We have the muscle to sustain opposition

My Sunday movie was I Like Movies, a Canadian production. It is the story of Lawrence, a high school senior who just loves movies, so much that he is in a film class and is making films with his best friend Matt. He wants to go to a New York film school. To pay for film school he gets a job in a video rental store. (Remember those? The movie is set in 2002, so it’s OK.) He’s also a teenager, rather self-centered, and has a lot of growing up to do. He lives with his mother and his father committed suicide a few years before. The one most helping him grow up is Alana, the store manager. She wonders if he brings up his dad’s death because he is still grieving or to get attention. Or maybe he says that because he doesn’t want to talk about more recent teenage angst. The acting is quite good, especially Isaiah Lehtinen who plays Lawrence and Romina D’Ugo who plays Alana. I enjoyed it, though this is one of those movies where I sometimes checked the time to see how much longer it would last. Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported Republican Rep. Byron Donalds of a deeply conservative Florida district held a town hall meeting. Knowing that previous Republican town halls have been disrupted by angry constituents and hearing that the agitators were from outside the district his staff screened attendees. They made sure attendees lived within the district. He still got booed. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Hamilton Nolan of his “How Things Work” Substack. Nolan wrote about President Ronald Reagan’s firing of 11,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981, his first year in office. This was a big flashing sign to corporate America that Reagan was on their side. This unshackled the union busting by corporations, leading to a collapse of labor’s strike power. “The bargaining power of workers decreased; union density fell; economic inequality rose.” The nasty guy has exceeded Reagan’s attacks on unions by an order of magnitude. Red state governors will copy his lead with their own public sector workers. Public sector unions could be decimated by the end of the nasty guy’s term. Down in the comments are many fine cartoons commemorating the death of Pope Francis. Robert Kennedy Jr., head of Health and Human Services, is known for pushing the benefits of raw milk. Because it isn’t pasteurized, raw milk may have pathogens and may be quite dangerous. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that Kennedy has “decommissioned” the lab that tests the sanitary standard of raw milk and other dairy products. Because of this and budget cuts the Food and Drug Administration can no longer do testing to verify the safety of raw milk. One begins to wonder if he is trying to make us all sick on purpose. Rob Schmitz of NPR discussed the authoritarian rule of Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary. Schmitz is guided by politician Akos Hadhazy. Orban in in his fourth consecutive term. Schmitz said:

In that time, he has dismantled democratic checks and balances, taking control of the country's media, civil society and universities, and consolidated power in himself and his Fidesz party. His step-by-step dismantling of Hungary's democracy is a point of fascination for political scientists around the world, including those advising the Trump administration. But Hadhazy says Orban is an easy read.

Orban isn’t a genius. He’s following the example of Putin. Schmitz then summarized the words of Peter Kreko, political scientist:

Kreko has mapped out the process Orban has taken to dismantle Hungary's democracy. Orban began, he says, by weakening Hungary's courts, filling them with loyalists. He then applied pressure on media companies, either turning them into state propaganda or putting them out of business. Then, says Kreko, Orban took control over universities, appointing leaders loyal to him. Kreko says Orban focused on ridding Hungary of any institution capable of checking his power. And he says he sees similarities to how President Donald Trump is carrying out his second term in office. The difference, says Kreko, is the pace at which Trump is operating.

Kreko added:

I think Trump went further in two months than Orban could in 15 years. The United States, it reminds me of a constitutional coup where everything happens very rapidly.

From my view the nasty guy’s takeover has taken much longer than two months. He captured the Supreme Court in his first term, more than five to eight years ago, and he had plenty of oligarch help to do it. During his first term he was much too inept to capture the government in a meaningful way. After that first term he had four years with lots of help – Project 2025 – to create a plan for his second term and to bend the Republican Party to his will. Parts of the plan have been executed rapidly – turning media companies into state propaganda, taking control of universities and law firms, and installing loyal leaders. But even that work is far from complete. Harvard refused his demands. There are media companies that do not churn out propaganda. Full takeover may be a lot less than Orban’s 15 years, but it has taken and will take much longer than two months. Schmitz said that Orban pushed through a ban on assemblies that “promote homosexuality” to “protect children” (yeah, that old lie). Which means the Budapest Pride Parade, one of Europe’s largest, is banned. This is a step in showing that Orban is taking the power to ban any peaceful protest against himself. Dave Davies, host of Fresh Air on NPR had a long (38 minute) discussion with Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard. A few years ago Levitsky and co-author Daniel Ziblatt published the book How Democracies Die. Levitsky was invited back to Fresh Air to discuss an article titled The Path to American Authoritarianism for the journal Foreign Affairs co authored with Lucan Way. I heard part of the discussion on the way home last night, which prompted me to find the whole thing. Davies begins with a quote from the article:

U.S. democracy will likely break down during the Second Trump administration in the sense that it will cease to meet standard criteria for a liberal democracy - full adult suffrage, free and fair elections, and broad protection of civil liberties.

