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Tuesday, January 3, 2017

The 15 Warnings Signs of Impending Tyranny - Robert Reich

Found here. My comments in bold.
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It's amazing to me how Dr. Reich can be so blinded by ideology that he cannot see anything except his own talking points. In this article he makes astounding claims about a tyranny that Trump will supposedly impose. The fact that there is no possibility of the kind of tyranny Reich envisions does not deter him.

After each point, I will link to an Obama example of the same thing. So would that make Obama a tyrant as well?
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As tyrants take control of democracies, they typically:

1. Exaggerate their mandate to govern – claiming, for example, that they won an election by a landslide even after losing the popular vote. (Obama.)

2. Repeatedly claim massive voter fraud in the absence of any evidence, in order to restrict voting in subsequent elections. (Obama.)

3. Call anyone who opposes them “enemies.” (Obama.)

4. Turn the public against journalists or media outlets that criticize them, calling them “deceitful” and “scum.” (Obama.)

5. Hold few if any press conferences, preferring to communicate with the public directly through mass rallies and unfiltered statements. (Obama. Again.)

6. Tell the public big lies, causing them to doubt the truth and to believe fictions that support the tyrants’ goals. (Obama. Politifact.) 

7. Blame economic stresses on immigrants or racial or religious minorities, and foment public bias and even violence against them. (Is it somehow better to blame the rich?)

8. Attribute acts of domestic violence to “enemies within,” and use such events as excuses to beef up internal security and limit civil liberties. (Obama.)

9. Threaten mass deportations, registries of religious minorities, and the banning of refugees. (Obama actually did it.)

10. Seek to eliminate or reduce the influence of competing centers of power, such as labor unions and opposition parties. (Obama. Again.)

11. Appoint family members to high positions of authority (Obama.)

12. Surround themselves with their own personal security force rather than a security detail accountable to the public. (The supplied link is about the danger of private security acting too forcefully, not about accountability. And I've never heard anyone complain about the need for Secret Service accountability to the public. I think Dr. Reich is trying to pack his list.)

13. Put generals into top civilian posts (Obama.)

14. Make personal alliances with foreign dictators. (Obama.)

15. Draw no distinction between personal property and public property, profiteering from their public office. (Obama.)

Consider yourself warned.

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