Posted on 07/04/2017 1:10:31 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The resistance movement against President Donald Trump has one of the country's premier historians onboard — and his reasons for opposing Trump are pretty terrifying. Leading historian at Yale, Timothy Snyder, warns that Trump could try overthrowing democracy during his presidency. In fact, he predicts it's "inevitable."
Snyder has spent his career working on Modern Eastern Europe, and as such he has plenty of knowledge on authoritarian leaders. Using his research, he wrote a book to help get America through the Trump presidency and it's called On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. The book is more of a guidebook that takes lessons from the past to figure out what the resistance needs to do on a daily basis under Trump.
Snyder's concerns over the nation's political system were further explored in an interview between him and Salon. Snyder explained to Salon's Chauncey DeVega that Trump could theoretically mount his own version of the Reichstag fire in Nazi Germany to try and consolidate power outside of Democracy. In addition to detailing the theory in his own book, he has also put forward this argument in The New York Review of Books.
Essentially, Snyder argues, it would start with some sort of terrorist attack or other national emergency. In response to the attack, Trump could institute a state of emergency whereby constitutional law and freedoms are limited. "I think it’s pretty much inevitable that they will try," Snyder told DeVega, explaining that "conventional ways of being popular are not working out for them." To be clear, this is all theoretical.
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Trump's polling numbers remain at historic lows. So, save that path to continued governance, an alternative method of consolidating control could be "getting into a new rhythm of politics, one that does not depend upon popular policies and electoral cycles."
Whether the strategy would actually succeed is an entirely other question. Snyder explains, "Whether it works or not depends upon whether when something terrible happens to this country, we are aware that the main significance of it is whether or not we are going to be more or less free citizens in the future." His personal thought on the matter is that, no, a power grab wouldn't ultimately work — "not so much because we are so great but because we have a little bit of time to prepare."
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Snyder basically thinks enough citizens and government actors have thought about the possibility and won't let it happen. Reading his book might prepare you to join in the fight. "What my book does is it goes across the arc of regime change, from the beginning to the end, and it provides things ranging from simpler to harder that people can literally do every day," Snyder explains to Salon.
Herein comes the most interesting part:
The thing that matters the most is to realize that in moments like this your actions really do matter. It is ironic but in an authoritarian regime-change situation, the individual matters more than [in] a democracy. In an authoritarian regime change, at the beginning the individual has a special kind of power because the authoritarian regime depends on a certain kind of consent.
If enough individuals "find the ways not to express their consent," then the overthrowing of democracy won't be successful. Perhaps it's not the usual way to spend your July 4, but there's probably not a more patriotic way to spend Independence Day.
Not in replacement numbers.
That is why they are terrified of immigration enforcement and voter fraud enforcement more than any other issues. It is also why they work so hard to sexually damage children.
They don’t reproduce effectively.
The church I attend is full of families with three or five children.
That sort of thing terrifies these people.
What do you expect for a measly hundred thou a year?
“Liberalism is a mental disease.”
Worth repeating
Amazing, how these overly educated intellectuals yet idiots are never correct with anything from health to politics!
Nassim Taleb Exposes The World’s “Intellectual-Yet-Idiot” Class!
What we have been seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking “clerks” and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to vote for.
But the problem is the one-eyed following the blind: these self-described members of the “intelligenzia” can’t find a coconut in Coconut Island, meaning they aren’t intelligent enough to define intelligence and fall into circularities?—?but their main skills is capacity to pass exams written by people like them. With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30 years of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating at best only 1/3th of the time, people are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers (or Montaigne and such filtered classical knowledge) with a better track record than these policymaking goons.
Indeed one can see that these academico-bureaucrats wanting to run our lives aren’t even rigorous, whether in medical statistics or policymaking. They cant tell science from scientism?—?in fact in their eyes scientism looks more scientific than real science. (For instance it is trivial to show the following: much of what the Cass-Sunstein-Richard Thaler types?—?those who want to “nudge” us into some behavior?—?much of what they call “rational” or “irrational” comes from their misunderstanding of probability theory and cosmetic use of first-order models.) They are prone to mistake the ensemble for the linear aggregation of its components as we saw in the chapter extending the minority rule.
The Intellectual Yet Idiot is a production of modernity hence has been accelerating since the mid twentieth century, to reach its local supremum today, along with the broad category of people without skin-in-the-game who have been invading many walks of life. Why? Simply, in many countries, the government’s role is ten times what it was a century ago (expressed in percentage of GDP). The IYI seems ubiquitous in our lives but is still a small minority and rarely seen outside specialized outlets, social media, and or the IYI.
For more info on the Intellectual yet idiots, go to the link below:
“Trump’s polling numbers remain at historic lows.”
Really? Last time I checked they were at 50% but I guess it depends whether you get it from fake news or other sources.
All libtard regressives do is project.
It’s a paradox but “academics” are often the most ideological, bureaucratic and stupid people you will ever meet
It is a pathetic indictment of academia that nitwits such as this pinhead are tenured faculty. What a joke.
This is exactly the excuse the establishment will use when they move to murder our President.
War is coming my friends. Sadly, I fear CW II will make the first look like a picnic
Where?
Not in the US, we are a republic.
Odd that a "historian", even one from Yale, would not know that.
Perhaps I should send him my first grade history book.
This is one of those good examples of leftists proposing that others are or will commit the crimes that they themselves are underway with committing.
They do this as inoculation by introducing the concept and then clouding the infection.
What fools.
Obama was immensely authoritarian while Trump has not been authoritarian at all. Trump has acted with the law behind him while Obama kept skirting the law and attempting to act beyond or without the mandate of law.
Obama spent most of his two terms at 35 to 47 percent. And HE was the greatest president EVER.
...of course, nobody talks about that.
From the author’s perspective it is a coup against the democracy of foreigners voting in our elections and deciding America’s future.
Trump is a threat to those who want open borders and a US subservient to the UN.
To those who value the Constitution, Trump is our last chance.
The esteemed professor used the Hitler argument ...so he has already lost the contest of ideas.
Note to high school graduates looking to major in History - don’t choose Yale; you’ll be wasting someone’s money.
Far as I can see it then is also now.
Notice how Venezuela has all but fallen off the news radar. You may find something about it way down on the bottom of one of the British news outlets, but our media is absolutely silent on Venezuela, which is imploding as I type this. Why, because Maduro/Chavez did/are doing exactly what this retard says Trump will do, but they get a pass because they are the annointed angels of marxism, delivering people from things like food. This dipshit professor should jump off the faculty lounge roof.
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