Earlier quoted context omitted.
Conservatives want to increase the power of those government institutions that are the least accountable, and are most connected to the use of violence: the police and the military. They want to reduce the power of any government institutions that would serve to provide public accountability to other power centers in US society, mainly corporations and the wealthy. Corporations and the wealthy need police: to protect…
> Conservatives want to increase the power of those government institutions that are the least accountable, and are most connected to the use of violence: the police and the military. That's just not true. Conservatives want to balance the need for police to enforce the law with the risk that the police acquire too much power. Also, conservatives recognize far more correctly than the left that we need military streng…
With Biden, you need to watch the hands, not the mouth. Biden only proposes stuff that the left likes when he knows it won't pass — and he has a couple of thumbs on the scale (Manchin and Synema) to ensure that they don't. It's a matter of optics. On the eviction moratorium, for example, Biden knew he'd be overruled, and he knows that the Senate won't allow any extension by legislation to pass; all he actually did was get the actual leftists to stop camping out on the capitol steps. The Biden administration isn't practically governing to the right of the Obama administration, which was itself right wing. Look at the notable accomplishments of the Obama administration: a massive bail-out to investment banks, blocking socialized health care while enforcing/guaranteeing the revenue streams of private insurance companies, and maintaining the Global War On Terror, in part by ramping up the drone war.
On the other hand, if you consider health mandates authoritarian...I don't know that we have any common ground for speaking. If public health isn't a legitimate government concern, then probably nothing is.