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this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2024
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One point I disagree on is that the country was founded on distrust of government. I'd say rather it was founded on distrust of dictatorships and autocracy. From the outset it was designed in a way that attempted to distribute power in such a way that no single individual or group had absolute power. It was one of the reasons why several of the founders were highly skeptical of political parties and considered banning them outright but instead settled for voicing warnings about them. They feared that a single political party could eventually become dominant and become the de facto ruler of the country.
In recent years there has been an effort to re-frame distrust of autocracy into a general distrust of government. I believe this has been primarily driven by powerful business interests in an attempt to remove regulations that get in the way of their maximizing profits at the expense of the public. They have rather successfully hijacked the anti-communism propaganda of the 50s and 60s and twisted it into an anti-government propaganda.
The really weird move is how right-wing attitudes in the USA have gone from distrust of government and its "interference" in their lives, through distrust of autocracy, to strong support for fascist autocracy that would be highly oppressive and invasive into people's lives. The last step is astonishing.
Absolutely, but it's also easy to see how the change happened. The original goal was to prevent autocracy, so power was distributed and checks and balances were created to prevent any one person or branch from being able to have too much authority. The message was corrupted into distrust of all government and combined with the debunked trickle down capitalism theory (thanks Reagan) that wealthy companies would lead to a wealthy public. The GOP then ran on a platform of eliminating "corrupt government" and removing "government interference" that was supposedly preventing that sweet free market capitalism they had been promising from working and trickling down to everyone. This then allowed them to re-frame stripping regulations and power from various government bodies and centralizing it within the executive branch as removing "wasteful and corrupt government", and removing checks and balances as removing laws and regulations that "protected corrupt government officials".
This also explains the "he's not hurting the right people" crowd, as they were sold on the idea that the autocrats would be using their power to attack government institutions and politicians, not the public. They never bothered to follow things to their logical conclusion and ask "once you've established an autocrat, and removed all government regulations, what happens next?", with the obvious answer "you have a dictatorship".
That's a good analysis, and helpful. Thanks!
Another important point that occurred to me on reflection is why they can simultaneously hold the belief in their head at the same time that all politicians are corrupt, and yet still have complete faith in Trump. They treat politicians like they're some foreign species, like they're not just normal people. In their mind there's a clear distinction between "us", and "politicians". But they don't consider Trump to be a politician, they've internally classified him as "business man", hence he's not corrupt, because he's not a politician.