America is tilting dangerously close to autocracy much to the delight of the dictators in Russian & China.
The GOP's efforts to undermine the integrity of elections & threats to tank the economy pave the way for an autocracy of our own.
Xi Jinping, the Chinese dictator, anointed himself as leader for an unprecedented third five-year term at the recent The 20th Communist Party Conference. Under his rule, China used technological advances in artificial intelligence and facial recognition to create one of the most repressive systems on the planet. Everyone is surveilled. The media is entirely under his control .The Uigur population in the country’s northeast is enslaved. Xi will not tolerate any dissent, not even dissenting thinking.
Kevin Rudd, President of the Asia Society and former PM and Foreign Minister of Australia wrote about XI in Foreign Affairs:
Xi has … has developed a new form of Marxist nationalism… Xi has pushed politics to the Leninist left, economics to the Marxist left, and foreign policy to the nationalist right. He has reasserted the influence and control the CCP exerts over all domains of public policy and private life, reinvigorated state-owned enterprises, and placed new restrictions on the private sector.
Xi has crushed democracy in Hong Kong. And he has promised to reunite China and Taiwan by force if necessary. He views democracy as chaos, and champions totalitarian systems as order.
In today’s China the leader’s image is everywhere. Xi’s thought is now officially a constitutional doctrine, like Mao’s Little Red Book. Children are taught it in school. The scholar of autocracy, Ruth Ben Ghiat explains that the personality cult is crucial to the power grab. Thinking the leader is ruthless and all powerful creates conditions for breaking societal norms and weakening any institutional checks on absolutism.
Many observers think Xi’s Marxist economics will fail. In fact, private investors are already turning from China. When times get tough, as they always do, protecting the cult leader means changing the subject- usually by creating fake threats, foreign and domestic. History is full of the violence and destruction that results.
Right now, America is standing firm for the rule of law in international disputes, and for human rights everywhere. We have not wavered in our response to Vladimir Putin’s illegal effort to redraw the map of Europe by force. We have not shied away from speaking up on behalf of the rights of people in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Well, at least America’s president and the current Congress are standing firm. The American people are not really paying attention.
Instead, we are caught up in our own drama. The Chinese and Russian dictators can take comfort that a new fifth column in America uses the big lie to undermine the integrity of elections and pave the way for an autocracy of our own. Certainly, Xi and Putin must enjoy the dynamics of a dying American political party-- what once was the party of Lincoln. So important for our two-party democracy, its failures erode both our government and our society. Like a collapsing star, the GOP is pulling into its center all the detritus around it. Only the loudest and craziest MAGA voices get traction in their captured media and online. Only the loudest and craziest candidates get nominated. They have no policy platform, but absolutism in the name of MAGA identity is required.
Republicans are openly threatening to tank the economy to bring Democrats to heal. The GOP contenders for chair of the House Banking Committee have all promised not to lift the debt ceiling absent complete capitulation on the issues that matter to their base. They will hold the country hostage with that vote while they push demands to ban abortion, to weaken NATO, to mandate that their politics be taught as our history. Listen to them. They promise to put social security and Medicare on the chopping block, and to permanently extend tax cuts to the wealthiest among us. Democrats will not go along. Expect default and a powerful recession and the collapse of the international finance system to follow. This is MAGA’s vengeance against the majority culture in the United States. Not surprisingly, Bloomberg Government is reporting that experts fear economic disaster if the GOP take over the House.
Americans would be smart to run away from this disaster. We should understand this moment as one akin to the mid-20th century, where American resolve can make the difference between freedom and repression, and where we lift our own economy up in the act of saving others.
A failing Russia, a rising China, a united effort among autocracies to organize the world is a clear and present danger to America’s interests and a serious challenge to our values. At such a moment, a united United States could step up and save humanity from the cruelty they have on offer. We can lead on a new economics of common prosperity. We can lead on climate change. We can be the successful multi racial democracy the world longs for and needs.
Or not.