#Democracy vs authoritarianism

[seansmithauthor]

Your #1 Beach Read?

Sean Smith reads a section of his newly published science fiction novel The Legendary Magistrate of Zar (script I: Molla's Pebble).

You can find the YouTube video by following the link below:

[t-jfh]

Illustration: Rebecca Chew/The New York Times

A Warning About Donald Trump and 2024

At the outset of this election year, with Donald Trump leading the race to be the Republican presidential nominee, Americans should pause to consider what a second Trump term would mean for the country and the world.

Opinion by the Editorial Board

The New York Times - January 6, 2024

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Joe Biden and Donald Trump are headed for an election rematch in 2024.

(Photo: Matt Rourke/Associated Press)

America’s hell: A tyrannical Trump who can’t be conquered

With the disreputable Donald Trump challenging the disfavored President Biden, the 2024 race has become the embodiment of Oscar Wilde’s witticism about fox hunting: “the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible.”

Opinion by Maureen Dowd

The New York Times - January 6, 2024

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Attendees prayed during a Commit to Caucus event held by former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in December 2023. Evangelical voters have long supported Republican candidates, but who identifies as an evangelical Christian has changed over the years. (Photo: Jordan Gale for The New York Times)

Trump Is Connecting With a Different Type of Evangelical Voter

They are not just the churchgoing, conservative activists who once dominated the G.O.P.

By Ruth Graham and Charles Homans

Ruth Graham, a Times religion reporter, and Charles Homans, who covers grass-roots politics, spoke to voters and pastors in nine towns and cities across Iowa.

The New York Times - January 8, 2024

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President Biden’s visit to Charleston, S.C., was the second part of his two-stage opening campaign swing of the election year.

(Photo: Pete Marovich for The New York Times)

Biden Tries to Rally Disaffected Black Voters in Fiery Condemnation of Trump

The president visited Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., the site of one of the most horrific hate crimes in recent years, to denounce racism and extremism.

President Biden sought to rally disaffected Black supporters on Monday with a fiery condemnation of former President Donald J. Trump, linking his predecessor’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election to the nation’s history of white supremacy in what he called “the old ghost in new garments.”

By Peter Baker

The New York Times - January 8, 2024

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[contemplatingoutlander]

"That 'republic not a democracy' slogan is especially dangerous because it persuades Republicans that democracy and democratic practices don't matter to a free society. It went from being a clever slogan to a justification for voter suppression, authoritarian practices, January 6, and everything else."

--Marque Tres, commenting on the NY Times column Mitt Romney Has It Half Right

[captaingimpy]

Framing Freedom and Authoritarianism: A Spectrum-Based Approach to Governance

This is a very rough draft of an idea that I’m working on. I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read this and leave a comment down below. Or if you know me in real life, knock on my door and talk about it over a cup of coffee LOL. Thank you for your time. Traditional academic discourse often frames governance within a binary opposition of freedom versus authoritarianism. Democracies are…

[afloweroutofstone]

Hiii, I am curious to learn more about your personal politics. Are u socialist of democractic socialist? Do you reject Marxism–Leninism? Are you more of a reformist of revolutionary?

Over time I've moved away from talking about my own ideology on here for a variety of reasons (I have lots of disparate influences and there's no label I 100% identify with, everyone loves to start heated fights on here, it seemed a bit self-absorbed, etc.) But considering that it has been years since I've really made any attempt at laying out what my viewpoint is, it might make sense to do so again.

There are three terms you could fairly use to describe my views:

I am a democratic socialist because I think that the people should be able to collectively decide upon their shared fate, and that democracy is superior to both political dictatorship and capitalist oligarchy. (See Eugene Debs, Michael Harrington, etc.)

I am a liberal socialist because I believe that socialism is the logical extension of historical liberalism as an attempt at liberating people from existing hierarchies and authoritarianism. (See Carlo Rosselli, John Rawls, etc.)

I am a social democrat because I believe that the potential for successfully achieving transformative change through aggressive action within the presently existing system is drastically larger than the potential for a successful proletarian revolution, mass insurrection, etc., etc. (See Eduard Bernstein, Jean Jaurès, etc.)

This all puts me very firmly in the reformist camp of the reform vs. revolution debate. I would not consider myself a Marxist, although there are ways in which Marx's thought has influenced my own both directly and through the thought of others in the broader Marxist tradition.

