This is a frightening scenario

[Yarco]

The military is already purging soldiers with far-right or anti-vax views. You've got generals talking about the dangers of "white rage" and transgender four-star admirals. There won't be enough supporters in high-ranking military positions to stage a Trump-backing coup by 2024.

Biden started removing Trump supporters from the National Guard when they were called into DC on January 6th, and the purge hasn't stopped since then. FBI has already been openly hostile to Trump for years, not sure about the CIA.

Edited January 5, 2022 by Yarco

[DocWatts]

It seems highly likely that the United States will backslide to a hybrid (meaning a mixed democratic / authoritarian) regime within the next ten or so years. Democracy will probably continue to function at the level of States and Cities, but on a federal level the substance of democracy will be eroded to the point that the US could no longer be considered to be a full democracy by most metrics. Following the template laid down by other hybrid regimes, the facade of democracy will be maintained for purposes of plausible deniability (ie people in Russia still vote), but structural and legal barriers will be erected to prevent challenging parties from having any realistic chance of winning future elections.

To analogize a bit, while it's possible for someone to walk on a tightrope for a few hours without plummeting to thier doom, it's not reasonable to expect that to happen every day for ten years without incident. Even if it's not in 2022 and 2024, at some point Republicans are going to have the Legislative majorities needed to facilitate the slow moving coup they've been working towards. 

The unfortunate truth is that anti-democratic structural elements within US institutions (such as the filibuster, and the undemocratic make up of the Supreme Court and Senate) are preventing the very reforms that could safeguard democracy long enough for democratization efforts to begin to address larger systemic reforms.

Of course a regime marked by the kind of corruption, incompetence, and cronyism of Trump and his contemporaries is ultimately unsustainable in a country like the US, and will burn itself out given enough time. Of course this will entail harm to millions of people in the course of this, and further delay any tangible action on existential threats such as Climate Change.

Of course this isn't inevitable so those of us opposed to this course of events should keep fighting, but we shouldn't downplay the gravity of what's at stake going forward. Also it's not as if a hybrid regime can't transition back to democracy as well.

Edited January 5, 2022 by DocWatts

[Space Lizard]

11 minutes ago, Yarco said:

The military is already purging soldiers with far-right or anti-vax views. You've got generals talking about the dangers of "white rage" and transgender four-star admirals. There won't be enough supporters in high-ranking military positions to stage a Trump-backing coup by 2024.

Biden started removing Trump supporters from the National Guard when they were called into DC on January 6th, and the purge hasn't stopped since then. FBI has already been openly hostile to Trump for years, not sure about the CIA.

The one thing DC "Deep Staters" are good at is not letting a crisis go to waste. When they see an opportunity to expand their power through fear propaganda, they take it. The post-9/11 "War on Terror" was a case in point--mostly fabricated hysteria that funneled massive amounts of power and money into their hands, which they never relinquished. They tried similar things vis-a-vis Trump and Russia for four years, promoting outright fabrications 24/7 in the media, but it wasn't very effective. Of course covid has been their main fear-power project for two years running, but it's running out of steam. And now they're trying to make this Jan 6 thing a domestic 9/11 -- i.e., media-fabricated hysteria as a pretext to grab more power. I know a lot of people on the right have wised up to this game, but I'm not sure about our "liberal" friends, who seem to lap up the media fear propaganda worse than the Fox News folks these days.

Edited January 5, 2022 by Space Lizard

[Hardkill]

2 hours ago, DocWatts said:

It seems highly likely that the United States will backslide to a hybrid (meaning a mixed democratic / authoritarian) regime within the next ten or so years. Democracy will probably continue to function at the level of States and Cities, but on a federal level the substance of democracy will be eroded to the point that the US could no longer be considered to be a full democracy by most metrics. Following the template laid down by other hybrid regimes, the facade of democracy will be maintained for purposes of plausible deniability (ie people in Russia still vote), but structural and legal barriers will be erected to prevent challenging parties from having any realistic chance of winning future elections.

