By Free Republic | Created at 2024-11-16 03:57:51 | Updated at 2024-11-16 06:24:31
2 hours ago
This Is the Dark, Unspoken Promise of Trump’s Return
The New York Times ^ | Nov. 15, 2024, 5:04 a.m. ET | M. Gessen
Posted on 11/15/2024 7:52:27 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
For those bewildered by why so many Americans apparently voted against the values of liberal democracy, Balint Magyar has a useful formulation. “Liberal democracy,” he says, “offers moral constraints without problem-solving” — a lot of rules, not a lot of change — while “populism offers problem-solving without moral constraints.” Magyar, a scholar of autocracy, isn’t interested in calling Donald Trump a fascist. He sees the president-elect’s appeal in terms of something more primal: “Trump promises that you don’t have to think about other people.”
Around the world, populist autocrats have leveraged the thrilling power of that promise to transform their countries into vehicles for their own singular will. Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban vowed to restore a simpler, more orderly past, in which men were men and in charge. What they delivered was permission to abandon societal inhibitions, to amplify the grievances of one’s own group and heap hate on assorted others, particularly on groups that cannot speak up for themselves. Magyar calls this “morally unconstrained collective egoism.” Trump’s first term, and his actions in the four years since, tracked the early record of Putin and Orban in important ways. Looking closely at their trajectories, through the lens of Magyar’s theories, gives a chillingly clear sense of where Trump’s second term may lead.
I called Magyar to ask about this pattern in the late winter of 2021, when it became clear to me that Trump would run for re-election. Magyar is Hungarian, and has extensively studied the autocracy of Orban. Like Trump, Orban had been cast out of office (in 2002, in a vote his supporters said had been fraudulent); he didn’t regain power until eight years later...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
TOPICS: Humor
KEYWORDS: media; msm; newyorkslimes
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“Liberal democracy,” he says, “offers moral constraints without problem-solving” — a lot of rules, not a lot of change — while “populism offers problem-solving without moral constraints.”
B.S.
Populists believe in limited government of, by and for the people.
The opposite of populism is elitism.
Elitists (AKA Liberal Democrats) believe in unlimited government of, by and for an entitled, hereditary, autocratic political/bureaucratic class.
To: E. Pluribus Unum
Wow. More and more projection from the NYTs!
It is leftists who do not have and do not want moral constraints.
It is leftists who do not want to be constrained by "what was".
It is leftists who pile hate on others.
This goes so far opposite from reality it is beyond satire.
2 posted on 11/15/2024 7:56:13 PM PST by marktwain (The Republic is at risk. Resistance to the Democratic Party is Resistance to Tyranny. )
To: E. Pluribus Unum
3 posted on 11/15/2024 7:57:46 PM PST by Dick Bachert
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