A Cautionary column by David Frum, a must read

David Frum, a well respected conservative thinker has just published a very insightful article covering Donald Trump and authoritarianism. He touches on so many things that are going on right now that it was hard for me to focus in on what I wanted to bring up here. It is rather lengthy so I have chosen a bit of it that I thought would be of interest. I encourage anyone who is not afraid of what he says we are in for to read the entire article.

In other sections of the article he discusses the reason for the attack on the press and the introduction of the concept of Fake News and his conflict of interest problems. He is counting on the public not caring.  

The oft-debated question “Is Donald Trump a fascist?” is not easy to answer. There are certainly fascistic elements to him: the subdivision of society into categories of friend and foe; the boastful virility and the delight in violence; the vision of life as a struggle for dominance that only some can win, and that others must lose.

Yet there’s also something incongruous and even absurd about applying the sinister label of fascist to Donald Trump. He is so pathetically needy, so shamelessly self-interested, so fitful and distracted. Fascism fetishizes hardihood, sacrifice, and struggle—concepts not often associated with Trump.

A would-be kleptocrat is better served by spreading cynicism than by deceiving followers.
Perhaps this is the wrong question. Perhaps the better question about Trump is not “What is he?” but “What will he do to us?”

By all early indications, the Trump presidency will corrode public integrity and the rule of law—and also do untold damage to American global leadership, the Western alliance, and democratic norms around the world. The damage has already begun, and it will not be soon or easily undone. Yet exactly how much damage is allowed to be done is an open question—the most important near-term question in American politics. It is also an intensely personal one, for its answer will be determined by the answer to another question: What will you do? And you? And you?

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-build-an-autocracy/513872/

Fake News. Here's how churning out fake news supports the effort toward an authoritarian presidency.

Mostly, however, modern strongmen seek merely to discredit journalism as an institution, by denying that such a thing as independent judgment can exist. All reporting serves an agenda. There is no truth, only competing attempts to grab power.
By filling the media space with bizarre inventions and brazen denials, purveyors of fake news hope to mobilize potential supporters with righteous wrath—and to demoralize potential opponents by nurturing the idea that everybody lies and nothing matters. A would-be kleptocrat is actually better served by spreading cynicism than by deceiving followers with false beliefs: Believers can be disillusioned; people who expect to hear only lies can hardly complain when a lie is exposed. The inculcation of cynicism breaks down the distinction between those forms of media that try their imperfect best to report the truth, and those that purvey falsehoods for reasons of profit or ideology. The New York Times becomes the equivalent of Russia’s RT; The Washington Post of Breitbart; NPR of Infowars.

I think I'll have to set this one aside for another day. I'm already too depressed and this sounds far too close to the truth.

Thanks for posting this Othershoe.