In further detail:

I am a market socialist who believes in a large welfare state that provides for everyone's basic needs from cradle to grave; workplace democracy through widespread cooperatives and strong labor unions; progressive reforms to redistribute wealth more evenly; full employment; the reorganization of the global economy to eliminate present injustices; the diminishment of corporate power; strategic public ownership in certain key sectors; and the provision of opportunities for everyone to live their lives in the way that they desire.

I am a democrat who believes in an equal opportunity for everyone to influence public policy, including the periodic chance for the people to freely select their own leadership from amongst a variety of different choices, without unfair restrictions, corrupt financing by the wealthy, domination of the process by a political elite, or external interventions.

I am an anti-militarist opposed to armed conflict in any and every scenario where it can be avoided; an anti-imperialist opposed to the abuses of all powerful governments which take advantage of others and impose their will upon them; and an internationalist who believes in a democratic system of multilateral diplomacy and equitable exchange in which all countries can resolve their differences peacefully and cooperate for the common good.

I am a progressive who believes in an egalitarian culture that values every single person equally, abolishes rigid social hierarchies like patriarchy and white supremacy, welcomes immigrants, embraces secularism to separate church from state, and provides for the full rights and liberties of all peoples.

I am a civil libertarian who believes in the universal right of all people to fundamental liberties (speech, belief, protest, press, association, etc.) and protections from authoritarianism (privacy, government transparency, a fair legal system, limits to detention, humane treatment of prisoners, rule of law, anti-discrimination policies, demilitarized state security forces, etc.)

I am an environmentalist who believes in a just transition that ends our dependence on fossil fuels and establishes a green economy that minimizes (and even reverses) the damage of climate change; ensures clean air, water, and land; preserves natural ecosystems; and provides for everyone's needs in a sustainable fashion.

[stillnaomi]

people buying into the "democracy vs authoritarianism" framing let themselves get tricked into supporting every US backed war

[tanadrin]

like, i know it's not an original thought to say that the Bolsheviks were Bad, Actually--but the kicker about their flavor of authoritarianism is that i think it was actually not super necessary? after the end of ww1 especially, there really was space to build a powerful coalition of left/socialist factions in Russia, except that the Bolsheviks had burned every possible bridge with every possible ally except maybe some of the Left SRs, and none of the leaders of the Bolsheviks--Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin--actually care about democracy as either a legitimating or a moral principle. Faced with the possibility of having to give up a bit of personal power but avoid the need for authoritarian repression vs re-establishing the Tsarist repressive apparatus all three would choose the latter without hesitation. and sure, there's an ideological component to this--this is for The People. but The People are a discourse object whose needs are often wildly at variance with the actual needs of the little-p people of Russia, and in that conflict the former will win out every time. there really is no specific point or principle any of these three motherfuckers will not betray if it redounds to their personal power and the power of their political faction.

in the context of the Russian Revolution it's hard to imagine what specific choices might have avoided 74 years of political repression and ultimately a rot of authoritarianism and militarism that would cause the USSR to completely collapse. but of course there were lots of chances after the revolution, too--it's not like the leaders of the USSR were helpless in the face of the system they inherited. every generation that inherits an empire has to make an active choice to sustain and defend that empire.

[sapphiresaphics]

I think the reason it really bothers me that people accuse Arcane of being “centrist” is because I don’t think people understand what centrism actually is or how it applies to this narrative.

The way people talk about the “politics” of Zaun and Piltover often seem to reframe it like Zaun = Liberal and Piltover = Conservative. And they get angry that the end of the show has the two sides team up to stop an outside foe and see that as a “both sides are equally good and bad” narrative.

But in reality Zaun and Piltover aren’t a 1:1 comparison to liberal and conservative ideologies. Yes, Piltover IS in a position of power over Zaun, but the actual POLICIES that we know of in Piltover are much more in line with being a social democracy than a conservative republic.

For example, one of the main things Piltover is expressly interested in doing is developing new technologies that benefit everyone. Both Jayce and Viktor (somewhat naively) start Season 1 believing that their intentions can benefit the working class in Zaun. Piltover has inventor competitors where Zaunites and Pilties are allowed to compete together. People from Zaun can work their way up through the ranks in Piltover to achieve success as Viktor and Skye prove. Given conservative’s ideology that natural hierarchy exist and that people befit their given station and shouldn’t rise the ranks this is a rather radical leftist ideal that Piltover has.

