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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   45549 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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I think this is misreading the use of "defeat of democracy" in the Trump context. The progressive mainstream has been nursing a narrative somewhat along the lines of "If he can get away with it, Trump will abolish voting and proclaim himself emperor"; if you believe that, you don't need to require any esoteric beliefs on the true meaning of democracy to consider him becoming president a defeat for it, as the standard definition of democracy seems to assign some implicit weight to future generations that makes "overwhelming majority (of those who can vote now) elects eternal dictatorship" not count as a democratic choice. Conversely, dictatorially imposing democratic election processes in the future (by installing the unpopular leader that is seen as for maintaining them) would count as a "victory for democracy" even if it is not itself a democratic process, in the same way in which driving Germany's democratically elected leader to suicide in 1945 seems to be widely accepted as a victory for democracy.

Moreover, progressives believe that this belief of theirs must be obviously true to proponents of Trump as well, i.e. that they would be explicitly voting for the abolition of democracy. Considering noises about turnout rates in various elections across the world, I dare say even a 15% turnout or 85% spoiled ballots would also be labelled a "defeat of democracy".

I agree that that seems to be the mental model of the most anti-Trump blue family and friends I have. To them, the enabling act was a few months away from 2016 through 2020, and then in January 2021 their fears were seemingly confirmed by Trump refusing to concede. It's a bad situation, because if Trump and/or DeSantis are elected in 2024, it will be with a democratic mandate to go to war with institutions like the FBI, IRS, ATF, CDC, etc and attack woke capital, especially big tech. In the mind of Republicans, this will be seen as restoring democracy from unelected officials and breaking up trusts. To the Trump-fearing, it will look like a dictatorial purge. The institutions being attacked by Trump/DeSantis will obviously play this up in the media for their own self-interest.

The progressive mainstream has been nursing a narrative somewhat along the lines of "If he can get away with it, Trump will abolish voting and proclaim himself emperor"

People being able to modify their perception of the world so drastically away from the truth, that they perceive Trump as being likely to abolish voting, poses the same problem as utility monsters: giving into their preferences and interpreterting them charitably starts an arms race spiral of everyone trying to radicalize themselves.

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