How COVID-19 is accelerating Donald Trump and the GOP's descent into authoritarianism
Published 47 mins ago on April 16, 2020
By AlterNet- Commentary
That Maya Angelou quote about believing people when they show you who they are gets tossed around quite a bit in reference to the 45th President of the United States, but it seems like no matter how many times Donald J. Trump beats us over the head with the message, there are still a lot of people who don’t quite get it.
So allow me to translate: Trump and his allies within the GOP ecosystem are hostile to democracy. Their response to the COVID-19 outbreak clarifies existing authoritarian trends within the regime and the broader Republican coalition and provides a pretext for accelerating them. Most recently, Trump fired both the Inspector General for the intelligence community who complied with the law and passed on a whistleblower complaint about Trump’s attempt to strong arm Ukraine to Congress, and the Inspector General originally responsible for overseeing over $2 trillion in pandemic bailout funds. (We’ll return to these offenses.)
In How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt provide a checklist of authoritarian behavior which weaken and eventually destroy democracies. They include: Undermining the legitimacy of elections; denying the legitimacy of political opponents; tolerating or encouraging violence and attempts to curtail civil liberties, including or especially the freedom of the press. The Trump administration checks every box.
Once we accept that the United States is functioning more like an autocracy, the bumbled response to COVID-19 starts to make much more sense. And that understanding also allows us to better prepare ourselves for the opposition that’s required to defend our democracy.
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/how-covid-19-is-accelerating-donald-trump-and-the-gops-descent-into-authoritarianism/
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It is unlikely that the public safety threat of COVID will subside by the national elections in November, therefore making an urgent case for U.S.-wide mail-in voting. Republicans, fearing the results of wider participation, have fought against it. The chair of the Republican Party, Ronna McDaniel, claimed (contrary to all available evidence) that Democrats “want to take away the safeguards that ensure the integrity of the election process.”
More ominously, Barr’s Department of Justice has already quietly asked Congress to suspend constitutionally protected rights in the event of an emergency, including an outbreak. Among other things, the proposal would allow judges to hold people indefinitely without trial, and would prevent individuals testing positive for the Coronavirus to seek asylum.
With each escalation of his assault on the rule of law, Trump and his supporters within the GOP have faced little unified opposition. Though Trump’s indifference has already cost American lives, there are few calls from the media or Democratic leadership for his resignation. He’s demonstrably unfit, spewing lies, endangering every person in this country, and there is no organized, meaningful resistance to his perfidy.
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