Overseas Elections Have Repudiated Right-wing Extremism. We Must Be Next.
Europe and Iran’s rescue from within didn’t just happen; it was a product of people consciously deciding to halt encroaching autocracy. We can too. We need to.
Four months.
That’s how long we have until the most critical election in modern American history, the outcome of which will determine whether we continue as an ever-evolving constitutionally limited democratic republic or descend into fascism.
The United States often regards itself as an outlier among other developed countries. But while we are “exceptional” in some ways, and other countries have different governmental structures and processes, we really aren’t all that different from other Western democracies in terms of what they want for their citizens. Our economic and military standing in the world as it is, being the world’s oldest constitutionally limited democratic republic puts us in the position of setting examples for other developed nations. Sometimes, though, our allies and those we may not be so allied with provide the examples for us.
What happened last week in Europe and Iran are a few of them.
In what was predicted to be a win for far-right fascist-leaning parties, France’s New Popular Front emerged from snap elections with 182 seats in the National Assembly. Now the largest bloc in the French parliament, it places incumbent President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition second and forces out the hard-right National Rally of Marine Le Pen.
The United Kingdom celebrated its independence day from decades of austerity-led government on our independence day from the United Kingdom.
On July fourth, the UK prime minister Rishi Sunak lost his seat to the Labour Party’s Keir Starmer, the first center-left party leader to win a national election since Tony Blair.
While leader of the hard-right Reform UK party, Nigel Farage, won a parliamentary seat, Starmer’s victory is a decisive repudiation of the policies perpetuating economic and social inequality for years.
Then, over to the Middle East, where voters in Iran elected cardiologist and former health minister Masoud Pezeshkian, a reformist who promises to challenge the country’s mandatory women’s hijab law, disband the morality police, and pursue better relations with the United States and other Western countries, hoping to get sanctions against Iran lifted.
Why does this matter over here?
Because the people voters choose to lead them not only send a message to those leaders; they also send messages to other countries about the directions those countries are ideologically heading.
In four months we too will be going to polls to send a message to the world about whom we want to lead us for the foreseeable future, not just the next four years. Who that individual is will affect the entire world. The UK, France, and Iran know this. They have vested interests in seeing the United States strengthen democracy, not see it descend into an authoritarian hellscape that would assuredly weaken their own governments.
Despite the positive outcome of staving off autocracy for the time being, the hard right is still on the ascendency all over the world. Europe is closer to war than it has ever been since 1945, and fascist ideology threatens democracy’s future here at home as the republican party is united against democracy.
President Biden commented after signing a $95 billion foreign aid bill in April:
For months, while MAGA Republicans were blocking aid, Ukraine has been running out of artillery shells and ammunition.
In February, a former FBI informant republicans held up as a witness in their quixotic mission to impeach President Biden turned out to be a Russian mole. Alexander Smirnov, the Oversight Committee’s “star witness,” lied to the FBI when he alleged Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each. Donald Trump appointed the federal prosecutor who debunked this claim.
Ohio Sen. and toady of convicted felon Trump stated in the Financial Times:
We owe it to our European partners to be honest: Americans want allies in Europe, not client states, and our generosity in Ukraine is coming to an end. Europeans should regard the conclusion of the war there as an imperative. And Europe should consider how exactly it is going to live with Russia when the war in Ukraine is over.
About Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán, Vance said, “I think he’s made smart decisions that we could learn from in the United States.”
Trump has been carrying water for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin for years. Trump spent his entire four years as president as a mouthpiece for Putin’s ultimate wish to destroy the international alliance that he sees as preventing him from re-creating the Soviet Union.
Trump’s elevation to the presidency was the outcome of a coordinated disinformation campaign that included insidious social media infiltration and exploiting internal political divisions.
While Vladimir Putin can’t communicate directly with the American people, the twice-impeached, four-times indicted former reality TV slumlord found criminally liable for rape and convicted on 34 counts of business fraud can and is, and MAGA members of Congress are complicit, actively working against American interests in favor of Putin’s.
