President Donald Trump

Scandinavia are a collection of social democracies. While their "labor party"-equivalents have a history of ties to communism and the Cominterm, and were fairly socialist in nature, this pretty much changed during WW2 and the post-war period. During this time they pretty much all went full bore social democracy and aligned with the US instead of the Soviet Union.

Historically speaking, social democracy is one of the ideologies that communist parties have fought the hardest, especially Marxist-Leninists.

What currently stops the poor people (say the bottom 90%) voting to take away all the money away from the rich people (say the top 10%)? Whatever mechanism currently prevents that can also prevent your scenario, surely?

Soviets begged the West for help in those years and really one of the only people to take them seriously was Churchill of all people.

So they did the smart thing which was negotiate a temporary peace while they built their industry and army after the detrimental wars and backwards tsarist era.

They were already on pace to win before large amounts of material arrived.

Cruz proving once again that he knows nothing about anything and just collects checks. MAGA in tears over their beloved Carlson shredding one of their own.

That interview was hilarious

It’s sort of a complicated question because we have lots of data showing what concentrating power into an elite class does and relatively less data on the ability of a largely unrestricted franchise to maintain societal cohesion.

I would just kind of say that there have been many cases where larger franchises have been correlated with more socially and economically left-wing societies, namely the gains of Western societies throughout the 20th century when it comes to wealth redistribution and social programs. The trouble is whether those gains can actually be maintained across any period of time.

But I suspect the complete liquidation of the top 10% can rarely happen with the consent of the 90%, because the 90% can’t really agree on what that would look like. Communist societies usually involve violent revolutions and the forceful taking of state power by a minority, not broad societal agreement on social programs.

Then there’s also the general protections of minority interests afforded by the constitution which will just be a point in both our directions since some of those protect property and create societal inertia and some of those widen the franchise.

Carlson is 100x core Maga than Cruz, how is this even controversial as a claim??

Seems a better idea to make it necessary for candidates to sit these tests and set a threshold they have to pass.

I'll be honest, prior to 2016 it had never even occurred to me that a complete imbecile who would likely fail the sort of basic tests I am envisioning here could ever garner enough votes to be elected to an office of any importance. This assumption was, of course, shown to be very, very wrong.

Using a strong selection mandatory filter only on candidates looks better on paper, but afaik no countries tried it yet.

In the USA you can even become a federal judge with absolutely no legal knowledge, there is no explicit requirement.

In theory filtering candidates should be easier to sell politically (removing the vote from people will hardly be possible), even if it might require changing the constitution in many countries.

But i have a feeling it would be gamed anyway. At the end you will have a "commission" or some equivalent entity certifying those tests, and deciding the details, and that commission will be politically controlled, and it will have a lot of power to simply remove candidates it dislikes. It can become a source of totalitarian risk, a tool for whomever takes power to cut off the opposition legally.

You see that happening in France with Le Pen losing the possibility to run because of a court decision. As much as you can detest Le Pen, you should remember that's what happens in Russia when Putin doesn't want a candidate to run as well.

Institutions should be judged by how they work under pressure, under massive stress, how they work when the most evil, cunning bastards occupy them, not on how they work when decent people sit on the thrones, because most institutions will work decently well with good people occupying them.

Sarah Pallin run as VP for republicans in 2008. She was previously the governor of a state.

It will never have occured to people that this may result in a bible/creationist/etc knowledge test

I pointed this out at the time and was told the fact she lost proved the system worked fine.

Idiots all the way down

It's hardly a new thing

That is a danger in America and some other countries. I was thinking more generally.

Back in 2008 this forum was still 100% checks and balances will always prevent an authoritarian/fascist president from having their way.

That's still the case today. Nothing Trump did which courts let happen is even remotely as fascist as the patriot act or the internment of american of japanese ethnicity was.

A lot of what you guys call "authoritarian" is legal in the USA though.

Will you get ****ed with this moronic, disingenuous **** already?

You think that because something is technically "legal" it's ipso facto not authoritarian? President uses emergency powers under the constitution to suspend most basic rights and elections and declare martial law and himself king for life? All legal, nothing to see here guys, move along.

I have no idea where you got this dumb**** idea that "legal" and "authoritarian" are antonyms, anyway. Pretty sure you just made it up and hoped noboy would notice, like most of the crap you post here.

Shhhhhhhhhh!!

I think the point is that America was pretty much always authoritarian even if Trump is a d bag and arguably trying to make it even more so. The Patriot act is indeed more authoritarian than anything Trump has tried. He's gone in four years anyway regardless of how melodramatic some Americans get on the issue and no he can't pull a Putin and make himself leader for life. I firmly believe freedom is sacrosanct for the American people and I don't believe they'll put up with that for a second once his term is up. Assuming he doesn't croak it in the meantime he's 79 after all.

Don't get too angry about semantic. I can be ok with your definitions if you define it in non-ambigous ways. Fact is that fascism is inherently illegal (mass censorship, arrests of the opposition and so on).

Authoritarianism the way you define it (if it includes legal stuff) is just something that is perfectly compatible with democracy and you can dislike it as much as i want (same as i dislike high taxes) but you cannot claim it threaten democracy in any way. At least not the legal part.

And you can't put in nearby fascism as if it was close to fascism. If it is legal it is not close to fascism.

The constitution in the USA does not allow elections to be suspended. It does not allow emergency powers to make presidential terms "for life". It does not allow the suspension of all rights, only a few of them.

Not sure why you use examples of *illegal, unconstitutional activities* and then say "all legal".

If a country constitution allows those things, then that is a problem for that country and the constitution should be amended not to allow those things ever. Having clearcut, unambigous, strict limits to what "emergency powers" allow seems like one of the most important parts of a constitution, given how easy otherwise it is to abuse them right?

And it was Trump who ended it, by threatening to veto the latest iteration of the patriot act in 2020. Neither party felt too strongly about having a fight over it, so they let it run out.

So Trump actually ended the most fascist abuse of power in the USA in the last decades.

Ofc the media couldn't acknowledge Trump took one of the most pro-freedom, pro democracy, anti-fascist decisions a president did in decades, it had to find a nefarious motive, but still, they did report on it at the time

https://www.businessinsider.com/house-cancels-vote-fisa-patriot-act-bill-trump-veto-2020-5

Business Insider

The House just ditched a bill that would renew and expand the FBI's surveillance powers after Trump threatened to veto it

The House of Representatives just canceled a vote on a controversial bill that would have renewed the Patriot Act and expanded the FBI's surveillance powers after President Donald Trump said he'd veto it.
The bill drew backlash last week from progressives and civil liberties groups, who warned it would let the FBI conduct warrantless searches of Americans' web-browsing history.
But Trump opposes the bill for another reason: He believes it gives the Justice Department too much power when investigating political candidates, like the FBI probe into his campaign's alleged ties to Russia.

So many words just to say: "I love Trump and I love fascism!"

Not sure if the Patriot act is scrapped entirely I think some aspects of it still remain