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Hostility to democracy is literally the bedrock of the 20th century american federal government. We live in the nation Woodrow Wilson created: https://teachinga

Hostility to democracy is literally the bedrock of the 20th century american federal government. We live in the nation Woodrow Wilson created: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-study-of-administration-2/ https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-study-of-ad...

guelo 1y ago
The Great MAGA Cultural Revolution has shifted the overton window enough among right wing elite that anti democracy propaganda is now strong and spreading. But it's still our foundation, "we the people" and all that. If the right keeps pushing dictators I see a civil war in our future.
- rayiner 1y ago
  The MAGA cultural revolution fundamentally is an opposition to Wilsonianism and liberal universalism. That's why MAGA's authoritarian impulses are directed to the organs of Wilsonianism--such as executive agencies permanently captured by one party--rather than the public at large.
  - guelo 1y ago
    The deeply unpopular destruction of government institutions in 6 months that were built over decades by hundreds of laws passed by thousands of elected representatives is not democracy. It is a billionaire coup, they're blowing up all the safeguards that generations of Americans put in place to protect us from them.
    - rayiner 1y ago
      > destruction of government institutions in 6 months that were built over decades by hundreds of laws passed by thousands of elected representatives Republicans made the case to their voters that these institutions were permanently controlled by Democrats, and expressly promised to dismantle them. And Republicans won the Presidency and both houses of Congress. There's no principle of "democracy" that says changes to longstanding institutions must proceed slowly. In fact, the only thing that's preventing Trump from living up to even more of his campaign promises is the anti-democratic check of the filibuster. > billionaire coup Every objective analysis shows that the majority of billionaires supported Kamala Harris. She raised $1.65 billion against Trump's $1.05 billion: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-11-15/trump-harris-and-musk-how-money-did-and-didnt-affect-the-election https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-11-15/trump-har.... She went into the home stretch with a huge cash advantage over Trump: https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/21/politics/campaign-fundraising-harris-trump-cash https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/21/politics/campaign-fundraising.... This was the second time Trump won despite being outspent and swimming against the opposition of Wall Street.
      - guelo 1y ago
        > that these institutions were permanently controlled by Democrats the lies is what got us here
        rayiner 1y ago
        Not only is it true, it's not even debatable. 84% of federal employee campaign contributions went to Kamala Harris: https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/11/federal-employees-donate-42m-presidential-race-mostly-harris/400760/ https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/11/federal-employees-.... If you exclude DOD, it's like 90%. In State and Commerce, it was like 95%. To put that into context, replacing the federal workforce with random voters from AOC's district in New York City would double the percentage of Republicans! (https://nypost.com/2024/11/09/us-news/aocs-district-saw-massive-shift-to-trump-during-presidential-election/ https://nypost.com/2024/11/09/us-news/aocs-district-saw-mass...)
        keeda 1y ago
        From your first link: > Those donation totals may be explained, at least in part, by the former president’s policies related to those agencies. Trump has repeatedly vowed to eliminate Education if he is elected. He maintained an adversarial relationship with EPA, proposing in each of his annual budgets to decimate the agency’s spending and meddling in its scientific work. Trump instituted a longstanding hiring freeze at State and referred to it as “the Deep State” Department. Trump has also vowed to do away with a merit-based civil service for much of the federal workforce. "Employees at institutions being threatened to be dismantled by a presidential candidate do not support that candidate" does not prove what you think it proves. In fact, the same link says Trump got 40% of federal employee donations in 2020, which is much more balanced. Also donation amounts don't map to votes. From another link on the same site, https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2016/10/federal-employees-are-donating-almost-exclusively-hillary-clinton/132667/ https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2016/10/federal-employe... -- > The lopsided donations do not necessarily reflect how the federal workforce is voting. The former State Department secretary led the businessman by 5 percentage points among federal employees in a July poll by the Government Business Council, the research arm of Government Executive Media Group, with 42 percent of respondents saying they would vote for Clinton, compared to 37 percent who said the same for Trump. We'll need more substantial evidence to believe that these institutions are "permanently controlled by Democrats."
  - jacquesm 1y ago
    It is an opposition to reality. I had really hoped that by now you'd have seen that the things that you voted for and hoped to see come to pass are not the universal sweet that you thought they would be. But all I see is that every time more news about the disastrous political direction that USA has taken is that you shift your goalposts with it and declare that this too is what you wanted. As a dad of bi-racial kids I would be super worried that those chickens would come home to roost. These are not just paper games and plenty of people who thought their situation in the USA was a safe as houses - and who voted for Trump - have seen that assumption invalidated. But as they say: a conservative is a liberal with a daughter.
- ethbr1 1y ago