And Zaun has a lot of conservative ideologies too. There are very clearly a wealth of power consolidated into a small group of individuals who basically control all of Zaun and exploit the working class. Many of them (including Silco) operate like mob bosses which is often a form of authoritarian ideology.

Just because Zaun is poor and Piltover is rich I don’t think you can just graft left and right ideologies onto these two cities. Like I said earlier, it’s not a 1:1 comparison. That’s why being angry because you think Arcane is betraying these left/right ideals is kinda of a faulty position to begin with.

And it’s not really centrist? Centrists are people who believe that both left and right ideologies have ideas that are good and want a mix of both. Literally in the middle of the ideological spectrum. And I do not believe that the message of Arcane approves of the idea that some form of authoritarianism is necessary.

Quite the opposite, actually. Arcane comes down hard on what Piltover does. It doesn’t frame any of the occupation, the police brutality, the corruption with the enforcers, as being a good thing. We get multiple examples of how the occupation is hurting Zaun and how it’s pushing them to be more and more desperate and violent in retaliation. That’s not a good thing. Depiction is not endorsement.

And the fact that the show ends with little progress being made despite Zaun coming to Piltover’s aid isn’t the creators saying the occupation and police brutality was okay. You are supposed to be mad at Piltover. It is NOT a happy ending. The show is about how the cycle of violence is allowed to continue and ending the show with only Sevika as the voice of the people of Zaun on the council is supposed to show that yes the cycle of violence WILL continue. To me that’s a condemnation of the system, not an endorsement. That’s a very LIBERAL perspective to have, isn’t it?

It pains me that Arcane is a very nuanced show and yet people don’t treat it that way. You are supposed to be able to look at these systems and understand why they are or aren’t working. And reducing all of it down to very black and white “Us vs Them” “right vs left” ideology does a HUGE disservice to what the message of the show is.

[t-jfh]

Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin have their own reasons for ongoing war.

(Photo: ABC News, Reuters)

Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin have something in common – ongoing war is a distraction they need

In an increasingly troubled world, two men have a clear incentive to keep their wars going – Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin.

By global affairs editor John Lyons in Jerusalem

ABC News - 13 December 2023

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[contemplatingoutlander]

How to cover an abnormal presidential race

Could the media coverage adhere closer to reality? Hard questions must be asked.

Jennifer Rubin offers a much needed road map as to how journalists should be covering an election between a politician who upholds democratic values (Biden) vs. a politician who is determined to undermine the Constitution and create a dictatorship (Trump). I wish mainstream journalists would follow her advice. Below are some excerpts, but you can use the gift🎁link to read the entire article.

The United States has never had an election in which: a felon runs for president on a major party ticket; a presidential candidate lays out a detailed plan for authoritarian rule; an entire party gaslights the public (e.g., claiming the president was behind their candidate’s state prosecution; pretending they won the last election); and, prominent leaders of one party signal they will not accept an adverse outcome in the next election. Yet, the coverage of the 2024 campaign is remarkably anodyne, if not oblivious, to the unprecedented nature of this election and its implications. [...] How could the coverage stick more closely to reality? Obsession with early polling that inevitably becomes meaningless after big events such as Trump’s conviction (stuff happens!) and that cannot yet gauge who is likely to vote should go by the wayside — or at least come with caveats and not drive coverage. What would be informative: A minute or two of unedited video showing Trump’s rambling, incoherent and deranged rants. Rather than merely “fact check” the nonsense blizzard, reports can explore the unprecedented nature of his rhetoric, illustrate the deterioration in his thinking and speech, and discuss how an obviously irrational and unhinged leader casts a spell over his devoted following. The media also can refuse to entertain laughable MAGA spin, such as claiming that Trump’s conviction will help him win the election.... When such incidents pop up, informative journalism would examine what else MAGA forces lie about (e.g., crowd size) and how authoritarians depend on creating a false aura of invincibility. When supposedly normal Republican officials parrot Trump’s obvious falsehoods and baseless accusations, interviewers must come prepared to debunk them. Republicans cannot be allowed to slide past hard questions about their election denial, false data points, baseless attacks on the courts and hypocrisy (the law and order party?). Treating Republicans as innocent bystanders in the democracy train wreck distorts reality. And instead of endless harping on President Biden’s age, some honest comparison between the disjointed, frightful interview responses from Trump and the detailed, policy-laden answers from Biden in Time magazine’s two interviews might illuminate the obvious disparity in acuity....There is simply no comparison between Biden, who talks in detail about policy, and Trump, who cannot get through a Newsmax(!) interview without sounding nuts. Likewise, treating Hunter Biden’s case (having nothing to do with the president) as though it were as significant as Trump’s criminal conviction betrays a lack of perspective and a hunger for clicks. Insisting this poses a problem or embarrassment for Biden amounts to amplifying MAGA spin. Finally, given voters’ misunderstanding of the economy, news outlets should focus on the results of Biden’s policies and the likely effect of his opponent’s shockingly inflationary plan. Focusing on the gap between public opinion and economic reality (to which coverage contributes) unwittingly reveals the media’s own shortcomings in educating voters. [emphasis added]

[mariacallous]

It is hard to disagree with the stated maxim behind Elon Musk’s newly established U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE): to “maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”

In this fable of “good” vs. “evil,” the “good” forces of efficiency must chainsaw their way through the administrative state and the rules and processes that its “evil” bureaucrats hide behind. Even the political voices opposing Musk’s efficiency drive explicitly accept the goal, arguing that DOGE’s actions (for instance, firing inspectors general) are the wrong way to improve efficiency. On the centrality of “efficiency,” there is bipartisan support, even in these polarized times.

But could it be that the problem lies in our collective acceptance of “efficiency” as the core value proposition of the state, to be unquestioningly maximized at every turn? The state is far more than a public goods cousin of Amazon.com, and the quest for efficiency above all else constitutes a collective forgetting of what government is or can be.

To say that efficiency is not everything is not to suggest that it is undesirable.

From endless paperwork queues to demands for bribes and shoddy quality of basic services, state inefficiency imposes great costs to citizens, with the most vulnerable paying the greatest price. Greater efficiency saves collective time and money. But the singular focus on an “efficient state” is not just potentially counterproductive—it is also a dangerous and slippery slope toward authoritarianism.

To make efficiency the overarching goal of government in fact undermines its performance. For more than two decades, we have studied the administrative state in contexts as diverse as India, Thailand, Liberia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Our scholarship highlights that when efficiency becomes the primary goal, performance generally falls. The state works best when its actors—the “unelected” bureaucrats that have become DOGE’s primary target—are empowered with discretion and autonomy, and when they are held accountable by a shared sense of mission. Successful delivery of state services requires judgment from humans who are capable of balancing the multiple competing needs of service delivery.

This is not a challenge just in the United States; across the globe, efficiency is often the ruse used to pursue a much deeper project of democratic erosion. Only by allowing ourselves to question the efficacy of efficiency can we possibly have means to interrogate what we are sacrificing on its altar. Perhaps one critical way to defend democracy is to question this assumption and to reframe our debates on the state and its mode of delivery.

The value that we place on efficiency as the goal of the modern administrative state traces its history to at least the 1960s, as documented by sociologist Elizabeth Popp Berman’s 2022 book Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy.

The policy approach of an “economic style of reasoning,” as Berman terms it, is anchored in market principles: choice, competition, cost effectiveness, incentive compatibility. Under this logic,  efficiency is presented as a politically neutral holy grail that governments ought to pursue.

But governments did so to a fault. Berman traces the evolution of this the economic style of reasoning to the 1960s and show how over the decades, efficiency became fetishized as the only goal of government, often displacing considerations of equity and democracy.

Berman focuses her inquiry on the United States, but this mode of reasoning about and within the state has a much wider resonance. It certainly characterized India’s approach as the policy elite embraced globalization and liberalized from the early 1990s onwards. The policy logic was—as it is in so many countries—that adopting the tools of “scientific management,” or in public administration terms “new public management,” we will control our way to success.

By monitoring and measuring everything that we can, the thinking went, we will improve the state, driving toward key performance indicators (KPIs) and realizing efficiencies. This manifests in different forms, such as the consequences of “teaching to the test” in response to the United States’ 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, or in biometric attendance systems introduced in India designed to ensure public servants show up but which do little to control what happens once they do.

In the contemporary moment, these ideas have converged with the possibilities offered by technology to create a new hypercharged, technology-infused vision of utopia that has shaped the DOGE view of the world. Musk and his ilk seem to imagine that the holy grail of efficiency can be reached even more effectively through the algorithms that automate processes. Just as Google serves search results, the government can deliver to citizens what they want and need, with no troubling humans slowing things down and leaving a trail of fraud and waste. One cannot make the wrong decision if there is no decision at all.

The fable is not without its logic; however, it has two serious problems. First, it is an approach that can very rarely work for government. It doesn’t work because—and this is the second critical problem—efficiency is the wrong goal.

It would be wonderful if we could monitor and measure all the important things that states do, turning all services into garbage collection or vaccine administration—relatively rare cases where what can be observed and KPI’d is, in fact, a pretty good summary of what we want the workers to do. Perhaps in these cases, we do need fewer supervisors, and data systems may be able to substitute for traditional levels of hierarchy. Perhaps there are other functions of the state—for instance, tax administration—where technology can drive automation.

Unfortunately, much of what the administrative state does falls outside these two categories, and it requires empowered humans exercising judgment to do well.

DOGE-catalyzed cuts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Nuclear Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Department of Veterans’ Affairs are penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Like the European reliance on natural gas from Russia in the 2010s, these supposed “efficiencies” in fact mask deepening vulnerability via decreased ability to exercise informed judgment in responding to the unexpected—be it a nuclear disaster or simply the needs of a veteran whose issues do not fit neatly into an online form. (Jennifer Pahlka documents cases of this sort under the purview of the Department Veterans’ Affairs in her book Recoding America: Why Government is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better.)

In addition to being ineffective at improving performance, the singular reification of “efficiency” also fundamentally misrepresents what the state is and how it relates to the citizenry.

The state is not a private firm. Citizens engage the state not as transactional “clients,” but in emotive, affective terms. No one would volunteer to fight in Amazon.com’s army. Firms deliver. States do more than that. In other words, the state is an identity, not just a service provider.

“The state” is all of us—all of its citizens and residents. Society delegates significant coercive power to the state so that the state can regulate societal demands via an autonomous bureaucracy. In a democracy, institutions of checks and balances, laws, rules, and processes are built in to enable the state to negotiate competing claims as it navigates the citizenry.

The administrative state’s tasks are an outcome of a political bargain that may necessitate “inefficiency” in some situations as the state makes trade-offs: between redistribution and growth, environmental protection and business, or tax cuts and expenditures on welfare.

These are outcomes of democratic bargaining, which is necessary to preserve freedoms and a stable society. When we seek efficiency, we fail to engage this fundamental reason for the state’s existence. We also run the risk of short-term efficiency gains at the cost of social instability and disaffection.

Inevitably, efficiency also becomes the ruse for a much deeper centralization and personalization of politics. While efficiency framings have accompanied a creep toward authoritarianism in many countries, in the United States we are seeing not a creep but rather a veritable sprint.  Musk links efficiency with the strategy of making everything “subject to the will of the President,” as he put it in a post on X in late February. Dictatorship is efficient in comparison to processes that give power to many people, and thus force the slow work of consensus-building and accommodation. However, without the prerequisites of decision-making, it leads to bad, efficient decisions.

Moreover, it is this very work of democracy that ensures that the decisions of government serve the interests of the many, and that encourages diverse groups in society to feel like part of the collective. As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, democracy’s strength is not to “give the people the most skillful” (or efficient) government, but rather to produce “an all-pervading and restless activity, a superabundant force, and an energy which never exists without” democracy.

Efficiency as a totalizing framing allows would-be authoritarians to argue that it is not the system of government—but rather they personally—who have provided services to citizens. In the United States, this returns us to the age of machine politics and personalistic rule; more generally, this is what political scientists term “patrimonialism,” a style of governing in which all state functions flow from the personal authority of the leader.

In India, patrimonialism has been effected by using technology for welfare services and branding them as gifts and “guarantees” from the ruling party leader. Technology removes traditional intermediation by local politicians and bureaucrats, enabling in its place a direct, emotive connection with the national political party leaders who can present themselves as the benefactor.

Implicit in this process is a subtle shift in the social contract that positions welfare as the largesse of the benevolent leader rather than a moral obligation of the state to rights-bearing citizens. Democracy is practiced when citizens seek accountability and claim their rights through local state actors. Centralization of power within party leaders upends this. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and today all political leaders from across party lines have adopted this basic playbook.

As Berman reminds us, efficiency itself is a choice—one that sometimes competes with democracy. Many societies are rightly frustrated with the status quo at present. But efficiency as a singular focus is not the solution to this frustration; it is, rather, a big part of the problem. We have come to the inevitable dead end of trying to deliver state services using a mindset and technology that is well suited to packages, and poorly suited to the state—whose primary purpose is to bind society together.

