Democracy Taken Down By the Democractic?

 The Bulwark published Don’t Call the Brazil Insurrection ‘Anti-Democratic’ which I think answers some questions of mine about January 6 and Trumpism.

The upheaval that took place in Brazil on Sunday—an assault on government buildings by supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president who lost the country’s Oct. 30 election—has generally been described as an “attack on democracy.” That’s what President Joe Biden and the leaders of Mexico and Canada called it in a joint statement on Monday. The European Union says it was an “anti-democratic storming of government quarters.” The American embassy in Brazil calls it an “anti-democratic protest.” The New York Times says it’s an “anti-democracy riot.” Other reports characterize it as an “anti-democratic riot” by “anti-democracy insurrectionists” or “anti-democratic demonstrators.”

It’s true that if the assault had succeeded in reinstalling Bolsonaro, it would have overturned Brazilian democracy. But it’s not true that the assailants understood themselves or their mission as anti-democratic. Most of them, subjectively, were pro-democratic. They believed that Bolsonaro had won the election, and therefore, they were defending democracy, not attacking it.

This isn’t just a cute semantic distinction. It’s crucial to averting, or at least defeating, a new kind of insurrection against legitimately elected governments in advanced countries.

As I listen to people who are pro-Trump, they do not have a politics that is anti-democratic. I have been putting them down as political windbags. That is, they have no political ideology. They propose no political or social changes. I have been waiting to hear what changes they think Trump and his ilk will bring to the country. I think now I see why I am still waiting.

They expect no changes. They expect the government to go on as before, but as one that will protect their liberties; one that will retain democracy for them.

I certainly hear no one espousing the dictatorship of the proletariat.

No one wants to create an American version of apartheid.

No one wants to rid the country of individualism, or democracy (voting fraud being a crime against democracy that the Trumpist would not engage in) per Mussolini.

That the people egging on Trumpism seems at odds with what its followers think they will get out of Trumpism only means the herd are dupes. How the Supreme Court Is About to Destroy Federalism.

Every grifter depends on a chump.

sch 1/12/23