  I mean, the US did have literal nazis publicly espousing fascism in the US before Pearl Harbor. There have always been portions of the US electorate enamored with authoritarianism.
  - rayiner 1y ago
    I'd point out that, at the time American went to war against the Nazis, it was in the 3rd decade of an immigration policy so restrictive that the foreign-born population dropped from 15% in 1920 to under 5% by 1970. Even though Europe was utterly devastated from war in the post-war period, there was no mass immigration of europeans to the U.S. because of restrictive immigration laws. So yes, there were Nazis in the U.S. But modern liberals also would've called Eisenhower or FDR a Nazi.
    - palmfacehn 1y ago
      >Roosevelt himself called Mussolini “admirable” and professed that he was “deeply impressed by what he has accomplished.” The admiration was mutual. In a laudatory review of Roosevelt’s 1933 book Looking Forward, Mussolini wrote, “Reminiscent of Fascism is the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices.… Without question, the mood accompanying this sea change resembles that of Fascism.” The chief Nazi newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, repeatedly praised “Roosevelt’s adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies” and “the development toward an authoritarian state” based on the “demand that collective good be put before individual self-interest.” https://www.cato.org/commentary/hitler-mussolini-roosevelt# https://www.cato.org/commentary/hitler-mussolini-roosevelt#
      - upboundspiral 1y ago
        Now I haven't read the book "Looking Forward." If I can get my hands on a copy it promises to be an interesting read. But I would like to follow up on the other ideas presented. ‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’ - Winston Churchill Democracy for all its imperfections, is symbolic of the idea that the people give power to the government, and that it is the government's duty to give power back to the people. To me, this is exactly what Roosevelt did. Did the people not give money (taxes) and power (accept rule of law) to the government? Is it so bad for the government to return some of that money and power to the people through the New Deal? Is it so bad for the government to lay the foundations for the economic security of its people? Or at least attempt to? I don't care if a crazy person was supposedly "impressed" at what Roosevelt was doing, because they were attempting to reframe it in terms of their propaganda. From the quotes you can see how they are twisting the ideal of democracy "power to the people" to instead focus solely on power (to the government), and thus authoritarianism. To disregard that the government is a powerful institution is foolish, of course, as is to assume that it somehow will magically work toward the betterment of the people. But to disregard the extreme differences between the social contract in a democratic state and an authoritarian one is insane, and the article you posted, when read in its entirety, agrees.
woodrowbarlow 1y ago
hmm. i read the whole thing and i'm not sure the point you're making. in the first paper, Wilson points out: * it is better for government to own its own infrastructure than to depend on private business -- and if the government must depend on business, he stresses the government should be in a position to exert control over the business. * it is easier for a monarchy to initiate administrative efficiencies than a democracy, therefore great care must be taken to design administrative policies without inadvertently introducing popular sovereignty. and the rest mostly pontificates and the distinction between a bureaucrat and a legislator. care to connect the dots between this and a "hostility to democracy"?
- rayiner 1y ago
  It's in your own summary, in your own words: > * it is easier for a monarchy to initiate administrative efficiencies than a democracy, therefore great care must be taken to design administrative policies without inadvertently introducing popular sovereignty. Wilson believed in "scientific governance" over popular sovereignty. He was unpersuaded that America's diverse electorate could efficiently govern itself, so sought to institute an administrative state to manage the electorate. These paragraphs in Part I are revealing: "Even if we had clear insight into all the political past, and could form out of perfectly instructed heads a few steady, infallible, placidly wise maxims of government into which all sound political doctrine would be ultimately resolvable, would the country act on them? That is the question. The bulk of mankind is rigidly unphilosophical, and nowadays the bulk of mankind votes. A truth must become not only plain but also commonplace before it will be seen by the people who go to their work very early in the morning; and not to act upon it must involve great and pinching inconveniences before these same people will make up their minds to act upon it. And where is this unphilosophical bulk of mankind more multifarious in its composition than in the United States? To know the public mind of this country, one must know the mind, not of Americans of the older stocks only, but also of Irishmen, of Germans, of Negroes. In order to get a footing for new doctrine, one must influence minds cast in every mold of race, minds inheriting every bias of environment, warped by the histories of a score of different nations, warmed or chilled, closed or expanded by almost every climate of the globe." Wilson's ideology was an outgrowth of the political situation in which he found himself. He was a WASP in a political party dependent on massive numbers of Catholic immigrants for political viability. The administrative state was a way to maintain WASP control of the government while leveraging the votes of non-WASPs. That's something that has persisted to this day. Federal government agencies, particularly the intelligence agencies and foreign service, are the last bastion of WASP America.
NoGravitas 1y ago
I mean, it's also the bedrock of the Constitution as compared to the Articles of Confederation. Most of the "founding fathers" haaaaaaatttteeeedd democracy, equating it with Mob Rule.

