08-23-2021, 10:49 PM
It's a matter of time. If some right-wing demagogue wins enough votes in a time of economic distress with a promise of a secret plan to restore prosperity, people will be intend more on getting prosperity back than how they get it. They will often fail to ask the question of who gets the prosperity and who gets to pay.
It is secretive not so much because the intention is to prevent illicit gain by people dealing on insider information but instead because the methods are horrible. Thus nobody is told that wages will be slashed, unions will be outlawed, people will be obliged to work unpaid overtime, that elites will be exempted from taxes, privatization will be done on behalf of rapacious profiteers on the cheap, that environmental laws and safety regulations will be gutted, that people will be obliged to make "contributions" to for-profit entities, and that protests against any of the above will be met with private violence without consequences to those who pay them.
I have heard plenty of right-wing pols say that they can make the tough decisions to make things work. Sure they can make the tough decisions -- because those pols do not care whom those decisions hurt so long as it is not themselves. That is the perfect argument of a sociopath.
It is secretive not so much because the intention is to prevent illicit gain by people dealing on insider information but instead because the methods are horrible. Thus nobody is told that wages will be slashed, unions will be outlawed, people will be obliged to work unpaid overtime, that elites will be exempted from taxes, privatization will be done on behalf of rapacious profiteers on the cheap, that environmental laws and safety regulations will be gutted, that people will be obliged to make "contributions" to for-profit entities, and that protests against any of the above will be met with private violence without consequences to those who pay them.
I have heard plenty of right-wing pols say that they can make the tough decisions to make things work. Sure they can make the tough decisions -- because those pols do not care whom those decisions hurt so long as it is not themselves. That is the perfect argument of a sociopath.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.