{"id":56214,"date":"2020-12-28T13:20:40","date_gmt":"2020-12-28T18:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56214"},"modified":"2020-12-28T13:20:40","modified_gmt":"2020-12-28T18:20:40","slug":"the-threat-of-authoritarianism-in-the-u-s-is-very-real-and-has-nothing-to-do-with-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56214","title":{"rendered":"The Threat of Authoritarianism in the U.S. is Very Real, and Has Nothing To Do With Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Threat of Authoritarianism in the U.S. is Very Real, and Has Nothing To Do With Trump<\/a><\/h3>\n

The COVID-driven centralization of economic power and information control in the hands of a few corporate monopolies poses enduring threats to political freedom.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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(L-R): Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos (Photo by BERTRAND GUAY,TOBIAS SCHWARZ,ANGELA WEISS,MARK RALSTON\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Asserting that Donald Trump<\/strong>\u00a0is a fascist-like dictator threatening the previously sturdy foundations of U.S. democracy has been a virtual requirement over the last four years to obtain entrance to cable news Green Rooms, sinecures as mainstream newspaper columnists, and popularity in faculty lounges. Yet it has proven to be a preposterous farce.<\/p>\n

In 2020 alone, Trump had two perfectly crafted opportunities to seize authoritarian power \u2014 a global health pandemic and sprawling protests and sustained riots throughout American cities \u2014 and yet did virtually nothing to exploit those opportunities. Actual would-be despots such as Hungary\u2019s Viktor Orb\u00e1n quickly seized on the virus to\u00a0declare martial law<\/a>, while\u00a0even prior U.S. presidents<\/a>, to say nothing of foreign tyrants, have used the pretext of much less civil unrest than what we saw this summer to deploy the military in the streets to pacify their own citizenry.<\/p>\n

But early in the pandemic, Trump was criticized, especially by Democrats, for\u00a0failing\u00a0<\/em>to assert the draconian powers he had, such as commandeering the means of industrial production under the Defense Production Act of 1950, invoked by Truman to force industry to produce materials needed for the Korean War…<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Threat of Authoritarianism in the U.S. is Very Real, and Has Nothing To Do With Trump The COVID-driven centralization of economic power and information control in the hands of a few corporate monopolies poses enduring threats to political freedom. (L-R): Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[43,9336,204,5437,607,1169,827],"class_list":["post-56214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-authoritarianism","tag-big-tech","tag-democracy","tag-glenn-greenwald","tag-pandemic","tag-social-media","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56215,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56214\/revisions\/56215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}