[FRIAM] Democracy in Name Only: endemic regime instability

[Steve Smith]

A Lefty "American Redoubt" eh?

Cascadia 
<https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2016/11/6_maps_that_show_what_us_would.html> 
vs Redoubt <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Redoubt>

NM's neighbor and abusive ex-spouse, TX seceded from the US power grid 
long ago (never joined) and this week may tell us what they learned from 
*last year's lesson" in inter-dependency and preparation.  Beto O'Rourke 
had a very snarky response to Abbot's claim (and self-contradiction) 
that he could guarantee that there would be no failures of the grid in 
the future (just unpredicted load-shed-events).   It was something about 
TX being the greatest energy producing region in the world, but refusing 
to spend the extra single-digit percentage to make it resilient to the 
kinds of weather events that are becoming more common (climate change?!).

Of course, in my little libertarian-utopian sovereign nation of one I am 
melting snow on my woodstove today because the measures *I* took against 
sub-freezing weather in my wellhouse were insufficient up to and 
including (apparently) triggering a failure in my 40 year old, now 
deprecated GE breaker for the pump.   I guess I'll be going to the 
big-box store (cuz the little box doesn't have enough variety and Jeff 
Bezos game never delivers sooner than next day) to buy a new subpanel as 
well as breakers/wiring (all made in China I suspect, because I want the 
*cheapest* viable option of course, I deserve it!) whilst grumbling 
about "planned obsolescence", "Chinese junk" and "Goddam 
Globalization".   If I could just get George Soros to task one of his 
space lasers (at low power) down my wellhouse and thaw everything out, 
I'd be in techno-utopian fat-city, neh?  Or I could just leave the 
breaker out and instead splice in a lower-guage bit of wire and call it 
a "fusable link".   The wellhouse is far from my house and is 
constructed of concrete block... so no big worries about fires?

On 2/4/22 10:02 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>
> As Omicron was ramping up Joy Reid said something along the lines of 
> “Is there a way to cut out a safe place to live these days [free from 
> all the anti-vaxxer crazies]?”
>
> That resonated with me.  I think that’s a plausible way how life could 
> be in ten years.   Some municipalities & companies, maybe some states, 
> will appeal to individuals that value, well, reason, and others will 
> not.   Then the exercise becomes one of which brands are in some sense 
> profitable.   This will of course deepen polarization, but over the 
> course of several generations the unprofitable approaches will die a 
> desperate and lonely and death.   Some of the woke brands won’t make 
> it, but neither will some of the reactionary brands.    It is not 
> clear what will happen to the federal government during this time, 
> perhaps the kind of oscillation the author imagines.   The trick will 
> be to insulate oneself from it until the political power of the 
> crazies is ground down by repeated failure and steadily decreasing 
> economic power.
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
> *Sent:* Friday, February 4, 2022 8:32 AM
> *To:* friam at redfish.com
> *Subject:* [FRIAM] Democracy in Name Only: endemic regime instability
>
> Someone here is more likely than I to have actually read Ziblatt and 
> Levitsky's How Democracies Die 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Democracies_Die#:~:text=How%20Democracies%20Die%20is%20a,process%20to%20increase%20their%20power.> 
>
>
> A recent article (behind a subscribe-wall) included the following quote:
>
> https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2022-01-20/americas-coming-age-instability
>
>     /America may no longer be safe for democracy, but it remains
>     inhospitable to autocracy./
>
>     /Rather than autocracy, the United States appears headed toward
>     endemic regime instability. /
>
>     /Such a scenario would be marked by frequent constitutional
>     crises, including contested or stolen elections and severe
>     conflict between presidents and Congress (such as impeachments and
>     executive efforts to bypass Congress), the judiciary (such as
>     efforts to purge or pack the courts), and state governments (such
>     as intense battles over voting rights and the administration of
>     elections). The United States would likely shift back and forth
>     between periods of dysfunctional democracy and periods of
>     competitive authoritarian rule during which incumbents abuse state
>     power, tolerate or encourage violent extremism, and tilt the
>     electoral playing field against their rivals./
>
> I found this characterization of our plight very compelling, if also 
> very disturbing.
>
> It seems as if we have "tumbled our gyros" but in a different mode 
> than the rhetoric about "Civil War" and "Descent into Autocracy" seem 
> to suggest.   It also characterizes a lot of the aspiring/limping 
> democracies we know of in the world today up to and including extreme 
> examples such as Russia which fits the DINO (democracy in name only) 
> label pretty well.
>
> This conception of the problem lead me to a very well written HS 
> student-essay by the same title: democracy-in-name-only 
> <https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/democracy-in-name-only-2020-01-02>.
>
> Within this essay was a poignant quote:
>
>
>     In the words of Alexis de Tocqueville,
>
>         /“A new science of politics is needed for a new world. This,
>         however, is what we think of least; launched in the middle of
>         a rapid stream, we obstinately fix our eyes on the ruins which
>         may still be descried upon the shore we have left, while the
>         current sweeps us along, and drives us backward toward the gulf.”/
>
>
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