Dictatorship By Any Other Name -- Tom Sullivan

[erronis]

https://digbysblog.net/2025/07/03/dictatorship-by-any-other-name/

Would smell as foul

Jonathan Chait’s old friend grew indignant when Chait referred to Donald Trump as an authoritarian. Trump had not cancelled elections or sent brownshirts into the street, etc., right?

No, but with his ICE goons, Trump bypasses any reluctance from Pentagon professionals about deploying troops against civilians. Since DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has tricked out ICE as soldiers, it’s like deploying soldiers without that bothersome Uniform Code of Military Justice or the restrictions of Posse Comitatus.

But I digress.

People like his friend, Chait writes,

… fail to see the administration’s slow-moving efforts to break down the norms and institutional barriers that otherwise inhibit the ruling party from asphyxiating its opposition. Political scientists who study democracy have a term that clarifies the phenomenon: democratic backsliding. Backslide far enough, and you end up in something called “competitive authoritarianism.”

We’d still have elections, but they’d be meaningless.

Chait cites six events from one day this week that suggest that the backslide is accelerating. They range from threatening to deport New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani because he doesn’t like him, to threatening to sue CNN over a story he doesn’t like, to musing about using his office to punish Elon Musk financially over their virtual slap fight.

. . .