Dems Become Everything We Were Told to Fear About Trump...

I just ran across this article at RealClearPolitics which is just chock full or irony, and while I agree with the author's observations, I must take issue with his title. There really is nothing new about "progressive" authoritarianism. It's been around since the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror in the 18th Century. Those of you who grew up during the Cold War are well familiar with the "progressive" authoritarianism that existed in the ideological gulags beyond the Iron and Bamboo Curtains. About the only thing that's new is it's emergence and prevalence here in the United States.

On the other hand, the author does speak of an interesting development that has occurred in recent years as the Democratic Party has abandoned its old alliance with the "deplorable" working class and formed a new one with what Joel Kotkin has described as the two upper classes of the new Neo-Feudal order:

"the clerisy, which dominates the upper part of the professional ranks, universities, media and culture, and a new aristocracy led by tech oligarchs with unprecedented wealth and growing control of information."

It's a VERY long article, but well worth the read, and here are a few choice selections:

This, of course, is something many of us have observed for quite some time, and it's interesting to see someone articulate it for us as well as Mr. Gutentag has done. Very nicely done.

In a nutshell, I think much of what we're seeing here is a result of the demise of the New Left. As Old Left "progressives" overrun the Democratic Party and purge the individualist elements from the New Left, all that remains is the Old - elitist, authoritarian and totalitarian - and this has been as unfortunate for our country as it has been inevitable.

 

Exactly right.

 

I know that we talk about the seemingly inherent evil in what progressives do and think. Two recent examples come to mind. First the HHS determining that minor children can without parental knowledge or consent, begin gender reassignment and "treatment" to include having mastectomies and castrations, use of puberty blockers, etc. The second was a bill that is currently being pushed in the Kalifornia state house that makes liability for or criminal responsibility for death post partem out to 6 weeks after birth for any cause non punishable or reviewable.

All in the name of "equity".. What BS is this? The horror of what democrats want and push these days... It's insane.

 

Strangely enough, when I read this passage quoted in the article above:

it reminded something that the late great liberal (in the Classical sense) Jean-François Revel noted in his final book Last Exit to Utopia: The Surivial of Socialism in a Post-Soviet Era:

 

This is a thread about liberals supposedly being authoritarian. Making sure parents have full control over their teens' bodies is now anti-authoritarian? Lol. The wisdom of doing something irreversible before age of consent is debatable, but the way it's being presented as an authoritarian policy is silly. Quite the opposite. It's conservatives who want to maximize control over peoples private bodies. I would be skeptical of the wisdom of a minor getting a mastectomy for gender dysphoria, but I would rather that decision be between that person and their healthcare providers than republican lawmakers. Each situation is unique.

 

Adornos warned about the danger of the authoritarian personality yoked to a Big Bad Government. Tis combination has always been the greatest threat to human survival.

A solid witness:

“The government - or rather, the party - controlled everything: the news media, arms, police, the armed forces, the judiciary system, communications, travel, all levels of education from kindergarten to universities, all cultural and religious institutions. Political indoctrination started at a very early age, and continued by means of the Hitler Youth with the ultimate goal of complete mind control. Children were exhorted in school to denounce even their own parents for derogatory remarks about Hitler or Nazi ideology. My own teenage cousin, for instance, threatened to denounce his father; and I was barely able to deter him by pointing out to him that he himself might end up destitute, if his father were arrested and incarcerated.

Organized resistance was practically impossible. One could not speak openly, even with close friends, never knowing whether they might not be Nazi spies or collaborators. So well organized was the control and surveillance by the party, that each city block had a party functionary assigned to spy on his neighbors. This "Blockwart" was ostensibly responsible for the well being of the residents of his city block, but in reality had to monitor, record and report on activities, conversations, and remarks of each person, as well as on their associations. Even the privacy of one's home was not assured: a tea cozy or pillows placed over the telephone were popular precautions against eavesdropping by bugging. Nor did one ever know what mail had been secretly opened.”
THE HISTORY PLACE, Memories of the White Rose, by George J. Wittenstein, M. D.
https://www.historyplace.com/pointsofview/white-rose1.htm

 

Hopefully that means Bye Bye to OAC.

 

So you think Covid-19 vaccines, wearing masks, closing schools and businesses needed to be strictly voluntary?

 

I suppose you don't understand the concept of age of majority then? No? Do you suppose children are then autonomous at the time of birth? Some progressives seem to believe in this. I honestly don't want any control over anyone else's body. I want them to obey the law. Murdering folks, grooming them, neglecting them? Those all seem to be laws progressives want. How about we make sure that folks who don't have actual legal standing because they aren't adults yet not make those choices for themselves? Seems there is something like a 40% regret leading to self harm statistic out there already. Are you aiming for that to go up?

