Is Obama creating a precedent for transparency the autocrats will have to follow?

[applegrove]

This is not a celebrity endorsement. Obama is a world leader.

Link to tweet

?s=20

[Hortensis]

1. No. Autocracy is determined to destroy transparency

and, btw, has done a great deal to infiltrate and coopt our major media, most of which are trying to turn national power over to the Republican Party and the autocrats it now serves.

Obama represents the enlightenment and freedom our nation has had for nearly 250 years. That doesn't mean we can't stop those determined to replace government of, by and for the people with autocracy. It's ours to lose.

On this subject,

“The main benefit of controlling a modern bureaucratic state is not the power to persecute the innocent. It is the power to protect the guilty.”

“What is spreading today is repressive kleptocracy, led by rulers motivated by greed rather than by the deranged idealism of Hitler or Stalin or Mao. Such rulers rely less on terror and more on rule twisting, the manipulation of information, and the co-option of elites. Their goal is self-enrichment; the corrosion of the rule of law is the necessary means.

As a shrewd local observer explained to me on a visit to Hungary in early 2016, “The main benefit of controlling a modern bureaucratic state is not the power to persecute the innocent. It is the power to protect the guilty.”

~ David Frum, Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic

Sounds a whole lot like what the Republicans have morphed into and what we're fighting, doesn't it?

[applegrove]

2. That is it exactly. This is liberal democracies attempt to fight for transparency.

Obama has done it for years. He supported Angela Merkle and Macron. Now Trudeau. That way transparency can be a liberal issue.

[Hortensis]

3. Yes. It always has been a liberal issue, ONLY a liberal issue.

It arises from the principle of equality, and attitudes toward equality are the single biggest difference between liberal and conservative personality. In designing our liberal democracy, our founding fathers worked hard to build in accountability to the people, and that requires transparency.

Conservatism leads to hierarchal societies and governments of various degrees of authoritarianism, wherein transparency to the people would be considered only desirable to the point it couldn't be avoided, usually temporarily meet demands of angry crowds, and always problematic.

A hierarchy where the upper levels would be accountable to the rest would be an oxymoron, after all.

[applegrove]

5. I hope this means liberals are learning to up their game. It didn't used

Last edited Fri Oct 18, 2019, 02:59 AM - Edit history (1)

to be that Presidents commented on canadian politics and chose a party to endorse. That part is new (of course the US has always interfered in the elections of their non allies). The authoritarians are all interfering and building a 'tight bundle of sticks' together. People for democracy and liberalism should do the same because authoritarians see alies as the enemy now because we are democracies.

[Hortensis]

6. Liberals always up and down their game. We're not

the only ones in it. This is a very fluid, complex and imperfect world. When the ball fields tilt vertical, everyone has to kick from that position and expect a lot of the balls to come down on top of them, not way out in front as desired. Electorates especially are extremely imperfect, and large numbers always make stupid and immoral decisions.

Personally, when I think of how earnest liberal politicians who devote their lives to battling to protect and advance our democracy are kicked around by people who imagine they are more principled but don't even realize what that is and who constantly betray what they claim to be their own principles, I don't know how principled politicians get their strength to continue. Many quit. I do know they'd all be on their knees begging for good sense and probity in the electorate if that'd only work.

"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

Winston Churchill

[NCLefty]

4. If his successor is any indication, clearly not.

[Sherman A1]

7. +1