President Donald Trump, in a typically fiery and furious moment./Image Credit: Depositphotos Licensed stock.
We know what you’re thinking, dear Spread Your Right Wings (SYRW) readers: His Donaldness, who we’ll see is an awesome authoritarian, doesn’t read–a fact he states with characteristically misplaced pride–and this is our weekly Readings column. Why should you, our, uh, readers, have to read, if he doesn’t? Wel, don’t worry. We only have to read in order to confirm our biases and reinforce what we already think we know, like good conservatives. And that feels good–even fun! And, let’s call it is like Tomi Lahren, reading SYRW is sort of like reading an advanced version of the back of the Cocoa Pebbles box.
This week, we want to make you aware of-super-quickly so you can get back to dousing that wooden cross on your front lawn in kerosene–an article–see: lots of times we don’t insult your intelligence by saying you need to read a book! How rude would that be, implying you don’t already know everything! This article we want to bring your short-attention to appeared in the Fake-News-except-when-it’s-something-we-want-to-believe media, specifically The New York Times. It’s by Nikolas Kirstof.
The author examines a soon-to-be-released…well, book. Sorry, SYRW readers. But you don’t have to read the book itself to actually increase the amount of accurate information in your head! You just need to take in what we’re saying about it. Easy peasy!
Donald as Dictator
In his article, Kristof writers: “Two political scientists specializing in how democracies decay and die have compiled four warning signs to determine if a political leader is a dangerous authoritarian: 1. The leader shows only a weak commitment to democratic rules. 2. He or she denies the legitimacy of opponents. 3. He or she tolerates violence. 4. He or she shows some willingness to curb civil liberties or the media.”
Related: We review Capitalism for Dummeez.
Kristof goes on to say that the authors of How Democracies Die, Stephen Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, political scientists who study government unlike the Alex Joneses or Rush Limbaughs of the world, posit that a leader who meets even one of these criteria should trouble those who value democracy., freedom, and the rule of law. Donald Trump, of course, meets every one.
Well, a big Donald Duh to that, Kristof, you cosmopolitan elitist! Here’s what the liberals don’t seem to get. While we right-wingers love to call America “the greatest country in the world,” vilify Colin Kaepernick for taking a knee because it’s supposedly disrespectful to our nation, take every chance we get to be all rah-rah-U.S.A., we don’t actually know anything about U.S. democracy or even give a shit-hole-country to find out. If we had been Canadian, say, by the accident of birth, we’d be spouting jingoistic nonsense about the Land of the Maple Leaf.
Let’s just briefly look at that fourfold authoritarian framework in terms of Donald.
Treason and Tyranny
1. Trump actively picks away at any and all democratic rules that took hundreds of years to refine and solidify as it suits his mercurial, self-serving agenda. Comey’s not taking an oath of loyalty–he’s out. Protocol is for public servants who care about the nation and people they serve–to hell with that!
“I’m the only one that matters,” said Trump in a widely quoted bost, this time by NPR. Well, that’s the motto of authoritarians around the world!
All we know is this: Donald had a successful: T.V. show! He’s loud, obnoxious, indecorous, and a womanizer. He seems to us the antithesis of Obama-style effete snowflake liberalism. He speaks our angry, in-your-face language, with a machismo we can relate and aspire to–especially because so little as a breeze can reduce it to a temper tantrum, like ours. We like it. We’ll gladly join him in destroying this country we claim to love. If we can’t have the biggest piece of the pie, no one’s going to have any. So, we’ll join Donald in burning it all down with his empty “fire and fury,” as author Michael Wolff put it. We’ll cheer as he lights a match and gaslights the Constitution and our country’s democratic institutions. We will–we are–standing on the sidelines hooting and hollering like idiots at our own funeral. We know we’re in deep trouble as a people, so let’s speed up and then enjoy our own undoing.
