The Shocking Paper Predicting
the End of Democracy
Politico,
by
Rick Shenkman
Original Article
Posted By: Imright,
9/8/2019 10:31:15 PM
Everything was unfolding as it usually does. The academics who gathered in Lisbon this summer for the International Society of Political Psychologists’ annual meeting had been politely listening for four days, nodding along as their peers took to the podium and delivered papers on everything from the explosion in conspiracy theories to the rise of authoritarianism. Then, the mood changed. As one of the lions of the profession, 68-year-old Shawn Rosenberg, began delivering his paper, people in the crowd of about a hundred started shifting in their seats. They loudly whispered objections to their friends. Three women seated next to me near the back row grew so loud
Reply 1 - Posted by:
voxpopuli 9/8/2019 10:39:13 PM (No. 175008)
Rosenberg, who earned degrees at Yale, Oxford and Harvard
an ill educated EU communist..
probably doesn't know which end of an AR15 to hold - or how may there are in Flyoverland..
8 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
Highlander 9/8/2019 10:54:38 PM (No. 175010)
Whew! For a minute there, he had me wondering. It’s only us right-wingers that are the problem, which is no problem at all.
11 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
saguni 9/8/2019 10:57:19 PM (No. 175011)
As usual, he has it bass ackward:
1. We are not a democracy, we are a republic
2. The Leftiod Elite want to be the authoritarians and tell us how to live
3. The Leftiod Elite are the fascists and guiding their "brown shirts," Antifa
17 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
cThree 9/8/2019 10:59:16 PM (No. 175012)
O Alas! The "right wing" is overtaking the liberal patriarchs!
What sanctimonious blather. From the article, the problem is:
[A]s society's "elites"—experts and public figures who help those around them navigate the heavy responsibilities that come with self-rule—have increasingly been sidelined, citizens have proved ill equipped cognitively and emotionally to run a well-functioning democracy. As a consequence, the center has collapsed and millions of frustrated and angst-filled voters have turned in desperation to right-wing populists.
Simply put, to paraphrase Reagan, the "center" has not collapsed; the elites have abandoned the center for the fringe left. I have more confidence in America. I think we're being gaslighted by the media as to the strength of these leftist Democrats, and I think they'll be slapped down.
The author is right about one thing, though. It is an existential struggle for our Republic. I think he mistakenly perceives the wrong enemy.
9 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
davew 9/8/2019 11:16:01 PM (No. 175014)
The founding fathers were quite aware of the failures of democracy in history which is why they constructed a representative republic with systems of checks and balances between the three branches to counter our natural human tendencies to power and ambition. You can hate populists all you want but they still have to abide by the Constitution and the rule of law. I don't think the left objects to the ruthless exercise of power as long as it agrees with their superior moral principles. This is the very definition of a "faction" that the whole of our government is designed to thwart.
I would have been more impressed if this paper had come out when Obama was wielding his pen and his phone but hypocrisy and fraud in academia is so consistently wrong about things that its not worth reading any more.
10 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Vesicant 9/8/2019 11:38:06 PM (No. 175022)
"Political psychologists" kind of gives the game away. Political science and psychology -- are there two social "sciences" more thoroughly discredited than these?
13 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Luandir 9/8/2019 11:47:10 PM (No. 175028)
#3, to add to your observations, the word "republic" does not appear anywhere in the article. Their constant carping about "democracy" thus goes even wider of reality.
9 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
Omen55 9/8/2019 11:58:23 PM (No. 175034)
The Founders put the 2nd Amend into the Constitution for a reason.
7 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
chumley 9/9/2019 2:40:54 AM (No. 175057)
What a wenis. I'm so glad there are people who are better than me, smarter than me and more educated than me to make decisions for me. I know they are all those things because he kept saying so throughout the article.
5 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
Trigger2 9/9/2019 3:06:58 AM (No. 175061)
People are ill equipped cognitively and emotionally. Well, at least that statement is true. It's the public school system's number one priority to make it so and so far they've done a spectacular job at it.
4 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
DVC 9/9/2019 4:40:19 AM (No. 175080)
He says "And as society’s “elites”—experts and public figures who help those around them navigate the heavy responsibilities that come with self-rule—have increasingly been sidelined, citizens have proved ill equipped cognitively and emotionally to run a well-functioning democracy."
Translation:
You damned idiots, who are too stupid to let us 'elites' continue to run things to our advantage, have gone off, ignored us, elected this damnable Trump cretin and we just CANNOT permit this sort of insurrection to continue. It looks like "democracy" is failing, so we will just have to stop letting you poor fools even vote any more. You have shown you just can't do it 'correctly'"
My answer: Pound sand, you SOB. And we have our Liberty Teeth to ensure that we retain our control over the levers of power, regardless of what you dastardly 'elites' think about it.
5 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
jeffkinnh 9/9/2019 6:39:26 AM (No. 175134)
The typical Leftist academic writing a Leftist paper and the typical Leftist Politico article cheering the results they love to hear. They both live inside of a collection of funhouse mirrors and love to babble about all the distorted images they see. They define the distortions they see as "truth" and take what they call "good" (seldom found) and claim it for themselves. They assign "bad" to their opponents, in this case the "right-wing".
One example is "authoritarianism" they assign to Right-wingers. One definition of which is "Authoritarianism is a form of government characterized by strong central power and limited political freedoms. Under an authoritarian regime, individual freedoms are subordinate to the state, and there is no constitutional accountability.".
They have it exactly backwards. The Left LOVES rules, THEIR rules. The Right is removing all the Left's centralized regulations and rules. The Right, for the most part, says "Leave it up to the states or the people", just as the Constitution says we should.
The conclusion of the paper is that we are too stupid to govern ourselves and we should turn the management of the Country over to our Leftist betters. Thus Communists/Socialists/Utopians have always claimed. Yet, they take over and destroy the countries they manage.
A Constitutional Republic succeeds and Socialist/Communist regimes suffer and collapse. The reality vs. the stale and moldy paper based on funhouse mirrors.
Why does ANYONE take these fools seriously?
1 person likes this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
ROLFNader 9/9/2019 7:06:01 AM (No. 175146)
I'm sure that Rick meant " The end of democrats".
1 person likes this.
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