I Study Guys Like Trump. There's a Reason They Keep Winning.

[Passages]

Last edited Fri Nov 8, 2024, 07:43 PM - Edit history (1)

By Ben Rhodes

November 8, 2024

Mr. Rhodes was deputy national security adviser under President Barack Obama.

In December 2019, I traveled to Hong Kong, where a heavy unease hung in the air. For months, young people had taken to the streets to protest the encroachment of the Chinese Communist Party on what was supposed to be a self-governing, democratic system. On walls they had scrawled: “Save Hong Kong! If we burn you burn with us!” All the protesters I spoke to knew their movement would fail; it was a last assertion of democratic identity before it was extinguished by a new order that saw democracy as the enemy within.

I met with a government official preparing to resign and told him I was writing a book about the rise of authoritarian nationalism. “The nationalism in the U.S. and Europe is somewhat different,” he told me. “Yours started with the financial crisis in 2008. That’s when liberalism started to lose its appeal, when people saw this wasn’t working. The narrative of liberalism and democracy collapsed. This spilled over into China, too. This is when China started to think — should we really follow a Western model?” We were sitting in a hotel lounge, the invisible forces he described surrounding us: capitalism, but not democracy; cultural elites cloistered away from the working class. “The nationalist movements in East and West were both a response to the collapse of the Western model,” he added.

Everything I’d experienced told me he was right. Eight years serving in the Obama White House after the financial crisis felt like swimming upstream, against the currents of global politics. A radicalized Republican Party rejected liberal democracy at home, mirroring far-right leaders like Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary who spoke about installing “illiberal democracy” (a polite term for “blood and soil” nationalism) across Europe. In Russia, Vladimir Putin set out to undermine — if not dismantle — the liberal order helmed by the United States. In China, Xi Jinping began to shift Beijing’s strategy from rising within that order to building a separate one, drained of democratic values. Barack Obama’s political skills and cultural appeal allowed him to navigate those currents, but they didn’t always transfer to other Democrats

SNIP
The playbook for transforming a democracy into a soft autocracy was clear: Win power with a populist message against elites. Redraw parliamentary districts. Change voting laws. Harass civil society. Pack courts with judges willing to support power grabs. Enrich cronies through corruption. Buy up newspapers and television stations and turn them into right-wing propaganda. Use social media to energize supporters. Wrap it up in an Us versus Them message: Us, the “real” Russians or Hungarians or Americans, against a rotating cast of Them: the migrants, the Muslims, the liberals, the gays, George Soros and on and on.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/08/opinion/republicans-democrats-trump.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare#

On edit.
This page exists in the archive.

https://archive.ph/

Here's the link.
https://archive.ph/31wj8
There is no paywall there.


Thank you to littlemisssmartypants.

[Orrex]

1. History shows how to deal with such dictators

[Passages]

2. Yes. FDR knew how.

[Dan]

3. Yes, he did....

After half of Europe was under German occupation.

After some of China was under Japanese occupation.

[ColinC]

4. And while throwing 120,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps?

[Passages]

6. History indicates he did well. Leaders today could learn:

FDR put much of the blame on what he called economic royalists who had managed to gain enormous power through what he called “concentration of control.” Does that sound familiar?

https://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/contributors/2018/09/05/fdrs-warning-concentrated-wealth-and-power-resonates-today/1200811002/

[LAS14]

12. And what, exactly, does history teach us? WWII? Nagasaki and Hiroshima? Who should we bomb? nt

[uponit7771]

5. "... turn them into right-wing propaganda..."

[misanthrope]

7. That playbook is neither new nor unknown

Its template has been used numerous times throughout history.

[Passages]

8. Yes. I don't believe he was suggesting it is new.

[misanthrope]

9. I couldn't read it because I'm not a subscriber

The excerpts posted led me to believe it was offered as a novel solution put together in the last few years.

[Passages]

11. I am sorry about that, all the paywalls now, so many

more each year.

[littlemissmartypants]

17. There's no excuse for a paywall.

This page exists in the archive.

https://archive.ph/

Here's the link.
https://archive.ph/31wj8
There is no paywall there.

[Passages]

20. Hey, you're great. Thank you very much.

[littlemissmartypants]

22. YW, Passages. ❤️

[underpants]

26. Thanks.

That’s freezing up on me after a few paragraphs.

No problem. I’ll try to run it through the archive.

[littlemissmartypants]

18. Link to the paywall free archive:

https://archive.ph/31wj8

Link to the archive for your use in the future. There are ways around pay walls. You don't have to be a subscriber anymore. Use this:

https://archive.ph/

❤️

[intrepidity]

32. But that archived page is not complete

Is it?

[littlemissmartypants]

33. If it's not...

I can be archived again.

For example, I found this copy that was archived three hours ago.

https://archive.ph/eoPps

You can also archive a link yourself with the other link. This one:

https://archive.ph/

Also here:

https://www.archivebuttons.com/

❤️

[yobrault1]

10. It's difficult to oppress an armed citizenry

so they will be coming for all them guns. Silver lining?

[LAS14]

13. How do we fight back against this particular piece of the scenario he lays out?

The playbook for transforming a democracy into a soft autocracy was clear: Win power with a populist message against elites.