guelo 1y ago

The Great MAGA Cultural Revolution has shifted the overton window enough among right wing elite that anti democracy propaganda is now strong and spreading. But it's still our foundation, "we the people" and all that. If the right keeps pushing dictators I see a civil war in our future.

rayiner 1y ago
The MAGA cultural revolution fundamentally is an opposition to Wilsonianism and liberal universalism. That's why MAGA's authoritarian impulses are directed to the organs of Wilsonianism--such as executive agencies permanently captured by one party--rather than the public at large.
- guelo 1y ago
  The deeply unpopular destruction of government institutions in 6 months that were built over decades by hundreds of laws passed by thousands of elected representatives is not democracy. It is a billionaire coup, they're blowing up all the safeguards that generations of Americans put in place to protect us from them.
  - rayiner 1y ago
    > destruction of government institutions in 6 months that were built over decades by hundreds of laws passed by thousands of elected representatives Republicans made the case to their voters that these institutions were permanently controlled by Democrats, and expressly promised to dismantle them. And Republicans won the Presidency and both houses of Congress. There's no principle of "democracy" that says changes to longstanding institutions must proceed slowly. In fact, the only thing that's preventing Trump from living up to even more of his campaign promises is the anti-democratic check of the filibuster. > billionaire coup Every objective analysis shows that the majority of billionaires supported Kamala Harris. She raised $1.65 billion against Trump's $1.05 billion: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-11-15/trump-harris-and-musk-how-money-did-and-didnt-affect-the-election https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-11-15/trump-har.... She went into the home stretch with a huge cash advantage over Trump: https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/21/politics/campaign-fundraising-harris-trump-cash https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/21/politics/campaign-fundraising.... This was the second time Trump won despite being outspent and swimming against the opposition of Wall Street.
    - guelo 1y ago
      > that these institutions were permanently controlled by Democrats the lies is what got us here
      - rayiner 1y ago
        Not only is it true, it's not even debatable. 84% of federal employee campaign contributions went to Kamala Harris: https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/11/federal-employees-donate-42m-presidential-race-mostly-harris/400760/ https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/11/federal-employees-.... If you exclude DOD, it's like 90%. In State and Commerce, it was like 95%. To put that into context, replacing the federal workforce with random voters from AOC's district in New York City would double the percentage of Republicans! (https://nypost.com/2024/11/09/us-news/aocs-district-saw-massive-shift-to-trump-during-presidential-election/ https://nypost.com/2024/11/09/us-news/aocs-district-saw-mass...)
        keeda 1y ago
        From your first link: > Those donation totals may be explained, at least in part, by the former president’s policies related to those agencies. Trump has repeatedly vowed to eliminate Education if he is elected. He maintained an adversarial relationship with EPA, proposing in each of his annual budgets to decimate the agency’s spending and meddling in its scientific work. Trump instituted a longstanding hiring freeze at State and referred to it as “the Deep State” Department. Trump has also vowed to do away with a merit-based civil service for much of the federal workforce. "Employees at institutions being threatened to be dismantled by a presidential candidate do not support that candidate" does not prove what you think it proves. In fact, the same link says Trump got 40% of federal employee donations in 2020, which is much more balanced. Also donation amounts don't map to votes. From another link on the same site, https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2016/10/federal-employees-are-donating-almost-exclusively-hillary-clinton/132667/ https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2016/10/federal-employe... -- > The lopsided donations do not necessarily reflect how the federal workforce is voting. The former State Department secretary led the businessman by 5 percentage points among federal employees in a July poll by the Government Business Council, the research arm of Government Executive Media Group, with 42 percent of respondents saying they would vote for Clinton, compared to 37 percent who said the same for Trump. We'll need more substantial evidence to believe that these institutions are "permanently controlled by Democrats."
- jacquesm 1y ago
  It is an opposition to reality. I had really hoped that by now you'd have seen that the things that you voted for and hoped to see come to pass are not the universal sweet that you thought they would be. But all I see is that every time more news about the disastrous political direction that USA has taken is that you shift your goalposts with it and declare that this too is what you wanted. As a dad of bi-racial kids I would be super worried that those chickens would come home to roost. These are not just paper games and plenty of people who thought their situation in the USA was a safe as houses - and who voted for Trump - have seen that assumption invalidated. But as they say: a conservative is a liberal with a daughter.
ethbr1 1y ago
I mean, the US did have literal nazis publicly espousing fascism in the US before Pearl Harbor. There have always been portions of the US electorate enamored with authoritarianism.
- rayiner 1y ago
  I'd point out that, at the time American went to war against the Nazis, it was in the 3rd decade of an immigration policy so restrictive that the foreign-born population dropped from 15% in 1920 to under 5% by 1970. Even though Europe was utterly devastated from war in the post-war period, there was no mass immigration of europeans to the U.S. because of restrictive immigration laws. So yes, there were Nazis in the U.S. But modern liberals also would've called Eisenhower or FDR a Nazi.
  - palmfacehn 1y ago
    >Roosevelt himself called Mussolini “admirable” and professed that he was “deeply impressed by what he has accomplished.” The admiration was mutual. In a laudatory review of Roosevelt’s 1933 book Looking Forward, Mussolini wrote, “Reminiscent of Fascism is the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices.… Without question, the mood accompanying this sea change resembles that of Fascism.” The chief Nazi newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, repeatedly praised “Roosevelt’s adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies” and “the development toward an authoritarian state” based on the “demand that collective good be put before individual self-interest.” https://www.cato.org/commentary/hitler-mussolini-roosevelt# https://www.cato.org/commentary/hitler-mussolini-roosevelt#
    - upboundspiral 1y ago
      Now I haven't read the book "Looking Forward." If I can get my hands on a copy it promises to be an interesting read. But I would like to follow up on the other ideas presented. ‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’ - Winston Churchill Democracy for all its imperfections, is symbolic of the idea that the people give power to the government, and that it is the government's duty to give power back to the people. To me, this is exactly what Roosevelt did. Did the people not give money (taxes) and power (accept rule of law) to the government? Is it so bad for the government to return some of that money and power to the people through the New Deal? Is it so bad for the government to lay the foundations for the economic security of its people? Or at least attempt to? I don't care if a crazy person was supposedly "impressed" at what Roosevelt was doing, because they were attempting to reframe it in terms of their propaganda. From the quotes you can see how they are twisting the ideal of democracy "power to the people" to instead focus solely on power (to the government), and thus authoritarianism. To disregard that the government is a powerful institution is foolish, of course, as is to assume that it somehow will magically work toward the betterment of the people. But to disregard the extreme differences between the social contract in a democratic state and an authoritarian one is insane, and the article you posted, when read in its entirety, agrees.

