Slippery slope to the RightEconomist Thomas Piketty examining large data observes that wealth disparities almost inevitably increase over time. Political influence and media concentrates as well, so that decisions made by an ever smaller number of individuals drive politics to the right, and make bad decisions more likely. Government is only as good as the decisions it makes. Typical right wing country has a wealthy, powerful leader surrounded by oligarchs, no free press, criminalized dissent, a minority group to blame, criminalized political opponents, wins elections by acclaim, high security, bloated military ready for war to expand. They have the authoritarian playbook in common. Arguments in defense of the centralization of power and rising authoritarianism are always different, but the results are always the same: corruption, stagnation, dictatorship, repression, violence.” Gary Kasparov the worst kind of one-party state "invariably replaces all first-rate talent, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty." Hannah Arendt wrote in the 1940's. The American Crisis, What Went Wrong, How We Recover P150 All those heroic empire builders in history were the heads of authoritarian, right wing government. Their values are the problem. "Although they are rare in the population as a whole, malevolent, sadistic, or psychopathic actors may be disproportionately likely to gain political power. Many dictators have exhibited such traits aside from Putin, Assad, Mao and Hitler, including Genghis Khan, Saddam Hussein, Stalin, Mussolini, Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, Franscois Duvalier, Nicolae Ceausescu, Idi Amin, and Pol Pot. There is therefore high risk that malevolent people could have an outsize impact on the future." The Ukraine War was caused by yet another right wing sociopath, Putin, who will stop at nothing to expand his turf. Putin is destroying Ukraine, committing war crimes as bad as Hitler's. Because of right wing leaders, the doomsday clock stands at 90 seconds to midnight. Victor Orban, Jair Bolsonaro, Narenda Modi, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, or Donald Trump all blame an ethnic minority as a threat and promise to stand up to them. The U.S. has reached unprecedented levels of wealth inequality. Studies show that it is an oligopoly.When corporations control government, that is the dictionary definition of Fascism. The wealth gap is roughly as wide as it was more than a century ago when the Gilded Age led to massive disparities between rich and poor, the World Inequality Lab found. The study was coordinated by Piketty, an expert on inequality known for his book " Capital in the Twenty-First Century ," as well as fellow inequality experts Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman of the University of California at Berkeley.” the GOP is the farthest right major party in any developed democracy. To find analogues you have to look to splinter neo-fascist parties in the EU.” New York Times (6/2019) States rights propel a beggar thy neighbor, race to the bottom: competing for lowest taxes, worst labor laws, most stingy social programs, lax environment regulation, keep most people down. schools are privatized for discrimination, books banned, schools censored, guns everywhere, minority voting suppressed, gerrymandering assures that government is not representative. Wealth disparities soar with corporate welfare, tax cuts for the wealthy, and corruption, which kills democracy, but the GOP is fine with that. Republican States are poorer, more polluted, have stricter voting rights, looser gun laws, harsher abortion regulation, poorer healthcare, worse virus response, lower education levels, higher religiosity, right wing media, and worse right-wing government. They have much heavier voter influence in federal elections. The US Constitution specifies that States elect the President, not people, which is why we get leaders without the popular vote: the President, Senate, and consequently the Supreme Court, which big dark money packed with theocrats. When Evangelicals control government, that is theocracy. The most backward countries in the world are theocracies. GOP claims they don't like government, which explains why they are bad at it. When it comes to three of the most urgent crises we face — covid-19, global warming and gun violence — [Republicans] disdain prevention in favor of amelioration. In practice that means allowing these calamities to rage out of control — and then hoping for the best. Max Boot in the Washington Post (9/22/2021) In spite of public opinion, the GOP would take control by any means necessary including violent insurrection. I think it is fair to conclude that right wing government extracts wealth from the people leaving many in poverty, demonizes minorities resulting in human rights abuses, minimizes social supports, keeps people down, ratchets up security at the expense of civil liberties, indoctrinates through intervention in media and education, rigs elections to suppress democracy, devastates the environment for profit, gravitates toward authoritarianism and dictatorship, and continues humanities addiction to war. It is not about safety or well-being of people Democracy may be short lived, but while it lasts, it is better than authoritarianism. |