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https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-build-an-autocracy/513872/
The Atlantic ^ | March 2017 (really January 30, 2017) | David Frum

Posted on 02/09/2017 8:50:28 AM PST by Pollster1

It’s 2021, and President Donald Trump will shortly be sworn in for his second term . . .

Allegations of fraud and self-dealing . . . have likewise been shrugged off . . . “I’m bringing back your jobs,” he has said over and over. Voters seem to have believed him—and are grateful . . .

Most Americans intuit that their president and his relatives have become vastly wealthier over the past four years. But rumors of graft are easy to dismiss. Because Trump has never released his tax returns, no one really knows . . .

The business community learned its lesson early. “You work for me, you don’t criticize me,” the president was reported to have told one major federal contractor, after knocking billions off his company’s stock-market valuation with an angry tweet . . .

Nobody’s repealed the First Amendment, of course, and Americans remain as free to speak their minds as ever—provided they can stomach seeing their timelines fill up with obscene abuse and angry threats from the pro-Trump troll armies that police Facebook and Twitter. Rather than deal with digital thugs, young people increasingly drift to less political media like Snapchat and Instagram . . .

Everything imagined above—and everything described below—is possible only if many people other than Donald Trump agree to permit it. It can all be stopped, if individual citizens and public officials. . .

Donald Trump, however, represents something much more radical. A president who plausibly owes his office at least in part to a clandestine intervention by a hostile foreign intelligence service? Who uses the bully pulpit to target individual critics?. . . If this were happening in Honduras, we’d know what to call it. It’s happening here instead, and so we are baffled.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: mediabias; trump
1. I intensely dislike this article.

2. This was on NPR last night for a half hour on their "unbiased, bipartisan" interview show that is running for the first 100 days under President Trump. The show featured an anti-Trump "republican conservative" interviewing the anti-Trump "republican", David Frum.

3. I think this theme is likely to get a lot of airtime and play as the Ctrl-Left tries to shape the narrative to claim America is bad, Trump is bad, the rule of law is bad, and this becomes their next attempted explanation for why.

We need to understand America's enemies, so I strongly recommend this long but well-written article. [Note: I describe it as well-written, not well-reasoned, although there is enough of an element of truth in the foundation to give the far left media class a jumping off point into total insanity that some might believe.]

1 posted on 02/09/2017 8:50:28 AM PST by Pollster1
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To: Pollster1

Donald hasn’t yet verged into the “you work for me” attitude towards private business. That would be an overweening egotism, not a proper pride in America.

However, to spaghetti spined cowards (and I used to be one and still fight against being one), any degree of confidence looks like overweening egotism and the confusion is easy.


2 posted on 02/09/2017 8:52:46 AM PST by HiTech RedNeck (Embrace the Lion of Judah and He will roar for you and teach you to roar too. See my page.)
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To: Pollster1

From is the house c#ntservative for the GOPe.


3 posted on 02/09/2017 8:56:27 AM PST by Pietro
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To: Pollster1

Oh brother! Don’t you love how the media always accuses Republicans of what the Democrats do and get away with all the time. “Allegations of fraud and self-dealing . . . have likewise been shrugged off . . .” That is how the Clintons, Obama and other Democrats have always been treated by the medial. How much crap would the Clintons have to do to get criticized by the media? Getting people killed and then lying about why? Check. Broadcasting state secrets to the enemy via an insecure email server? Check. Massive fraud and corruption misusing “charitable organizations” in pay to play schemes involving government influence? Check. It goes on and on... Amazing!


4 posted on 02/09/2017 8:57:18 AM PST by fireman15 (How many illegal aliens voted for Hillary in CA and NY alone?)
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To: Pollster1

Thoroughly hateful drivel. Not worth giving any time or effort. The first para is enough to dismiss the author and the obvious malicious writing.


5 posted on 02/09/2017 8:57:22 AM PST by Louis Foxwell (The Left has the temperament of a squealing pig.)
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To: Pollster1; admin

Nice title..................