To analogize a bit, while it's possible for someone to walk on a tightrope for a few hours without plummeting to thier doom, it's not reasonable to expect that to happen every day for ten years without incident. Even if it's not in 2022 and 2024, at some point Republicans are going to have the Legislative majorities needed to facilitate the slow moving coup they've been working towards. 

The unfortunate truth is that anti-democratic structural elements within US institutions (such as the filibuster, and the undemocratic make up of the Supreme Court and Senate) are preventing the very reforms that could safeguard democracy long enough for democratization efforts to begin to address larger systemic reforms.

Of course a regime marked by the kind of corruption, incompetence, and cronyism of Trump and his contemporaries is ultimately unsustainable in a country like the US, and will burn itself out given enough time. Of course this will entail harm to millions of people in the course of this, and further delay any tangible action on existential threats such as Climate Change.

Of course this isn't inevitable so those of us opposed to this course of events should keep fighting, but we shouldn't downplay the gravity of what's at stake going forward. Also it's not as if a hybrid regime can't transition back to democracy as well.

Well, right now the US has slid back from a full democracy to a flawed democracy.

So, I guess it's like Leo said, it's probably going to take many years for the country to heal from its democratic backsliding. 

[Fleetinglife]

4 hours ago, Space Lizard said:

"democracy", what they really mean is: "spreading our centralized systems of propaganda, finance, and law into your community or country so we have de facto control". And leaders who oppose this are called "dictators" and "populists"

No, no you got it backwards, those leaders actually call all that you mentioned above their version of their ''democracy'' when they themselves do the exact same thing, while they do a lot of projecting onto the West of an exaggerated and inflated version of these intentions as you described them and do a lot of diversions, distraction and calling out the supposed hypocrisy of the caricature they construct in their own closed minds around these countries own inner political systems to justify away their own inaction and interests in keeping their own version of this corrupt system and process in which it gets maintained and reproduced in their own country intact that allows them to maintain and hold overwhelming hegemonic power. 

For example, local communities here can't vote on local elections on who their representatives will be from their own, we can call them and they can be roughly translated and compared to the US political system, as being the same as, ''counties'', they choose from an already forwarded list of preselected candidates for that local self-governing municipality up to the national elections forwarded by the party they decide they are going to cast their vote for, nor on any party programs and later policies, nor do they have a say in the party machinery of bureaucracy who will be the party candidate/s for the national parliamentary elections representing their ''counties'' and presidential elections and nor can they choose different candidates from and for within that party if they wanted to, they can only be removed by the judged ineptitude and complaints arriving in the party higher-ups and leadership already holding state power seeking to safeguard and retain high public approval for the next elections so the people might not go and cast their vote for a different party.

Election and Electoral laws existing within the Constitution are severely outdated and inadequate for the current situation and time period here and are a safe haven for keeping corruption intact.

Edited January 5, 2022 by Fleetinglife

[Opo]

@Hardkill Y'all are more resilient than I thought. 

[Hardkill]

Some Canadians are now worried that not only will the right-wing may end up turning the US into an authoritarian country by 2030, but also there authoritarianism could end up spread even further north all the way up into Canada.

[BlueOak]

Authoritarianism will continue while liberalism is undermined internationally.

          Authoritarian
Socialist     +    Capitalist
              Liberal

With the backlash against identity politics. Many capitalists are still attacking liberals, and so moving the dynamic more to authoritarian. Which is not neccesary as China and Russia are rising powers with more authoritarian governments. So we have that dynamic adding to it too. We have the EU going through turmoil. We could well end up back to authoritarian states and all the internal violence and external posturing that brought.

*We could add environment to this model to make it 3D, as it should be a separate consideration and the most important of all. It would be smart for everyone to do so long term, as the importance of it naturally increases with its severity.

** Please also understand I use term liberal literally. Not the party, for parties in america its left, I believe in australia its right and the UK central.

Edited January 9, 2022 by BlueOak