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I've been thinking about why some people are terrified of Trump while others, like me, are more indifferent. I mostly tune out Trump news because I assume much of it involves scare tactics or misleading framing by his detractors. When my wife brings up concerns about his supposedly authoritarian actions, my general response is that if what he's doing is illegal, the governmental process will handle it - and if it's legal, then that's how the system is supposed to work. I have faith that our institutions have the checks and balances to deal with any presidential overreach appropriately.
This reminded me of a mirror situation during 2020-2021 with the BLM movement, where our positions were reversed. I was deeply concerned about social media mobs pressuring corporations, governments, and individuals to conform under threat of job loss, boycotts, and riots, while my wife thought these social pressures were justified and would naturally self-correct if they went too far. The key difference I see is that the government has built-in checks and balances designed to prevent abuse of power, while social movements and mob pressure operate without those same institutional restraints. It seems like we each trust different institutional mechanisms, but I can't help but think that formal governmental processes with built-in restraints are more reliable than grassroots social pressure that operates without those same safeguards. Furthermore, the media seems incentivized to amplify fear about Trump but not about grassroots social movements - Trump generates clicks and outrage regardless of which side you're on, while criticizing social movements risks alienating the platforms' own user base and advertiser-friendly demographics.
Ok, let me steelman TDS. Note that this is a steelman again.
Hybrid regimes, authoritarianism, whatever you want to call it, operates off of public-private partnerships. Governments have lots and lots of leverage, to the point that they can essentially get their way by bullying private organizations. And we live in the post-state; like in medieval towns, powerful non-state organizations essentially share the governance of society. In our case it’s not so much thé medieval church and the guilds as it is powerful companies, universities, a few labor unions, and maybe some religious organizations and NGOS.
Trump appears to be the first Republican who realizes that exerting government pressure on these organizations can enact his agenda at second hand. And he’s much better at it than previous republicans; he got the deal shoved through with the top law firms, he got the teamsters to jump ship, he won over big tech, he’s going after universities.
But enacting your agenda second hand is, well, the other side of the coin of authoritarianism. Literally, thé definition of authoritarianism is when non-state actors cooperate with the government to shut down the democratic process(the government taking direct control is instead totalitarianism). Like when FDR did it.
Do I believe this? Not really, maybe I hope for it a bit. But do I understand the concern among liberal journalists? Yeah, although I point to their open hypocrisy if they expect me to have much sympathy. After all, taking control of the media secondhand is sine qua non of successful authoritarian takeovers. Trump has X and now meta, thé Washington post- it’s not like you can’t point to examples here. News media is just not a profitable enough business for it to be not owned by someone else who can be pressured by the government.
This to me reads like a steelman of moderate's and right winger's description of the Democrat party. This is exactly what the left and Democrats have done. Now they're getting a taste of their own medicine and half of them act like it is the most authoritarian thing they've seen in modern history. All they really see is the reckless nature in which Trump and crew try to pull it off, and I will definitely concede that part to the left; Trump and his people are not nearly as good at hiding their intentions or authoritarian tendencies. The primary difference is that the Democrats have been very successful at the "We're not doing the thing we're doing." for about 10-15 years. It's easy to pull that kind of thing off when nearly all Western mainstream media outlets will eloquently argue your position for you, and when you can completely ostracize other schools of thought by calling all of their believers "bigots." It has been incredibly successful. That is until the receipts started piling up.
I would argue that the primary difference is that Trump is evil. (From a left-wing perspective)
Left-wingers very rarely come out and say it, because it's a difficult thing to admit out loud, but one cannot have a sensible conversation about the "hypocritical" responses without taking morality into account. Left-wingers are not mysteriously unable to notice the Dems' underhanded tactics. Nor do they necessarily approve of them. But whether or not you approve, unethical shortcuts are much more forgivable when wielded towards mostly-good aims than when wielded towards evil aims. It's the difference between your properly corrupt cop who's covering for a gang boss in exchange for cash, and your archetypal cop-show "loose cannon" who ignores protocol & anti-entrapment laws in his quest to fuck the bastards back. They may violate exactly the same laws on paper, but one is obviously rotten, while the other should probably be tolerated. There's no hypocrisy here, just an underlying values difference which is rarely admitted to in plain English because "it's okay when our guys do it" sounds hypocritical.
I think you are brutally underestimating the power of media bubbles and the Two Screens hypothesis. My Republican father and Democrat mother dragged me into a discussion yesterday because dad was just astounded that mom had never heard a single rumbling that suggested that the Russia Collusion Incident might be flawed (much less a deliberate hoax).
My mother spends a great deal of time on social media mainlining Democrat narratives. When would she ever hear about an underhanded tactic from her own side?
This is just Russell's conjugation.
Not exactly. Russell's conjugation is a form of sheer hypocrisy - describing the same bad behavior differently based purely on whether you're unrelatedly biased in favor of the person who's doing it. Crucially, if you had perfect information about the facts of each case, and passed judgement under a Rawlsian veil of ignorance, you would regard the misdeeds as morally equivalent.
Whereas, in the case of Blues who are aware of Democratic wrongdoing (and granted, that isn't all of them; in the quoted sentence, "Left-wingers" implicitly referred to the kinds of left-wingers who argue about politics online, not to random normies) but largely ignore it while clutching pearls whenever Trump puts a foot wrong, I believe that they do sincerely believe Democrats' bad behavior is more excusable. They won't admit that to a political opponent mid-debate, but they'd defend it before God Himself with a clear conscience. "You're a murderous psycho, he saved an innocent victim's life" is not a Russell conjugation if you actually believe that A committed murder for personal gain while B was trying to save a third party.
Hence "He will stop at nothing to destroy Our Democracy, they took a few dubious shortcuts to try and save it", which I contend is subject to value disagreements and factual disputes, but not inherently an incoherent/hypocritical sentence.
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