NBC News reported in February:
Former President Donald Trump said Saturday he would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” if it attacked a NATO country that didn’t pay enough for defense. The comments will do little to ease concerns in Europe about U.S. dependability, with military aid that Ukraine desperately needs held up in Congress and the front-runner for the GOP nomination now reiterating his long-standing skepticism of America’s historical commitments to its allies.
The Republican party deigning to Trump’s every maniacal whim would likely have no problem using its well-funded right-wing hate media machine to justify going along with him. There would be some opposition, sure, but if the past four decades, and definitely the past seven years, are any indication, the bulwark between democracy and fascism that used to protect the United States is rapidly eroding.
The outcome of November’s election could mean nothing less than the United States being the next country to ditch democracy in favor of strong-man autocracy.
The blueprint for this is called “Project 2025,” and, according to its website, it proposes a goal to “rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left” by “build[ing] on four pillars that will, collectively, pave the way for an effective conservative Administration.” Its author, the Heritage Foundation’s Paul Dan, explains the process seeks to “roll back nothing less than 100 years of what they see as liberal encroachment on Washington.”
Whether or not Donald Trump ever sees the inside of the White House again, Project 2025’s “candidate-agnostic” goal is “to ensure that what remains of this slashed-down bureaucracy is reliably MAGA conservative.”
Apparently laid out during Trump’s tenure in the White House, the plan would require independent agencies, like the Federal Reserve and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to submit action proposals directly to the president himself “for review.”
Former Office of Management and Budget (OMB) head during the Trump administration, Russell Vought, told the Times:
What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them. It’s very hard to square the Fed’s independence with the Constitution.
In other words, if it isn’t in the Constitution, it’s perfectly fine to hand it off to the president to control it.
In 2022, Donald Trump returned to the Washington, DC to deliver a rant at the “America First Policy Institute” summit.
First, he called for concentration camps for the unhoused, in addition to the ones he established for migrants at the Southern border with Mexico.
Combining the human rights violations we committed against Native Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries and Japanese Americans during World War Two, Trump asserted the government should “remove” thousands of unhoused Americans and relocate them to tents on “large parcels of inexpensive land in the outer reaches of the cities” with “permanent bathrooms” and “medical professionals.”
Then, channeling his inner former Philippine president Roderigo Duterte, Trump suggested executing drug dealers.
He praised China’s undemocratic policies toward suspected criminals.
In addition to favoring a return to the racist “stop-and-frisk policies in cities,” Trump insisted that if he were still in office, he would override governors and mayors, and deploy the national guard to high-crime neighborhoods.
As Time magazine reported:
Every election is billed as a national turning point. This time that rings true. To supporters, the prospect of Trump 2.0, unconstrained and backed by a disciplined movement of true believers, offers revolutionary promise. To much of the rest of the nation and the world, it represents an alarming risk. A second Trump term could bring “the end of our democracy,” says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, “and the birth of a new kind of authoritarian presidential order.”
Should Trump or anyone aspiring to be like him ever again gain the levers of power, this is part of the road map toward autocracy we can expect.
It happens from within, and the machinations to accomplish it are already in motion. It’s happening on social media and in mainstream media.
And it’s happening in our courts.
The SCOTUS Just Bid Us “Happy Summer!”
Part one.
The SCOTUS Just Bid Us “Happy Summer!”
Part two.
The SCOTUS Just Bid Us “Happy Summer!”
Part three.
Let’s not “sleepwalk into dictatorship,” as former Republican House member Liz Cheney said recently.
Europe and Iran’s rescue from within didn’t just happen; it was a product of people consciously deciding to halt encroaching autocracy.
We can too. We need to. It’s going to require overwhelming numbers, but we can do it.
No more palaver about “Joe Biden’s age”.
No more taking our focus off the existential threat.
The fate of the world depends on it — literally.
Thank you, Ted!! You are spot-on!! Our turn is next and its up to everyone to put aside their personal grievances against the Democrats and vote with the understanding that if nothing else, abortion and gun safety which both affect our lives completely directly and daily will never be protected by the Republican party. And maybe throw in Climate Protection while we're at it. We all..ALL..must vote. If Europe can do it, so can we!!