After Trump's behavior this week, experts worry that 2020 could be our last free election

[swag]

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/trump-2020-election-roger-stone-tweets-barr-giuliani-ukraine-a9336601.html

I spoke to experts on authoritarian rule about Trump's behavior this week. They say 2020 could be our last free election

by Andrew Feinberg

excerpt:


. . ."The United States looks to be moving in the direction of Hungary or Poland, with the justice system starting to become a tool under the power of the executive branch that is being used for partisan ends," said Jason Stanley, a Yale University philosophy professor who studies authoritarian politics.

"Republicans have shown no interest in sharing power or having a multi-party democracy, they've shown no interest in the rule of law," he added, because a guiding concept of the Republican style of politics perfected by Trump is a wholesale rejection of the Democratic Party as a legitimate expression of voters' political will.

The way Republicans see it, he explained, the only real Americans are the ones who vote for them. It's a path Republicans have been on since 1990, when Newt Gingrich and GOP consultant Frank Luntz began teaching Republicans to describe Democrats as sick, corrupt, anti-American traitors whose every exercise of power is an abuse.

"It's one party rule, and one party rule is a form of authoritarianism. Trump is a symptom of that," he said. "We're so far beyond democratic practice when people are talking about purely partisan judges, and when the Justice Department is being run by the President of the United States, we're talking about a monarchy or something like it."

Another scholar of authoritarianism, New York University's Ruth Ben-Ghiat, said Trump's co-opting of the Justice Department is typical of a democracy falling under the control of a dictator.


. . . more

[2naSalit]

1. I've been thinking that since 2016....nt

[dchill]

2. I believe that was 2012.

[lapfog_1]

3. 2012 was our last "free" election...

or maybe even 1996.

I believe the Repukes have been cheating by numerous means every presidential election since then. It was only the miracle of Obama that got us 2008 and 2012, and then only by squeaking by instead of overwhelming majorities.

[PSPS]

5. Eisenhower was the last legitimately-elected republican president

Nixon, Ford, Reagan, both bushes and trump were installed due to treasonous behavior.

Nixon -- Back-channel deals with Hanoi
Ford -- Installed by nixon's resignation
Reagan -- Back-channel deals with the Iranians
HW Bush -- Willie Horton
W Bush -- Lost election but was installed by partisan supreme court
Trump -- Colluded with russia and partisan FBI, lost election, installed by electoral college

[Lord Ludd]

12. W Bush 2 (2004) -- Won with voter suppression by Ohio SecState nt

[CousinIT]

10. I agree.

Actually, I believe 2012 was our last free election. Eisenhower was the last legitimately elected Republican President. Since then, America's demographics changed, and GOP had to cheat to "win" each time since voters now largely don't favor them.

Election fraud, inviting foreign interference on their behalf, gerrymandering, Fascist and Russian-style active measure propaganda, and voter suppression are their favorite tools. GOP favors what it has always favored: white, wealthy, heterosexual, male minority rule.

They have been waging a war on our Republic to keep it in place since the 1960s.

When America elected a black President in spite of their efforts, they intensified them, resulting in Trump. GOP are hell bent that they will never allow America's demographics to change any further. This is what's behind keeping brown-skinned immigrants out and women in their place via reproductive control & economic oppression. Maintaining white male minority rule is the reason.

It's amazing how many people don't see this. They've waged this war against the diverse American populace, the voters and our Republic for decades. It's obvious what they're about. The black President scared them into escalating their war. Then we almost had a female POTUS. Republicans were horrified! That kicked their war machinery into high gear.

I believe this is the biggest reason (never mind the co-opted corporate-pwned media, financially devastated public education system, massive voter suppression & gerrymandering, deliberately planted 3rd party spoilers and uneducated ignorant voters hoodwinked by propaganda) we now have Trump - their savior: to protect white, wealthy, male minority rule.

It's why they don't care what he does or says. They're that desperate that they've hitched their rich white guy wagon to a Trump: A notoriously criminal, notoriously racist, notoriously rapist mobster; a drug-addled, narcissistic, money-laundering moron who looks like a rotting canteloupe and has a matching intellect; who got where he is by criminal activity and generations of training in how to get away with it, not because he's intelligent.

They're desperate. Trump could shoot a newborn on the White House lawn. So what? As long as he 'drains the swamp' of principled Democrats and judges, women with any principle or power whatsoever, ethical, principled brown-skinned people or those who fairly represent them; as long as Trump prevents white males from becoming a ruling minority and a demographic minority in America - by any means possible (like caging children indefinitely on our borders and committing any other human rights abuses necessary), he's their HE-RO.

They're DESPERATE.

The problem is, because nobody anywhere SAYS any of this (it should be pointed out by our Democrats in office, our Democratic candidates and our alleged "news" media every day - hell, Bloomberg could do some fantastic adverts about it) and as long as they are allowed to keep it hidden, they're WINNING their little war on our Republic.

What would happen if they were shamed on air, in print, on websites and by every other non-Republican in America daily about it? Well....they'd be on the defensive. Big-time. For a long time. They'd be called out. The national rug lifted on the albino cockroach infestation known as the Republican Party. Their ruse would be at long last exposed for what it IS - D E S P E R A T I O N.

Ohh Myy....

[Orrex]

4. When an entrenched, cancerous power elminates all legal, nonviolent mechanisms of accountability...

Then the people will find other mechanisms.

[Orrex]

11. It would be a hell of a thing to see it used for a good cause for once

Instead of for the enrichment of the gun industry.

[Jarqui]

6. Why do they think 2020 will be a free election?

If they have the power to stop a free election, why wait until after 2020 when they could secure their power by stopping 2020 from being a free election?

[calimary]

7. Sheesh...

[dalton99a]

9. Kick

[Blue_Tires]

13. Like I said

If Trump wants to be Caesar, then he should get a reminder of exactly how Caesar went out...

[lagomorph777]

14. We have to turn out like never before, to overcome the GOP cheating.