Blog #20 The Authoritarian Playbook for America

Do you know the classic signs along the path to dictatorship? What can we do?

History provides too many examples of societies that slow-walk the death of democracy.

In America, there is an unwillingness to accept such a negative possibility. Such preposterous possibilities are ignored as Americans linger in a political coma while dreams become nightmares. The inconvenient, if not tragic, truth is that the history of modern democracy is more about the decline and fall of democracies and the persistent rise of authoritarian dictatorships, neo-socialism, and communism.

Aristotle, yes, that great philosopher from Greek history over 2,000 years ago, warned that inequality would bring instability while Plato believed that demagogues exploited free speech to install themselves as tyrants.

Now look at what is happening in the US today. The radical leftist narrative is about equity instead of equality. Essentially, equity is about not treating everyone equally. As such, we have seen the instability and unfairness it creates.

Radical elements push for changes that stretch the imagination for reasonableness or break long-standing rules of generally accepted “common sense.”

Examples abound, such as defunding the police and refusing to enforce or prosecute laws that enable hard-core criminals and invite new levels of thievery and felonious crime. Another is to promote sexual deviation as normal and commit acts typically considered pedophilia or child molestation.

Still, another example is the barrage of accusations reversing 200 years of progress against racism by using racism as a bullhorn to create chaos, justify division, make false accusations, justify cancel culture, and demand reparations for a crime against humanity that has been perpetrated against all races for thousands of years and still exists today in many other countries.

One more new development is the dual system of justice. No better example of that is the recent plea deal given to Hunter Biden. After over five years of an FBI investigation with ample evidence, including his own laptop, he gets probation for tax evasion and a gun crime.

For most all Americans who would do the same violations, they would get jail time up to five years. But Hunter is the President’s son being charged by a politicized FBI that has surrendered its credibility as a respected organization. Hunter is just a victim of society while being a poster child for white privilege.

Extending the ideology of victimhood, we have this movement to focus on criminals being victims and victims being the cause of crime. Right is wrong and wrong is right. History needs to be rewritten or forgotten. All of this creates chaos, uncertainty, and fear in society. Such fear is the basis for leverage by those who want to gain control.

Fascism promotes fear to gain support for their belief in the myth of what could be rather than in the truth of what is. This is where the elite will take advantage of fear to strengthen their power grab and substantiate it with outlandish promises and some immediate gifts as incentives to bait the impoverished, those living in fear, and those who see no hope.

America must not ignore the lessons of Germany in the 1930s. Hitler was elected to office by a democracy. He slowly dismantled or made dysfunctional valued institutions while falsely targeting a group – Jews – for being the real criminals. Hitler also created the myths needed to give hope when there was despair. As we know, he would generate misery and death on a horrific scale not seen before in all of human history.

What kind of gifts do elite leaders provide? For illegal immigrants, free everything from healthcare to college. For workers, promises of free healthcare and free money are disguised as government benefits. The elite turns up the speed of the presses to print more money without restriction or care. Corporations get saddled with regulations unless you buy the political narrative of the elites, in which case you get massive, lucrative contracts and favorable exceptions to regulations and taxes.

With more crime, they demand the removal of guns. To create unemployment, they give more welfare benefits. With more illegals allowed free entry, they are showered with free hotel rooms, phones, cash, healthcare, education, and more while expecting their votes in future shame elections.

The objective is to create dependency on the government for everything.

When faced with a pandemic or a climate crisis or war, or some other invented crisis-du-jour, the elite will embrace the opportunity to lie or exaggerate about what is needed to get compliance. With compliance, freedoms are sacrificed by the people, and control by the elites is strengthened. If the courts get in the way, you will hear about stacking or changing the court with friendly judges to ensure their impotence. The law of the land is superseded by a carefully crafted and promoted national emergency.

Eventually, the focus and strategy is to ensure the creation of a one-party system.

The one-party system is the seed that snowballs into authoritarian control and dictatorship. The average person will feel helpless and cannot fight the new order. It is the death of democracy, which has happened many times before. We are not that special to believe it can’t happen here.

Don’t believe it? Look at the one-party states like California, Oregon, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and more. They have a one-party rule where they maintain control with no real opposition. Chaos with crime, homelessness, drug use, and civil disorder worsens.

Citizens have the choice to get absorbed in the system or leave. We see a massive migration away from those cities that will not change as the elites in power still benefit from the control, money, and a different standard of living than the average worker/taxpayer. The death spiral continues until a strong man comes along and completes the takeover.

Worse, as we see in the Black community with all the turmoil and black-on-black death, polls show that 89% expect racism to have no change, and most feel it will only worsen. Only a few years ago, that feeling was much different as progress was slowly being made.

So it all begs the question, “What can we do?”

We have a Constitution. It must not be compromised. We must not give up our rights. Those rights must not be surrendered easily to comply with cries of another emergency – the ice age, the ozone layer, new diseases, new pandemics, climate change, and war.

We must not accept compliance when it violates our laws.

We must respect the rule of law and demand our laws be enforced.

We cannot survive with a dual standard of justice.

We must recognize our support for the black community has failed. We need a new approach that creates self-reliance, self-confidence, family focus, and hope.

We must respect our institutions as they will be the target of authoritarians.

We cannot accept rogue leaders who distort or damage the mission and credibility of our federal organizations, including both Houses of Congress, the US Federal Court Systems, and various Departments of Government, even as we need to end self-interested bureaucrats.

We must reduce the size of the government. It is not sustainable to have more government workers than private industry workers.

We must not allow the assault on family and religion to continue. Society must respect families and their faith, as those values are essential for the growth and development of all.

We cannot allow government dependency to grow beyond half the population. Financially it is simply not sustainable. If anything, we must reduce dependence, and that can only happen with a strong work ethic, education, advancement by merit, and a “common sense” list of values that reflect our worth as humans.

We must pay attention to those who would be king. We need leaders, not dictators. We need truth, not deception. We need integrity, not showmanship. We need mutual respect for all Americans at every level. And we need to remove those who would subvert our way of life, laws, and culture.

In short, we need to re-focus on those actions that created modern-day America. That includes innovation, less government intervention, free market capitalism, supportive banking, and law and order.

Some would call that the American Dream.