Tag / authoritarianism

by Nathan Coumbe

Baseball follows the decline of American democracy

“Baseball suits the character of this democratic nation. 

Democracy is government by persuasion. That means it requires patience. That means it requires a lot of compromise. Democracy is the slow politics of the half-loaf. 

Baseball is the game of the long season, where small, incremental differences decide who wins and who loses particular games, series, seasons. In baseball, you know going to the ballpark that the chances are you may win, but you also may lose. There’s no certainty, no given. You know when the season starts that the best team is going to get beaten a third of the time; the worst team is going to win a third of the time. The argument over 162 games—that middle third. 

So it’s a game you can’t like if winning’s everything. And democracy is that way, too.” 

—George Will, “Ken Burns: Baseball“

I would now posit that Americans’ declining interest in, and ability to watch and focus on, baseball directly correlates to our declining democratic ideals. 

When winning is everything—like it is in the new American pastime, football—and our culture reflects that, American democracy can no longer function. 

Baseball has become the jazz music of American sports culture: something we created that truly reflects who we are as a culture, yet no one cares about anymore.

Baseball and jazz—two of the greatest cultural creations that are 100% genuine American innovations—are the same two things most Americans don’t care about, understand, or appreciate. 

We’ve traded cerebral, authentically human jazz for three-minute pop songs, mostly created by computers with singers who rely on autotune to hit anything above or below a 5-note range. A 162-game baseball season over 8 months, for a 16-game football season that lasts 5 months. 

I’ve often said that our declining interest and ability to follow baseball is an indication of social media’s detrimental impact on our ability to focus for long periods. 

Now I’m quite certain it heralds something much worse.

by Nathan Coumbe

Fear keeps the majority out of power

It only takes one person for something evil to occur. For example, one of the reasons many authoritarian countries haven’t changed their regime already is that the vast majority of people live in fear of the handful of people who would commit evil on behalf of the leaders.

This is a question of power. If every single person in the country realized that they only have power because they can get other people to do bad things, the leaders would no longer be in power. 

The flipside of that is that it only requires one person being willing to harm or kill another for these people to be able to keep their power. 

It’s contagious—one person begets another person willing to commit harm (or too scared to refuse). Pretty soon, a tiny minority of people grows who are willing to commit evil to keep this one person in power.

Because not everyone says no, the minority rules, and the majority seems powerless. As such, the people who are in the majority must seemingly be willing to face death at the hands of the minority to effect change.

by Nathan Coumbe

We don’t know if we’re living in the “before” times until after

On October 24, 2024, Isaac Saul wrote a piece in Tangle (one of the best political news outlets around) about then-candidate Donald Trump’s “enemy from within” controversy.

I wrote a short essay in response, criticizing some of Mr. Saul’s points. It’s a little dated now, but I wanted to share an edited version of my thoughts on this blog, as I thought they were well-reasoned (and my fears have not been allayed in the first three months of Mr. Trump’s second presidency).

You [Isaac Saul] wrote this: “But none of us are going to live through World War II Germany.” How do you know that? What makes you so certain?

You say that Applebaum opens herself up to criticism by claiming Trump is speaking like Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. And you imply that criticism is warranted because Trump didn’t round up and kill millions of people or make good on many of his claims the first time around. 

But you go on to say that, “Hitler did that before [emphasis mine] rounding up and killing millions of Jews.” Doesn’t that contradict the criticism? How do you know that Trump isn’t doing this before he deports 11 million people? Before he unleashes the military on US citizens and his political enemies? 

And let us not forget that Hitler also had a failed coup (The Beer Hall Putsch) years before being elected Chancellor and declaring himself Führer. Might January 6th have been Trump’s failed Beer Hall Putsch on his way to authoritarianism?

When you live in the “before” times, it’s hard to know what the “after” times will look like. So, we naturally (or at least I think we should) take people’s dangerous language at face value. 

Perhaps Trump didn’t do it the first time around because he had so many people keeping his worst impulses in check… I doubt he’ll have reasonable people like that the second go-around. He’s sure to fill his administration with sycophants and “yes men” because they’re the only ones who want anything to do with him anymore.

I’ve heard so many times that our system of checks and balances will keep an authoritarian dictator from taking over. 

I don’t believe that, and here’s why: Ancient Rome had checks and balances in its Senate. So did the governments of 1920s Italy and 1930s Germany. And they all fell to dictators. Caesar had massive popular support, and so did Hitler. They were practically handed their dictatorships.

The Jews of Nazi Germany also believed that they weren’t going to live through (what later became) WWII Nazi Germany either. They didn’t believe Hitler would make good on his claims because of the checks and balances their democracy had in place.

I’m quoting a German Jewish newspaper from February 2, 1933 (10 years before the “Final Solution”), which was quoted on page 23 of Timothy Snyder’s book On Tyranny:

“We do not subscribe to the view that Mr. Hitler and his friends, now finally in possession of the power they have so long desired, will implement the proposals circulating in [Nazi newspapers]; they will not suddenly deprive German Jews of their constitutional rights, nor enclose them in ghettos, nor subject them to the jealous and murderous impulses of the mob. They cannot do this because a number of crucial factors hold powers in check…and they clearly do not want to go down that road. When one acts as a European power, the whole atmosphere tends towards ethical reflection upon one’s better self and away from revisiting one’s earlier oppositional posture.”

That line: “When one acts as a European power…” could easily be rewritten as, “When one acts as an American…” Is it not some sort of “American Exceptionalism” to believe that “it can’t happen here?” 

Snyder goes on to write: 

“The mistake is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions—even when that is exactly what they have announced that they will do.”

Thanks for reading. I don’t often cover politics on this blog, but I thought it was worth sharing a little insight into my thoughts on this topic.

As is often the case with political issues I believe to be concerning, I hope I’m wrong.

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