A Voter in His 20s Gives Up on Liberal Democracy

[DemocratSinceBirth]

He supported Donald Trump on the theory that “his illiberal tendencies are actually a feature rather than a bug.”

Many Donald Trump supporters have generously taken time in recent days to explain what the president-elect would have to do to lose their support. So far, I’ve highlighted two emails that represent significant if opposing factions within the Trump coalition: an immigration restrictionist hoping for conservative Supreme Court appointments and a moderate who wants Trump to govern as a liberal-centrist. It will be tough, I think, for the president-elect to satisfy both of those factions.

Today I present an email from a different kind of Trump supporter. He represents a much smaller part of the Trump coalition. And yet, it is a part that depresses me, because my 20-something correspondent has given up on the American experiment. Lest you think I exaggerate, I’ll let him present his ideas in his own words.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/a-voter-in-his-twenties-gives-up-on-liberal-democracy/512525/

[frazzled]

1. Will I have any hair left to pull out over the next few years?

I mean really ... Viktor Orban as your most admired politician.

In the old days, we used to call the kind of thinking this man displays as nihilism. I don't know what they call it today, but it certainly seems to pass for normal.

(Back to hair pulling.)

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. He holds out Lee Kuan Yew and Vladimir Putin as models.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. No, it's fascism: "the masses ... need a strong leader to fight an elite"

"Rather than accept our system of design by committee, what is needed is a strong leader to clear away the policy kludges, rent seeking, and incompetence of the lobbyists and their pet legislators."

"The only way Trump can lose my loyalty is if he fails to fight the John McCains, Paul Ryans, Chuck Schumers and others on both the Corporate Right and Identity Politics Left who prefer fixed ideas and ideological navel gazing to national well being. If he takes them on, and can improve the living standards of most Americans, then he has my total support. The concern is not ideological consistency or respect for the rules.

Instead, my concerns will be very basic. Does he improve economic growth? Does he reduce crime? Reduce unemployment rates? Increase average incomes?"

Desire for a strong leader with a monopoly on power, defining "national well being" as economic and crime related, but fine with the leader having no respect for the 'rules' (ie laws) or consistency, as long as he gets this done. His wishes are exactly what Mussolini or Hitler supporters would have expressed.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

5. We want to be governed. They want to be ruled.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Good summary (nt)

[DemocratSinceBirth]

7. I am a liberal democrat before I am a Liberal Democrat.

Losing an election is always painful. Losing our way of life would be a catastrophe.

The comments section attached to this article is interesting.

[HassleCat]

3. I wonder about his reading list.

Ayn Rand should be on there. His social Darwinism is straight out of Atlas Shrugged.

[brush]

9. Yup, know-it-all-ism gone amuck in search of a dictator. Sophomoric

[HughBeaumont]

8. More Red Flags than a Norsefire rally.

I voted for Ron Paul in both 2008 and 2012. I used to define myself as a Libertarian, but have intellectually drifted away from it.

Trump is a messenger, however imperfect, of an alternative that offers real, serious solutions.

He instead pointed out, correctly, that the most successful nations since the end of the Crisis have been states which aren’t liberal, and often not even democracies. Models like China, Singapore, Turkey, or even Russia to an extent, have delivered far greater gains in living standards to their population since 2000.

Trump is not anti-democratic.

Yet looking at the economic ruins of Greece and the rest of Southern Europe, the pseudo-recovery in the US, and the lack of sensible ideas being put forward by the political center, I no longer believe that it is any different from Marxism Leninism – a system doomed by its own optimism in human nature and ideologically too rigid for real-world success.

"Boy, are you stupid, Charlie Brown."

[LonePirate]

10. Who the hell are these moderates who expected him to govern as a liberal-centrist?

There was zero evidence of that during the campaign. Where do people come up with these hard-brained beliefs?