woodrowbarlow 1y ago

hmm. i read the whole thing and i'm not sure the point you're making. in the first paper, Wilson points out: * it is better for government to own its own infrastructure than to depend on private business -- and if the government must depend on business, he stresses the government should be in a position to exert control over the business. * it is easier for a monarchy to initiate administrative efficiencies than a democracy, therefore great care must be taken to design administrative policies without inadvertently introducing popular sovereignty. and the rest mostly pontificates and the distinction between a bureaucrat and a legislator. care to connect the dots between this and a "hostility to democracy"?

rayiner 1y ago
It's in your own summary, in your own words: > * it is easier for a monarchy to initiate administrative efficiencies than a democracy, therefore great care must be taken to design administrative policies without inadvertently introducing popular sovereignty. Wilson believed in "scientific governance" over popular sovereignty. He was unpersuaded that America's diverse electorate could efficiently govern itself, so sought to institute an administrative state to manage the electorate. These paragraphs in Part I are revealing: "Even if we had clear insight into all the political past, and could form out of perfectly instructed heads a few steady, infallible, placidly wise maxims of government into which all sound political doctrine would be ultimately resolvable, would the country act on them? That is the question. The bulk of mankind is rigidly unphilosophical, and nowadays the bulk of mankind votes. A truth must become not only plain but also commonplace before it will be seen by the people who go to their work very early in the morning; and not to act upon it must involve great and pinching inconveniences before these same people will make up their minds to act upon it. And where is this unphilosophical bulk of mankind more multifarious in its composition than in the United States? To know the public mind of this country, one must know the mind, not of Americans of the older stocks only, but also of Irishmen, of Germans, of Negroes. In order to get a footing for new doctrine, one must influence minds cast in every mold of race, minds inheriting every bias of environment, warped by the histories of a score of different nations, warmed or chilled, closed or expanded by almost every climate of the globe." Wilson's ideology was an outgrowth of the political situation in which he found himself. He was a WASP in a political party dependent on massive numbers of Catholic immigrants for political viability. The administrative state was a way to maintain WASP control of the government while leveraging the votes of non-WASPs. That's something that has persisted to this day. Federal government agencies, particularly the intelligence agencies and foreign service, are the last bastion of WASP America.

NoGravitas 1y ago

I mean, it's also the bedrock of the Constitution as compared to the Articles of Confederation. Most of the "founding fathers" haaaaaaatttteeeedd democracy, equating it with Mob Rule.