Saturday 26 October 2024

America's descent into authoritarianism begins

The US presidential election gets weirder by the day.  The Wall Street Journal (Murdoch owned BTW via the Dow Jones) reports that Elon Musk has been 'in conversation' with Vladimir Putin since 2022. Musk is as we know, a leading US defence contractor through his SpaceX company as well as owning the EV maker Tesla and one of the world's leading social media platforms, Twitter, which he's using to influence millions of voters in support of Donald Trump. Musk is becoming so rich and powerful that he's rising above governments like some madcap Bond villain.

Musk is also one of the largest contributors to Trump's election campaign.

According to the WSJ, Putin asked Musk not to activate his Starlink satellite communications system over Taiwan as a favour to Xi Jing Ping, China's autocratic leader for life.  In more normal times this would have been a massive scandal but hardly rates a mention. When the WSJ Tweeted it out to its 20 million followers it got just 400 retweets. Did Musk do that?  Who knows? That's part of the problem.

Elsewhere, George Conway, an American lawyer and once a supporter of Trump, has written an op-ed (No£) for The Atlantic about Donald Trump's mental state.  It's quite a long piece but well worth the time. While admitting he's not a psychiatrist he has consulted a lot of experts and in any case, Conway says, rightly in my opinion:

"You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, and you don’t need to be a mental-health professional to see that something’s very seriously off with Trump—particularly after nearly three years of watching his erratic and abnormal behavior in the White House. 

"Questions about Trump’s psychological stability have mounted throughout his presidency. But those questions have been coming even more frequently amid a recent escalation in Trump’s bizarre behavior, as the pressures of his upcoming reelection campaign, a possibly deteriorating economy, and now a full-blown impeachment inquiry have mounted. And the questioners have included those who have worked most closely with him."

It is a very well-researched piece, linking to details like this:

"In September, a former White House official offered a similar assessment to a Business Insider reporter: 'No one knows what to expect from him anymore,' because 'his mood changes from one minute to the next based on some headline or tweet, and the next thing you know his entire schedule gets tossed out the window. He’s losing his shit.'”

And this is central to the risk of electing Trump, nobody truly knows what he'll actually do. His policies, such as they are, have already been ripped to shreds by leading economists with him pushing back. He still believes exporting countries pay tariffs for example. 

Will he back off once in office or get some nutjob in place who will actually impose tariffs on US citizens? To climb down would be a humiliation but he's weathered worse. Adding 20% tariffs to virtually all imports would trigger a global trade war and something between a recession and a depression in America and he's crazy enough to do it.

During a discussion with podcaster Joe Rogan he even suggested tariffs could replace income tax!!!!

George Conway turned against Trump in 2018. His wife was Kellyanne Conway, a vocal supporter of Trump who worked as Trump's personal legal counsellor during his time in office and famously coined the phrase alternative facts." They are now divorced.

Conway has formed a Political Action Committee (PAC) to campaign against Trump and as part of his article on Trump descent into idiocy he has 225 mental health professionals sign a letter and he's taken out a full-page ad in The New York Times warning that the former president is a "threat to democracy":

Just how much of a threat can be seen in the actions of the owners of the LA Times and The Washington Post. Both newspapers are traditionally Democrat and would normally be expected to strongly endorse the Harris/Walz ticket but they have been stopped for fear of what might happen in Trump wins.

At least that is the supposed reasoning behind Jeff Bezos' decision to remain neutral. Bezos owns the WaPo and Amazon among other things but is apparently worried that he'll lose future government contracts under a Trump administration. Terrifying, eh?

This is how America is going to descend into authoritarianism.

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