First, we elected a know-nothing who knows nothing about “his base”–i.e., us–and now comes the good part. He takes over, completely and unconditionally. It feels good. It feels good to have Daddy Donald tell us it’s all going to be okay. Life is getting too scary, so we put an oddly comforting man in charge. He’s a tall, loud, bombastic frat boy douchebag–a persona that’s familiar and crassly appealing. It’s going to be okay now.
Related: See inspiring design ideas for the prison cells Trump and his admin maybe headed to!
2. Donald is still harping on the illegitimacy of the votes cast in Hilary’s favor, and he continues accusing Obama of all manner of nefarious and wrongheaded moves. It’s not enough that he won the electoral college vote. No! He must smite his enemies now that he has the power to do so, like God. Like an authoritarian.
When he saw Comey to be a public servant with loyalty to his office instead of His Orangeness, he’d had enough of him. You serve The Donald, or you serve no one.
His political alliances shift on a daily basis, based, as they are, based on legislative expediency, not ideological steadfastness. One day Paul Ryan is his best friend, the next day Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are. The next day–who knows! He’ll see what the situation requires. All he wants are good “ratings” and the perception that his consolidation of power in him, not even his administration, gets things done. It should inspire awe, he believes.
And the problem with this is, Mr. Kristof..? We don’t see any. In fact, we like it. It’s a sport. Let’s go, let’s fight, let’s win! There can only be one victor, and it’s going to be Trump. If he has to deflate a couple footballs along the way, that’s fine by us. As long as he doesn’t take a knee, indicative as it is of a sober thoughtfulness. Then we’d perform mental gymnastics that would make Simone Biles swoon, to explain why it’s logically consistent that he did so–just because he’s our leader, our deified guide through the messy realities of life in 2018. We’ll always stand by him.
3. Donald hearts violence. When he and Melania divorce, maybe he’ll marry it.
He encouraged rally-goers during his campaign to assault counter-protestors, still leads chants of, “Lock her up,” and Tweeted an image of himself brutally tackling a human embodiment of CNN.
His obsequious lapdog, Sarah Huckabee Sanders noted, “When someone hits him, he hits back ten times harder.” We never thought we’d hear such dignified, developmentally-appropriate talk from the White House. Hooray!
4. President Trump rails against the media almost as frequently as he plays golf poorly in Bedminster. See just one example of this in an article on The Hill.
He coined the term Fake News and now uses it to label any news that doesn’t paint him in the rosiest light possible. He’s gone as far as calling the media, “The enemy of the American people,” reported the New York Times.
He’s spoken of his desire to see journalists jailed for publishing articles based on leaky sources. Wow–ballsy! He’s our alpha and we’re his proud boot-lickers.
Tyrannical leader? Check. The downfall of U.S. democracy? Check. Authoritarianism achieved!
All Right to Be Authoritarian
Did we say “all right,” dear readers? We meant preferable. We’d stand for nothing else. We’d bend over for nothing else, rather.
Also: You must visit these eateries that have popped up in D.C. since Trump took office!
Kristof’s recounts in his article that authoritarians take over these days in what we’ll call “soft coups.” There aren’t necessarily violent overthrows or bloody massacres. The authoritarian-to-be comes to power ostensibly fairy elected, then joins the political cronies he or she installs in his administration in a piece-by-piece dismantling of democracy. What took hundreds of years to establish will take just a couple to destroy.
And that’s just we red-state-ers were hoping for when we and Russia helped Donald Trump rise to power. We hate to say this, but like one of our idols here at SYRW, Tomi Lahren, says, we call it like it is. Ultimately, Don Don is just a figurehead in the cultural game of chess we’re playing. We’ve got the upper hand. We, the Deplorables, the Alt-right, the marginalized cis-gender straight whites, are one, big monolithic authoritarian, but we’ll leave up to our figurehead to deliver on his authoritarian promises. So far he seems to be.
Until next week, Anti-Readers, don’t look at any text but that which we tell you to look at!
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© 2018 Akbar Khan