6 posted on 02/09/2017 8:57:39 AM PST by Red Badger (If "Majority Rule" was so important in South Africa, why isn't it that way here?.......)
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To: Pollster1

really, someone feels the need to post this crap?


7 posted on 02/09/2017 8:59:06 AM PST by UB355 (Slower traffic keep right)
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To: fireman15
Does that author realize that line from the article PERFECTLY describes the Clintons, arguably the most corrupt politicians in American history?
8 posted on 02/09/2017 9:00:48 AM PST by RayChuang88 (FairTax: America's economic cure)
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To: Pollster1

I think the Frumpster needs to start spending his time on Making America Great Again.


9 posted on 02/09/2017 9:06:55 AM PST by Paladin2 (No spellcheck. It's too much work to undo the auto wrong word substitution on mobile devices.)
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To: Pollster1

How to write like this:

1. - Write down everything you know about Barack Obama and the Clintons.

2. - Change the names from Obama and Clinton to Trump.


10 posted on 02/09/2017 9:15:25 AM PST by Iron Munro (If Illegals voted Rebublican 66 Million Democrats Would Be Screaming "Build The Wall!")
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To: UB355

Frum and the media as a whole felt the need, and it’s not a bad try.

He’s implying (at least on NPR) that President Trump’s goal is to loot American wealth and become “as rich as he wants people to think he already is” (probably not an exact quote, but I think it’s very close). He’s stating that President Trump is trying to become an autocrat unconstrained by the Constitution, an odd claim when the reality is that Trump is trying to restore the rule of law by enforcing laws that the globalist left have systematically ignored. This gives the Ctrl-Left yet another chance to shape the narrative they want.

By putting it in the mouth of what they assure us is a republican, they hope to give it credibility. In the real world, I’ve known a lot of VERY wealthy people. Billionaires who build stuff don’t change over to crooks to get more money. Crooks stay crooked, and businessmen stay businessmen. That’s 10th billion doesn’t motivate corruption - what could President Trump do with another $1B that he can’t already do with the money he already has? It’s not a plausible motivator.


11 posted on 02/09/2017 9:31:57 AM PST by Pollster1 ("Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed")
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To: Pietro

The left hasn’t been too successful at predicting the future lately, agrees hillary clinton, winner of all the left’s presidential polls pre-November 8.


12 posted on 02/09/2017 9:49:27 AM PST by DPMD
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To: Iron Munro

Exactly that. Sour grapes from poor losers.


13 posted on 02/09/2017 9:51:13 AM PST by rockrr (Everything is different now...)
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To: Pollster1

Vivid delusions.


14 posted on 02/09/2017 9:55:09 AM PST by Ray76 (DRAIN THE SWAMP)
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To: Pollster1

They are projecting on Trump when in reality it’s the likes of Cliton & Obasturd they are really talking about:-)


15 posted on 02/09/2017 9:59:36 AM PST by Harpotoo
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To: Pollster1

Twenty or thirty years ago, this used to be a readable periodical.

Shame.


16 posted on 02/09/2017 10:04:32 AM PST by KC Burke (Consider all of my posts as first drafts. (Apologies to L. Niven))
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To: Pollster1

Cerebral Auto-erotic fantasy.


17 posted on 02/09/2017 10:28:38 AM PST by dmcnash (Back off! I'm a Scientist.)
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To: Pollster1

Yeah. How can we possibly go forward without seeing the line on Trump’s tax returns where it says “Income from graft...”


18 posted on 02/09/2017 10:30:59 AM PST by Arthur McGowan (https://youtu.be/IYUYya6bPGw)
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To: Pollster1
He's in office for two weeks and they're starting this crap?

We've had decades of the Clintons - on film committing felonies, lying to the FBI, caught taking bribes...

Not a peep from 'The Atlantic'.

More Fake News.

There are real criminals out there that need to be dealt with:


19 posted on 02/09/2017 11:23:34 AM PST by Bon mots (Laughing at liberal tears!)
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