The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide

There is the theoretical understanding, and then there is how it meshes with reality.

The theoretical understanding is that we are in an ideological war. If you strip away all the nuance and ask for a high level understanding of what is happening right now, that is happening right now.

When meshed into reality it is a bit more complicated... neither side of our government is on the side of democracy. One is straight fascist, the other is in favor of a corporate state or oligarchy. Both party's power primarily comes from news media (oligarch owned) and from legalized bribery (the richest have the most power), so neither can challenge oligarchic power, because oligarchic power is where their power comes from. The fascist party is currently in the process of giving themselves power by replacing enforcement institutions with loyalists. Once all the people who enforce the law are loyalists, they can decide what the law is, and then it's no longer people with money who have all the power, but people the enforcers of "law" are loyal to.

Neither party can fight oligarchy because to fight oligarchy is to disempower themselves. Bernie and AOC might be the only exceptions.

SCOTUS said the money could not be frozen, but I don't think they put a deadline on when it had to be paid out. So it's not over.

The VP and Musk have both written recently about how the judiciary can't tell the executive branch what to do. I think Vance called it illegal. Regardless, law is meaningless if no one will enforce it.

You might be meaning something smart and good or something not so smart and good, but I only realized on my second reading.

What I mean is there is absolutely room somewhere between the current situation (examples from Norway) where:

- every road end up costing more than in comparable countries because no decision is final and everyone has a say

- school problems because teachers are not allowed to act, even in clear cases of abuse

- police have no tools against people under 14

but the solution is absolutely not to give politicians (or bureaucrats) unlimited power, bring back harsh physical punishment in school and turning a blind eye towards police violence.

In my understanding the problem seems to be that of polarization (examples sourced more globally):

- Why do I have to choose between 1. people who deny that trans people exist and 2. people who think that it isn't a problem when one inmate gets another inmate pregnant in a women's only prison? Or in sports, were womens sports, were people who were male athletes who never had a chance can transition and easily win as women? There certainly is a lot of room between these options.

- or why do I have to choose between 1. people who hate certain groups of people and 2. people who think it is OK when others arrive here and openly abuse our hospitality? Why did it take years to expel an internationally wanted terrorist?

List goes on.

History may not repeat, but it absolutely rhymes. If had a nickel for every time I heard about a government proposing to round up and deport thousands of people to a special island just so that their normal Constitution rules wouldn't apply, I'd have two nickels--which isn't a lot, but it's weird it happened twice.

It’s an understatement to say Canada is extremely displeased at this, it will cost the US billions in lost trade and tourism. And for what? The trade deficit if you take out oil exports from Canada to the US is actually in favor of the US. Many American jobs will be lost because of this.

That trust and relationship will not be rebuilt easily, you vastly underestimate the damage and cost that will come from all the ill will being generated.

Words from a president are not just words, they carry weight, but now that tariffs are actually in effect we can see plain as day the first part of him carrying to execution his reckless and completely senseless ideas.