[Passages]

14. You have an interesting thought. The US has how many armed militias?

If they should become alarmed by Trump, which seems unlikely, I imagine they become his new enemies.

[yobrault1]

15. When he comes for their arms and he will, that

will splinter their bro alliance at which point their mass circle jerk will take a “hard turn”. Pun intended.

[hadEnuf]

16. They will come for armed liberals first.

Then they will slowly include armed conservatives. Except for the useful idiots they will still need, of course.

[littlemissmartypants]

34. He'll have to get past...

The cold dead hands holding their gaming controls first.

[JoetheShow]

19. I found it without a paywall by googling the title.

Not sure if I can do this but let's give it a try:

https://dnyuz.com/2024/11/08/i-study-guys-like-trump-theres-a-reason-they-keep-winning/

It worked!!

[Passages]

21. I added it to the OP. Thank you.

[Ruby the Liberal]

23. Can anyone connect the dots on this for me?

Yours started with the financial crisis in 2008. That’s when liberalism started to lose its appeal, when people saw this wasn’t working.

I am not following this at all. Bush crashed the economy with lack of banking regulation, tax cuts for the rich and 2 wars financed on the national credit card. Obama's team brought us back from the brink of disaster.

How does that translate to liberalism "not working"??

[Passages]

24. He worked for Obama. He is not suggesting it was all on Obama.

He is saying that everything that has occurred that impacts the economy of the working class is a failure, and liberalism is used to define the Bush years..not separate from. Make sense?

Remember too, large swaths of people lost their homes and Obama's administration did not cause the problem but they did not save those homes for them while people like Jamie Dimon from Chase Bank paid no legal consequences.

There are so many pieces to this collapse, IMHO, we should not look to one piece, but collectively there was a failure(s) that led to an economic fragility which leaves room for a demagogue to take hold. For example, NAFTA hurt a great many people, and again, it's generally not one issue but over time it breeds distrust in how government functions for working people.

I posted from FDR in another OP. It sounds like today,
FDR
Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations – disappeared not because the people of those nations disliked democracy, but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion, government weakness, – weakness through lack of leadership in government. Finally, in desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope of getting something to eat. We in America know that our own democratic institutions can be preserved and made to work. But in order to preserve them we need to act together, to meet the problems of the Nation boldly, and to prove that the practical operation of democratic government is equal to the task of protecting the security of the people.

Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our Government to give employment to idle men. The people of America are in agreement in defending their liberties at any cost, and the first line of that defense lies in the protection of economic security. Your Government, seeking to protect democracy, must prove that Government is stronger than the forces of business depression.

History proves that dictatorships do not grow out of strong and successful governments but out of weak and helpless governments. If by democratic methods people get a government strong enough to protect them from fear and starvation, their democracy succeeds, but if they do not, they grow impatient. Therefore, the only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over its government.
https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/fireside-chat-on-the-recession/

[Ruby the Liberal]

25. Yes it does - thank you

The bank bailout (sans accountability) makes perfect sense. I was pretty pissed off about that myself. And yes, I remember Ben Rhodes - followed him on Twitter back in the day, which is why it confused me.

That actually ties into something my Mom shared. She lives in a retirement community and said that there were a lot of people carping about the student loan deal the past few months. Back when these folks were in college they weren't diploma mills (and costing $100k+ for that degree), but the underlying theme according to her was that they are about helping people in bad circumstances they had no control over. Not bailing out people for making "bad choices". I don't know how to unwind that.

So now they are going to see their tax dollars going into a privatized Social Security and Medicare - with certainty that the investors will be bailed out as needed - along with the lack of accountability for anyone in the cabal, and they are apparently just fine with that.

Okie doke. I guess this is who we are now. Or maybe always have been.

Thanks for the clarification.

[Passages]

27. Your Mom's opinion is not surprising to me. It is an

anecdotal look at how we all are susceptible to our experiences which then rightly or not, leave us with distrust in how the governing bodies do not protect its citizens most vulnerable.

College never needed to be off the charts crazy with tuition rates and leave our youth with a poor alternative. Go into debt or get an education? Desperation is a terrible state and so many will regret Trump. I do not blame the voters although I am shocked and horrified by their choice.

My deepest fear is that we do not address all the issues that led us here, so we can begin a solid way back without destroying each other.

Trump was always a marketer, always blaming the "other" so he could distract them from the real culprits, corporate control/monopolies over wages, benefits, etc.

[Ruby the Liberal]

29. Agreed - and just to clarify

She thankfully voted for Kamala. The story was relayed to me because she wanted help countering it when the opportunity arose.

[allegorical oracle]

30. As an old woman, I've learned that most changes occur from a "perfect storm" of

conditions. One of those, imo, is ignorance, as the final FDR quote alludes:

Therefore, the only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over its government.

Our population's education has been neglected insofar as history and civics goes. Combine that ignorance with social and right wing "legacy" media misinformation, and the result is a populace that is less capable of sorting truth from fiction.

[Passages]

31. Agree, it is a piece of how we got here. No doubt about it.

The Telecommunication Act of 1996 helped consolidate media and it was disastrous for democracy.

[Dem4life1234]

28. Yeah...voter suppression