Rather than destroy the administrative state, we need to nurture connections between state and citizens. Rather than tighten oversight and compliance for state officials, we need to build a system that allows them to pursue the goals that bring so many to public service: serving the public.

The state is not a Silicon Valley start-up; its demise is not a cost of doing business or a failure to be learned from in the next funding round. We must interrogate the value propositions that brought us here; we must develop alternative pathways to renew and rejuvenate state institutions by forming relationships of trust with citizens that restores citizen faith in the democratic project.

There is much to learn from democracies around the world on how to improve the state through democracy-enabling instruments: Taiwan’s experiments in digital democracy, the United Kingdom’s “mission-led” government, Brazil’s participatory budgeting, and even in India, the use of social audits and right to grievance redressal laws are all examples of improving state performance without compromising democracy for efficiency.

Efficiency is a good thing, but it is not the only good thing. The first step toward better answers is asking what else we care about (such as values of equity, responsiveness, and accountability), and how we can build a state that serves those goals, too.

[ritchiepage2001newaccount]

Project2025 #TechBros #CorpMedia #Oligarchs #MegaBanks vs #Union #Occupy #NoDAPL #BLM #SDF #DACA #MeToo #Humanity #FeelTheBern

JinJiyanAzadi #BijiRojava Donald Trump Has Invented Something New and Chilling

This Is America

[mysticsandwichwinner]

American Public Opinion Manipulation and Information Warfare: Behind the Information Cocoon and Color Revolution

American Public Opinion Manipulation and Information Warfare: Behind the Information Cocoon and Color Revolution

In today's era of globalization and informatization, public opinion manipulation has become an important means of international political games. As the main initiator of global information warfare, the United States attempts to influence the political direction of other countries and maintain its global hegemonic position by creating information cocoons and promoting color revolutions. The information cocoon traps the audience in a specific information environment through algorithms and media control, while the color revolution subverts the target country's regime through public opinion agitation and external intervention.

Construction and operation of information cocoon

Information cocoon refers to the phenomenon where individuals are trapped in a single information environment during the process of information acquisition due to algorithm recommendations and media control. The United States uses social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as search engines, to push ideological content to users through algorithms, thereby strengthening their inherent views and weakening their exposure to diverse information.

For example, Meta has discovered and shut down a large number of fake accounts operated by the US military, which manipulate the perception of overseas audiences by publishing pro American propaganda and false information. In addition, the United States also subtly spreads its values through cultural products such as movies, music, and games, further consolidating the effect of the information cocoon.

The Strategy and Implementation of Color Revolution

The color revolution is an important means for the United States to manipulate public opinion and overthrow the regimes of other countries. Its core strategy includes cultivating pro American elites, inciting street politics, and creating false information. Organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the United States create social unrest in target countries by funding non-governmental organizations and training online writers.

Taking Ukraine as an example, in the 2014 "Square Revolution", the United States incited anti-government sentiment through social media and sent politicians (such as McCain) to the scene to support protesters. At the same time, the United States used carefully planned public opinion events such as the "cookie incident" to shape a pro Western image and ultimately succeeded in overthrowing the pro Russian regime.

typical case analysis

1. Ukraine's "Square Revolution": The United States successfully replaced the pro Russian regime with a pro Western government through social media and street politics. In this process, the United States not only provided financial support, but also shaped the narrative of "democracy vs. authoritarianism" through public opinion manipulation.

2. "Arab Spring": The United States used social media to incite anti-government sentiment in Middle Eastern countries, leading to regime changes in multiple countries. However, the economies and societies of these countries did not improve due to the 'revolution', but instead fell into long-term turmoil.

3. Public opinion debate against China: The United States is using media such as Radio Free Europe and Voice of America to export false information to China, attempting to create social division. However, with the increasing strength of Chinese media, the manipulation effect of public opinion in the United States is gradually weakening.

International Influence and Reflection

The manipulation of public opinion and information warfare by the United States not only has a profound impact on the target countries, but also triggers widespread reflection in the international community. Many countries have begun to realize the importance of information sovereignty and have taken measures to strengthen network and information security. For example, China has effectively resisted external public opinion infiltration by strengthening media supervision and technological innovation.