 

Of course, the same thing happened in the "progressive" utopias that existed beyond the Iron and Bamboo Curtains...

 

You are half right. Both parties are just selling their own brand of overreach. Of course, the ability to control people is in direct proportion to the size and power of our government. Dems support a bigger, more powerful government and therefor beat the other party on authoritarianism.

The same people that claim to value a womans right to bodily autonomy when she wants an abortion change their tune when she refuses to consume a pharma product or protect her body from a rapist/killer with a gun.

If you support one, you support all.

 

Yeah, one of the things the pandemic exposed was the dumpster fire of phony pretenses. In some circles bodily autonomy begins and ends in a woman's uterus.

 

Only to you.

 

So you don't understand the concept of differences. Got it.

 

Very true. Both parties took turns being the pot and the kettle.

 

Understand? Yes. Agree with fully? No. In medieval times people were treated as adults by about 14, and even before then given responsibilities as they were able. The point isn't so much that medieval times were better so much as that 14 year olds are biologically capable of making their own decisions on average. Medical ethics had also recognized that a teens sexual health isn't something to be dictated by their parents. Part of this grew out of the fact that sometimes a parent or step parent is an abuser. But there's also the fact that they are capable of making their own choices and parents are meant to be trusted advisors, not dictators.

The law does not always deserve obedience. Unsure what murder you refer to. Maybe abortion. Grooming to be a transsexual is mostly a conservative myth. Most parents of these kids/teens wish their child didn't have gender dysphoria because things would be easier for everybody, especially the child.

Show a source. They could also regret not doing it and sexually maturing in a direction they don't want.

 

what happens during a pandemic, that even republicans declared a national emergency, does not mean one is supporting authoritarianism by requiring people to wear masks in public, Trump even declared himself a wartime President against the invisible enemy

and no one should support insurrectionist that violently take over the capital, regardless of party

 

So a bunch of Cold War boomers are being triggered into thinking “communism is evil and progressivism is communism!” again? Didn’t they learn anything from calling MLK Jr. a communist eh?

to that I say yeah I’m not surprised but still. Dems aren’t the ones who launched a coup attempt.

 

Authoritarian tyrants and their followers are like chameleons.
Red can become the new brown and vice versa with the flip of a salute.

"He declared a Day of National Labor and treated it as a day of unity between worker and the government. The main rally was held that evening at Tempelhof airfield where several hundred thousand workers and their leaders gathered to hear the Fuhrer expound on the dignity of labor and the need for national unity....when he finished the workers cheered as if he had promised them the world, and before they could emerge from the magic of his words they were singing the national hymn and the 'Horst Wessel Lied.'"

"The next morning the SA and SS, with the help of police, seized union offices throughout the nation. Labor leaders who had yesterday pledged allegiance to the government were arrested in their homes; union files and bank accounts were confiscated and labor newspapers shut down. Before nightfall organized labor in Germany was obliterated. But Hitler promised the workers that they would be better off than ever in the new German Labor Front and their rights would be fully protected. There was no uprising, no organized protest, and by the end of the month the vast army of workers was marching obediently behind the swastika. ***They had changed from red to brown without breaking step***." (emphasis is mine), John Toland, "Adolph Hitler", Anchor Books Doubleday NY 1992. p. 311,312.

 

AOC, like MTG is a national treasure.

"Ocasio-Cortez has squared off on Twitter against such varied media outlets as the New York Post, The Washington Post, Politico, the Hill newspaper, CBS News, Fox News and Glenn Beck's Blaze TV for statements she deemed offensive, inaccurate or just tone deaf."
WASHINGTON POST, When it comes to calling out the news media, Ocasio-Cortez has some things in common with Trump, BY Paul Farhi, February 13, 2019. (emphasis mine)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.cedfecb693ac

 

Kalifornia is pushing a bill that would allow mothers to simply neglect their newborn children for up to 6 weeks after birth as a definition of the application of the law in the bill. Yes, you read that correctly. So if you decide that the child doesn't deserve your time and effort to raise, you can abandon and neglect them to death. Another "progressive" helpful legal standard....

 

So you want children to be cared for by people who don't want to care for the child. Got it.

 

So you want chilled left in dumpsters to die, and not have the mothers charged. Got it. And no, I don't want children raised in crap environments. It begs credulity that someone who didn't want children can't manage enough self restraint, or personal responsibility to make choices like this that the state of California is now engineering into the social fabric. At what point do you suppose that the state should stop stepping in? If I took the flip side of that kind of mentality that you're espousing, would you agree that if the state simply decided that forced sterilization of said folks was appropriate? And if not, why? You're defending a state position that finds that the death of a child at the hands of neglect is ok... hmm...

 

How you gonna force sterilization, if we didn't even want to force vaccination?

 

Nope.