Popular legitimacy is still necessary for authoritarianism. There's a reason even Vladimir Putin still holds elections bsky.app/profile/tibb... - ThreadSky

gregdoucette.bsky.social • 10 days ago

Popular legitimacy is still necessary for authoritarianism. There's a reason even Vladimir Putin still holds elections

https://bsky.app/profile/tibber.bsky.social/post/3lr2j6h4ntk22

Reposted from tibber

Why would any of that matter at this point?

Comments

missy-ubermom.bsky.social•9 days ago

Didn’t you mean to write: “Vladimir Putin still holds “elections”? (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge) it’s only a legit election if you don’t know the outcome months prior. 🤷🏻‍♀️

crookedknight.bsky.social•10 days ago

Everything they do makes it seem like they don't think that principle holds for America anymore, or that nothing they do will actually break through the bubble to the point where it *does* damage their legitimacy.

nhashem.bsky.social•10 days ago

Russia, Iran, the CCP, and other authoritarian states also do massive amounts of internal surveillance to evaluate the mood/opinions of the public. There is a reason Putin wants to make sure e.g. young white collar professionals in Moscow and St. Petersburg feel mostly unimpacted by the war.

gregdoucette.bsky.social•10 days ago

Yup

https://bsky.app/profile/ryanwithcupcake.bsky.social/post/3lr2jldremk25

gregdoucette.bsky.social•10 days ago

Yep. But I'm not even at the "what's the fallout from doing it" stage – I'm stuck on how, procedurally, do folks think they could be blocked

Subsidiarity makes collective action hard, but makes stopping collective action functionally impossible

https://bsky.app/profile/dxmnkd316.bsky.social/post/3lr2j4ygakc24

gregdoucette.bsky.social•10 days ago

Game this out. Assume Trump declares an insurrection.

Then what?

https://bsky.app/profile/krisoverstreet.bsky.social/post/3lr2mc6hfl22c

krisoverstreet.bsky.social•10 days ago

Declare martial law. Call up the Nat'l Guards of all the states. Claim a conspiracy to resist the federal government in blue states. Round up the "conspirators" (any Democratic-run governments or national leaders) and appoint military governors.

End goal- one-party rule in America.

krisoverstreet.bsky.social•10 days ago

The federal armed forces will not refuse the orders.

Blue State Nat'l Guards might or might not, but if they resist, that will give Trump excuse to bomb the cities he hates anyway. And Nat'l Guard troops can't resist regular army.

Federalist judges will back him. GOP Congress won't stop him.

gregdoucette.bsky.social•10 days ago

What does declaring martial law accomplish?

https://bsky.app/profile/omarbradley.bsky.social/post/3lr2m5tiwhk2w

rlmrdlnz.bsky.social•10 days ago

Either before or after the declaration

Live
Rounds

gregdoucette.bsky.social•10 days ago

How do you envision any of this stops North Carolina from conducting elections in 2026?

What is the mechanical process by which NC's state-run federal elections become "Putin-style"?

https://bsky.app/profile/keyoke420.bsky.social/post/3lr2lx6b36k25

gregdoucette.bsky.social•10 days ago

The entire reason they brought back Kilmar Abrego Garcia – after multiple DOJ attorneys insisted to multiple courts it simply was not possible – is because running with the "we're no longer a nation of laws" argument was bad for them politically

keyoke420.bsky.social•9 days ago

We dont know the exact angle they are going to use yet. Charging democrats with felonies so we can't vote? Throwing out votes they dont like? Taking it to SCOTUS for another 6-3 victory. They've been planning this for decades. They're too exposed to stop now. They have to finish the coup.

madgastronomer.bsky.social•10 days ago

The thing is, it's not necessarily that he's going to STOP elections. But he's definitely going to encourage voter suppression and gerrymandering, and pressure election officials in states that might go blue to "lose" votes. And he can bring a lot more pressure to that now.

chessercat.bsky.social•9 days ago

And the governor of North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and a lot of the states this numpty calls “red” are Democrats.

A Democratic governor is going to cancel the statutory election, and then prevent counties, which do the bulk of the work of election administration, from running them?

milayna.bsky.social•10 days ago

Haven't there been a few special elections where Republican governors just didn't hold them and denied D's a seat

And let's not forget how McConnell just held a SCOTUS seat open for a year

It's less "what can compel them against it" than "what can compel them to do it"

magnificentskinbag.bsky.social•10 days ago

they're weak, and this will show it

there will be disorder, yes: but they'll be blamed for it, even though the press will write every report in the exonerative tense

nih-llamas.bsky.social•10 days ago

An expression of brutality.

omarbradley.bsky.social•10 days ago

trump setting the stage to stay in power indefinitely.

duskydesert.bsky.social•10 days ago

there is not enough resources to occupy most of the country

jimmydeltaone.bsky.social•10 days ago

more chaos, principally

bglazebrook26.bsky.social•10 days ago

Joseph Nunn with the @brennancenter.org wrote a great piece detailing why martial law isn't going to happen like everyone who's afraid of it seems to assume.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/martial-law-united-states-its-meaning-its-history-and-why-president-cant

caseinsensit1ve.bsky.social•10 days ago

The DoD's drone strike list starts getting populated with Democrats and dissenters who get on their radar. It only ends well for Trump if the opposition can't get their shit together after that starts.

...which, given these Dems, is a pretty safe bet for Trump to be honest.

fishcatcher.bsky.social•10 days ago

The overton window keeps getting pushed farther and farther open. Maga may not achieve everything all at once now...

figmentpudding.com•10 days ago

Honestly, just chaos. I think it's more frightening in how unpredictable it is.

It's wild seeing this rhetoric blowing the situation so so far out of proportion, while watching the livestreams and people are literally just standing around, for the most part.

What riots? What looters?

lapsu.bsky.social•10 days ago

"Game this out": not a sentence that's being said in the White House

urban-achiever.bsky.social•10 days ago

This is all very, very silly. The troops who would be occupying our cities are our friends, neighbors, family... Maybe I'm just not sufficiently jaded, but I just don't think my cousins are going to be enthused about beating me on the head with a baton because I'm carrying a sign or out past curfew.

2ndrepublic.bsky.social•10 days ago

i'll play devil's advocate here. Military is deployed into strategic, limited ways to suppress protests of ICE activity. Potentially getting involved in aiding ICE activity. Incremental build-up of armed force to Russia-ish levels. Doom loop of escalating protests and suppression.

mayort.bsky.social•10 days ago

My understanding is that the Russian situation is largely sustainable due to the county having very few credible centers of urban power. Convincingly dominate Moscow and maybe St. Petersburg and you're good to go. Easy. California *alone* has how many of these you'd need to occupy?

lonelylupine.bsky.social•10 days ago

Soviet Russia still held elections, and made sure they got the max participation they could, even going as far as bringing the ballot box to you if you couldn't go to it. Yeah, they weren't remotely fair elections, but they tried hard to make it look like they had popular assent.

mydamie.com•10 days ago

Even Kings feared igniting a populist revolt

alexheistermann.bsky.social•10 days ago

People had forget that Hitler was very popular in Nazi Germany.

alexheistermann.bsky.social•10 days ago

Expect republicans to abandon ship when trump popularity turn south real quick here.

flyingsquidgoggles.bsky.social•10 days ago

This is an important point - Putin and Orban hold sway because they are seen as maintaining an order, if Trump and Homan are seen as provoking disorder; that’s a significant departure from the playbook. It’ll poll well with the 30% who would support any killing of leftists, but what about the rest?

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply