#Politics#Elections#UE#Democracy: "An election is a device for maximising conflict and minimising democracy. Parties gain ground by sowing division and anger, often around trivial issues that play to their advantage. At the same time, as the big players seek to appease commercial lobbies and the billionaire press, they converge disastrously on far more important issues, such as austerity, privatised public services, massive inequality of wealth and the unfolding genocide in Gaza. Many of those who seek election manipulate, distract and lie.
Communities are set against each other: see how the Tories appeal to their elderly base by treating young people as a problem to be solved, currently through national service. The parties reduce our complex choices to a brutal binary; sometimes, as in the 2019 election, to a three-word slogan (Get Brexit Done). Vast questions, such as the environmental crisis, the spiral of accumulation by the wealthy, the possibility of food system failure or the resurgent threat of nuclear war, remain unresolved and generally unmentioned. All that is left to us, except for a 10-second action every five years, is to sit and hope. We end up, in our supposedly representative system, with a highly unrepresentative parliament and a perennial sense of disappointment.
Just as capitalism is arguably the opposite of markets, general elections such as the one we now face could be seen as the opposite of democracy. But, as with so many aspects of public life, entirely different concepts have been hopelessly confused. Elections are not democracy and democracy is not elections.
Earlier societies recognised the distinction. Aristotle and Montesquieu observed that elections generated (respectively) “oligarchical” and “aristocratic” rule."
Lying about our #democracy can cost you. A jury awarded R Freeman & S Moss $148M from Giuliani. Fox News settled with Dominion for $787M after facing the prospect of a lengthy & damaging trial. #Media orgs like OANN/Project Veritas/Salem Media have issued retractions & apologies for their false election claims. We don’t know exactly how this rebalancing towards truth will impact the 2024 election. Those actors-certain to pause-. https://www.ifyoucankeepit.org/p/lying-about-the-2024-election-will
Judge rules #SteveBannon must go to #prison by July 1 while appealing #contempt case
The former #Trump adviser is challenging a 4-month prison term for contempt of Congress after failing to appear before a House panel investigating the #Jan6, 2021, riot.
U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols agreed after a nearly hour-long hearing. “I don’t believe that the original basis for my stay of Mr. #Bannon’s sentence exists any longer. I no longer consider that his appeal raises substantial questions of #law of a kind likely to reverse his #conviction,” Nichols said, citing that panel’s ruling.
Modi’s authoritarian Hindu nationalist party did not fare well in India’s recent elections. This unexpected result shows that polls and prognostications are certainly not infallible. What matters is the vote.
Sen Rubio -top R on Intel CMTE: Pres Biden was “a demented man propped up by wicked & deranged ppl” -it was now time to “fight fire with fire” *flame emojis to rep. the fire. Seeking retribution thru the justice system is hardly a new concept for #TFG.
A 2nd #Trump admin could #weaponize existing government agencies to dismantle democracy itself.
This article is part of “Project 2025: The Plot Against #America,” a Nation special issue devoted to unpacking the right’s vast & chilling program for a 2nd Trump term.
managing elections to benefit himself & his #Republican allies; gutting public broadcasting & constraining #press#freedom; & undermining civil society. #Trump, who…demanded that the results of #Georgia’s 2020…[election] be “recalculated” to give him a win, wants the trappings of #democracy w/o the reality of electoral consequences. That’s what #propaganda experts Edward Herman & Frank Brodhead described as “demonstration elections,” in which…wins are assured for the #authoritarians….
The outline for such a scenario emerges from a thorough reading of #Project2025’s Mandate for Leadership, which specifically proposes a #Trump-friendly recalculation of the systems that sustain American #democracy. The strategy for establishing an American version of Orbán’s “#illiberal democracy” is not spelled out in any particular chapter of Mandate. Rather, it is woven throughout the whole of the document, w/key elements appearing in the chapters on reworking #DHS, the #FCC, & the #FEC.
In Mandate’s chapter on the #DHS, Ken Cuccinelli writes, “Of the utmost urgency is immediately ending CISA’s counter-mis / #disinformation efforts. … #Project2025 document declares that “the entirety of the #CISA#Cybersecurity Advisory Committee should be dismissed on Day One.”
…This is just one way that Project 2025’s cabal of “experts” is scheming to thwart honest discourse about #elections & #democracy.
Instead of focusing on #VoterSuppression, the manipulation of #election processes by domestic & foreign agents, & other genuine threats to #democracy, Mandate for Leadership’s authors would have these agencies do the bidding of #Trump & his #MAGA movement. That’s a formula for giving Trump the #authoritarian#power he seeks—not through an explicit crushing of electoral democracy, but by “reforming” it in precisely the way that the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy warns is most dangerous.
#StephenMiller, a fmr snr adviser to #Trump [& pure concentrated evil] who still helps guide his thinking on policy, blared out a directive on #FoxNews after a jury found Trump #guilty of falsifying financial records to cover up… his 2016 [#ElectionInterference]. Miller posed a series of questions to Republicans at every level, including local DAs.
“Is every House cmte controlled by #Republicans [ab]using its subpoena power in every way it needs to right now?” #StephenMiller demanded. “Is every Republican DA starting every investigation they need to right now?”
“Every facet of #Republican Party #politics & #power has to be used right now to go toe-to-toe w/Marxism & beat these Communists,” Miller said, using the catchall slurs #Trump allies routinely use against #Democrats.