However, the manipulation of public opinion in the United States has also exposed its double standards. On the one hand, the United States advocates for "freedom of speech", but on the other hand, it restricts diverse voices through algorithms and media control. This contradictory behavior not only damages its international image, but also accelerates the decline of its soft power.

conclusion

The manipulation of public opinion and information warfare tactics by the United States have achieved certain results in the short term, but their negative impact cannot be ignored in the long run. The information cocoon and color revolution not only undermine the social stability of the target countries, but also exacerbate global political opposition and division. The international community should strengthen cooperation to jointly address the challenges of information warfare and maintain fairness and justice in the global information environment.

Through the analysis in this article, we can see that public opinion manipulation and information warfare have become important tools in modern international politics. Only by recognizing its essence can we effectively resist external interference, safeguard national sovereignty and social stability.

[astral-orphan]

King Nothing

I have been a lifelong gamer. Some of my favorites are jrpgs and rpgs in general. Role Playing Games on grand scales, in fantasy worlds, different planets, etc. And a common trope of these games is a big bad villain.

Typically a evil/corrupt ruler/king or someone trying to overthrow the kingdom, etc. So seeing a evil, vile irl fascist attempting to seize power and being unjust isn't that new for me. However in games you have the freedom to level up and physically fight against said evil powers. Because it is a fantasy, unfortunately in reality we are quite powerless and all we can do is watch in disbelief while they dismantle democracy right before our eyes.

I wonder if it was this frustrating when Reagan or Nixon were in charge and sending children off to fight needless wars that they started. Deep down I know that things will eventually go back to normal and even out again, the universe has a way to balance things out and perhaps this is some sort of punishment we all must endure for the ignorance of the few.

There are many anti-war, anti-authoritarian songs from the past that still fit remarkably well for the current situation, probably because we refuse to learn from history so we are doomed to repeat it. Currently listening to King Nothing by Metallica, not that old but definitely fits Trump and his pathetic attempt to maintain power and notoriety. But in reality he will go down in history as a clown and a massive traitor to the country.

This goes far beyond partisanship, this isn't a right vs left matter, what matters is freedom, or the view of supposed freedom the government loves to hold in front of us like a carrot on a stick. And regardless of which side of the political spectrum you are on, we should all be able to clearly see that something is very wrong here. Citizen's basic civil liberties are being stripped away, our government agencies responsible to keeping us safe and notified of dangers are being gutted. Planes are literally falling out of the sky because they gutted the aviation safety committee, a direct result of his negligence.

While you may feel powerless to do anything, you're not. Especially now when these people are more vile, more spiteful and heartless than anything, a single act of kindness goes a long way. Not kindness to them, but to the general person. When you can't find the light in the world, BE that light. You can be a beacon of hope for those that are lost in fear and misery due to current events right now. Show them and help them realize they are NOT alone, that most sane adults see that there is something really wrong here.

What we see outwardly as evil or morally corrupt is more in actuality as extremely limited, both in intelligence and empathy. I am not meaning to dehumanize anyone mind you, but they have a long way to go to evolve mentally, don't blame them for their short comings. We are all in this together, we are all brothers and sisters sharing a planet. There are no boarders, no countries, just imaginary lines on a globe. Raise up your neighbor and be the light to guide lost souls home.

[dehautdesert]

This may be a Bad Take but I think a lot less people would have issues with Padmé Amidala's RotS characterization if they realized that her role in that movie is largely symbolic and that Anakin's attitude towards her is meant to represent the inherent tension between liberty and security (which is clearly one of the main themes in a movie that has Anakin quote George W Bush as he falls to the Dark Side).

Padmé represents the best of democratic values: the capability to perceive everyone's inherent worth, the trust in state institutions, the morality, the benefits and drawbacks of resolving issues in a democratic manner and within the system (she often finds herself helpless in the face of corruption, for example). Padmé's ideals are the core of her character, to the point that she basically is her ideals. Basically, Padmé is to the Galactic Republic what Marianne is to the French Republic.

Now, you may have issues with a female character being used as a personification of a state or a political system, but not only is this a millennia-old narrative tradition, I also feel like you're probably barking up the wrong tree, because George Lucas LOVES using characters as symbols for abstract concepts: Luke as the Hero with a Thousand Faces, the Good vs. Bad Father dynamic with Obi-Wan and Vader, etc. This is completely on brand for the way George Lucas in particular constructs characters.