Freedom House produces an annual freedom index, rating each country from zero for the most authoritarian to one hundred for the most democratic. The US tended to get a score in the low 90s, on par with other Western democracies. But by 2021 our score slipped to 83 and with the return of the nasty guy will likely go lower. Levitsky says the score dropped because of...

the rise in political violence, political threats, threats against politicians, refusal to accept the results of a democratic election in 2020, an effort to use violence to block a peaceful transfer of power.

Levitsky thinks the US may become what he calls “competitive authoritarianism.” The dictator got into power through a legal election, there is a Constitution, the opposition remains legal, and there are elections, but the opposition faces such big obstacles it can’t win. Gaining power through an election allows the despot to claim he isn’t authoritarian. Most 21st century autocracies – Venezuela, Turkey, and El Salvador – are like this. Levitsky talked about the weaponization of government, using the FBI and Department of Justice to investigate a political enemy. Even if the DOJ can’t prove crimes in court, they can damage the target through needing to spend a lot of money on lawyers, being distracted from or having to leave a job, or simply months to years of anguish and lost sleep. Governments can get private actors, particularly corporations, on their side. Government agencies that are supposed to be independent have a lot of power of businesses through government contracts and concessions, tax status, and anti-monopoly rulings. When these agencies lose their independence they can be used to induce a corporation to cooperate or punish them if they don’t. Key billionaires showed they will cooperate though million dollar gifts to the inauguration. Levitsky doubts the nasty guy can consolidate power in this term. He gives two reasons. The first is nasty guy’s approval rating is near 45%. A despot with an approval rating of 75% to 80% has a much higher chance and more to work with. The second reason is a despot can consolidate power in a country with a small private sector, fragmented opposition, and an underdeveloped civil society. The US has a large, wealthy, and diverse private sector (even with Bezos already giving his fealty). It has many well-organized foundations and civic groups with strong lawyers. The Democratic Party, with all its flaws, is still a potent force. Levitsky discussed the takeover attempt of his employer Harvard University. What the nasty guy wanted was the end of academic freedom. That’s incompatible with a democratic society and no democracy has ever permitted it. Universities are frequently one of the first targets of a despot. Levitsky was part of the campaign to make sure what happened to Columbia didn’t happen to Harvard. And when it happened the refusal offered energy and encouragement to other universities and a civil society waiting for a powerful actor to fight back. Republicans could easily stop a great deal of what the nasty guy is doing. Only a handful of Republicans would be enough to make that happen. But the party has been purged of the Liz Cheneys. Now it almost uniformly backs or acquiesces to an authoritarian figure, and there is no serious debate about the nasty guy’s authoritarianism. They watched him attempt a coup and still gave him the nomination, then fell in line to give him the cabinet he wanted. Levitsky said:

It's astounding to me how far mainstream Republicans are willing to go to avoid a conflict with Trump and how far they're willing to sacrifice democracy in order to preserve their jobs or their social standing.

The nasty guy is defying the Supreme Court in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. But there is enough of a gray area from both sides to claim compliance. If the Supreme Court really is concerned about Abrego Garcia and about compliance John Roberts and the court need to be clearer and more public in their language. The Court doesn’t want the confrontation. Openly undermining the executive branch can weaken the court a great deal (at a time when the legitimacy of the Court is already low). Levitsky did not anticipate Musk and the wreckage he would do. No other former democracies have had anything comparable to this concentration of economic, media, and political power. Amazing our regulations, politics, and checks and balances didn’t prevent the damage and corruption. Musk puzzles Levitsky. What is Musk’s goal? Breaking and downsizing government is going to hurt the MAGA base, which hurts the nasty guy. Is Musk working to install an authoritarian government with Musk as the partner ruler? Levitsky thinks we’ve already crossed the line away from democracy. In a democracy there should be no risk or cost to publicly opposing the government. Through threats to universities, law firms, and the medial we’ve already seen there is. People now must factor in that cost, though still mild, before opposing the regime. That’s in the short term. In the long term, we continue to have the organizational and financial muscle to sustain opposition.