepped up: What the World Needs From Pope Leo (shared link). If I could put it in a nutshell, I wouldn’t share the link, but this jumped out at me:
This is a much weirder landscape than the one in which liberal and conservative Catholics clashed over contraception or gay marriage, and it’s likely to get weirder still as we move deeper into a digital and virtual and artificial-intelligence-mediated existence.
Catholicism has had little of note to say thus far about what it means to be Christian and human under these conditions or how Catholics should think morally and spiritually about their relationships to these technologies. But if Leo XIV reigns as long as Leo XIII did, no issue may be more important to the faithful — or the world.
I reiterate that as far as I can tell, my fascination with the Pope has a couple of sources:
- He is seen as the very Vicar of Christ by 1.4 billion of my separated brethren.
- He is one of a handful of distilled symbols of Christianity for my countrymen. (The MAGA response confirms that MAGA hates any remotely authentic Christianity because there’s too little hate in it. “Men loved darkness rather than light” and all that.)
- What he cannot yet undo are barriers to healing the Great Schism, but Popes can undermine (and have undermined) those barriers so that they may someday collapse.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced Monday that he would not be running for the Senate in 2026. The popular Republican governor was considered a top contender to challenge vulnerable Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in a state that President Trump narrowly won in 2024. Kemp, who clashed with Trump in the past over the president’s claims of election fraud in Georgia in 2020, won reelection in 2022 after defeating a primary challenger backed by Trump.
The Morning Dispatch.
Why would he run? Trump’s a piece of shit who hates him, and the Senate is frozen in the headlights of Trump’s Panzer Divisions.
Harvard’s tax exemption
Forget whether he has a point (though I don’t think he does): Trump announcing that he’s going to strip Harvard’s tax exemption is a crime (I mean that), an outrage, and should get him impeached. But our Congressblobs are afraid of (1) primaries and (2) literal physical violence against themselves and their families.
Invincible ignorance
On NPR Friday night, I heard a Trump supporter, speaking of the price increases (and other chaos?) from tariffs, sucking it up and saying “It’s what we get for letting them do that to us for so long.”
Sarah Palin was John the Baptist to Donald Trump’s Velveeta Jesus.
When Dan Turner of Turner Hydraulics ordered a custom product for a U.S. steel mill from a Chinese manufacturer back in January, he was expecting to pay a 25 percent tariff on the $49,000 product when it arrived this spring at a port in the United States.
But that was before President Donald Trump announced his April 2 “Liberation Day” tariffs on countries around the world—and then subsequently paused most of his so-called reciprocal tariffs while simultaneously escalating his trade war against China.
Just days after the custom product shipped, Trump announced China would face minimum tariffs of 145 percent, but the rate can vary by product. Turner is now expecting to pay significantly more than a 145 percent tariff when the item, currently somewhere on a container ship in the ocean, arrives.
“So we are having to pay an $84,000 tariff on a $49,000 item,” Turner told The Dispatch in an interview. “We’re just hoping either the ship sinks or somebody comes to their senses before it hits the dock.”
‘We’re Just Hoping the Ship Sinks’