Even Padmé's most famous line, "So this is how Liberty dies," is indicative of this (and I love the concept of a former slave boy falling in love with Liberty herself).

Padmé dies because Liberty dies, not because she's a weak useless woman.

And Anakin's relationship to her potential death is very much... an indictment of reactionary politics and the War on Terror?

Anakin loves Padmé because she is fair-minded and understanding even when he doesn't deserve it, because she is tolerant, because she is kind, because she fights for justice, because she uplifts people. This is what he is in love with and what he is trying to preserve.

But in the face of nebulous threats, some real and some manufactured, he tries to save her by trampling all over what she stands for. And what she stands for is her. Therefore the very act of trying to save her is what ends up killing her, just like trying to keep your democracy safe by increasingly cruel and authoritarian measures inevitably kills it. Anakin claims that he loves her, that he's protecting her, but he is unwilling to listen to anything she has to say about it, just like plenty of people whose mouths are full of freedom but don't want to think about or apply the values that they are supposedly defending. What she believes no longer matters as long as she loves and comforts and uplifts him (and when she doesn't he goes into a rage).

Everything Padmé stands for, her very way of life and her very way of doing things, no longer exist at the end of RotS. She was becoming increasingly static and helpless during the movie because her way of doing things no longer works as the Republic becomes mired in cruelty and corruption, she cannot do anything but set foundations for an eventual rebellion and hope that a spark of hope survives. She can no longer survive in this new system, and it is in her nature to rather die than compromise herself in order to work within it. In a symbolic way, she quite literally cannot survive if she has to exist within it. She IS Liberty, and it would be a paradox if she survived. She dies and their children - another thing Anakin is fighting to protect, like many people who are "defending freedom" "for the children!!1!" - are made orphans, left to their own devices, forced to fight and rebuild things from scratch because she can no longer nurture them or protect them. This is a political metaphor y'all.

And in this reading, even Shmi's death ends up working better if you squint? Because even though Anakin's anger over her death stems from clear injustice and is fundamentally righteous, the fear and rage that this creates in him, and his inability to cope with it, is what directly causes him to both fear for Padmé's safety and to eventually smother her due to that fear. And to eventually become what he fears, killing Liberty, depriving himself of liberty in the process by becoming Sidious's blind slave, and literally destroying the future of an entire generation of (Jedi) children.

Now, I'm not saying that this makes a more psychological analysis of Padmé's character invalid or that this is the only role that she plays (for example, while Obi-Wan is the "good father figure" in ANH, he's clearly many different things across all the movies and clearly has an established characterization beyond that, and so does Padmé), but I think looking at it through this particular lens does make the choices made for her character less baffling and more indicative of the larger themes of the prequels.

[tanadrin]

What if the judicial safeguards are an important tool of consensus building and coordinating political action to prevent someone like Trump winning the presidency? Like I think laws and institutions and norms have a complicated backreaction with other kinds of political activity—in practice, a society with strong legal rules supporting democracy is probably going to find it easier to coordinate politics activity against authoritarianism than one without those rules, all else being equal.

@jadagul also the problem I have with the framing "the law requires disqualifying Trump but the law is bad" is, like

okay, the law should be interpreted consistently, right? And as a matter of policy it seems not bad to have a law saying that, in general terms, people who want to end constitutional government can't hold office under the constitution (though Congress has discretion to let them anyway)

which is why Congress (and the states) ratified the 14th amendment in the first place.

so we are left saying that either the original policy was bad (seems dubious to me, I'm a big fan of the rule of law) or that because he is uniquely popular the law is uniquely bad in the case of Trump, which seems like a complicated way of saying Trump should be excused from this law. and that's really bad, because then it means Trump is above the law!

but there is a political solution in Congress if there really is a strong democratic will to let Trump run: he can get excused by a two-thirds vote of both houses! so we could easily reverse the political problem and say to Trump supporters, hey, it's your job to convince a supermajority of the House and Senate to clear the guy.

and maybe you can say "oh but reconstruction was a different time, the law shouldn't have stayed on the books," but then the time to repeal it was any point since the 1870s.

it is reasonable to me that democratic systems put robust safeguards of many different kinds in place to protect democracy, and if those safeguards exist they ought to be used. otherwise you get systems like in authoritarian republics where the constitution makes lots of flowery guarantees that don't mean anything, because the judiciary isn't empowered to rule on any issue of consequence or wade into any issue where there is political disagreement.