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Dictatorships and US government: Extra cheese edition
Boring7
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
There was a meandering topic in the Jong-Il thread about whether or not Hugo Chavez was a dictatorship and whether or not the US was an autocratic machine oiled by the blood of the common man.
I wanted to argue but it seemed off topic, so here we are and here's my opinion, the extra cheese is the pizza I'm having for breakfast.
Chavez is a dictator. Yeah the legislature full of cronies and minions put their foot down once or twice to stop him, and yeah he's a popular dictator, but the government is still, for the most part, "Hugo Chavez sez, Venezuela does." Both legally and in practice.
thoughts?
I wanted to argue but it seemed off topic, so here we are and here's my opinion, the extra cheese is the pizza I'm having for breakfast.
Chavez is a dictator. Yeah the legislature full of cronies and minions put their foot down once or twice to stop him, and yeah he's a popular dictator, but the government is still, for the most part, "Hugo Chavez sez, Venezuela does." Both legally and in practice.
thoughts?
Boring7 on
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As for American living off the blood of the common man? There are examples of American overthrowing popular, democratic governments in order to support their own interests, like in Iran and Guatemala in the 50’s. Then again, it’s hard to find any country that has been/is in a position of some power that hasn’t exactly the same thing.
If your government routinely shoots its own people in the streets, claims to routinely have political victories over 90% for the control party, or spontaneously creates new cabinet positions to extend the governorship of its officials, you're probably living in a fascist state.
Like I said in the other thread, I'm not certain that someone like Chavez is a dictator, but he'll do in a pinch. Proudly getting all snuggly with regimes in Cuba, Iran, and Russia don't do you any favors in that department.
"I'm term limited to not stay in this office any more, so I'll just create a new one with the same powers and move over to that one."
How bout this as a good rule of thumb? If you are proposing amendments that would allow you to rule for as long as you're still breathing, then at best you are a would-be dictator. Chavez is a clown and his countrymen are realizing he is running their country into the ground. He'll be gone in the next decade and Venezuela will be better for it.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/hungarys-constitutional-revolution/#more-27489
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/more-hungary/#more-27541http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/world/europe/foes-of-hungarys-government-fear-demolition-of-democracy.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=all
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Mostly that the only mechanism for getting rid of it once it inevitably becomes unpopular is civil war.
Besides rights, long-term issues like managing a peaceful transfer of power - you have to make sure the ruling ideology rather than the leader is where loyalties lie and this can be unclear. Popular dictatorships often boost their popularity through a degree of graft, and the web of crony support can collapse suddenly, or it might not; it's hard to tell a priori (which is true of any government in a corrupt nation, not just an entrenched one; it's just that the entrenched one can build to a higher quality of life under the stability provided by one regime whereas the unstable democracy never gets that rich to begin with).
In countries with nontrivial threats to the expression of dissent, keeping tabs on the "real" level of dissent can be difficult. The sudden success of the Iranian revolution came as a surprise, even to its leaders. Both the beginning of Soviet communism in 1917 and the beginning of the end in East Germany occurred quite unexpectedly - whilst the existence of dissidents were known, their level of popular support was not. "Popular" can be hard to judge.
That's kinda how it goes now?
By a large portion of his people.
He also provided impressive social services for the entire country. As far as I know, there was little discrimination in regards to tribal or religious sects.
Gaddafi's failure was that his "socialist" system wasn't. Everything was owned by him, not the people, and infrastructure and perks became focused more and more on urban areas, leaving areas where the revolution started to be left behind when it came to sewage, lighting, etc. Before the Revolution and around the same time Gaddafi and Bush reconciled, Gaddafi held several speeches where he directly addressed some of these issues. Oil profits were to go directly from the administration to the people. Popular elections for government positions were to be introduced. The Revolution's biggest gripes were housing and jobs.
The problem is that the political corruption stalled or completely halted the reforms. There's no way to gauge how serious Gaddafi was versus lip service. I'm guessing the latter.
The Revolution began in earnest when Gaddafi met the protesters with severe violence.
If Gaddafi had made good on the reforms, cracked down on corruption, and provided the needed infrastructure and loosened his private control on all industry and properly socialized the country he'd still be alive and in control.
I dunno what you're accusing me of since I haven't said anything regarding oppression/dissension, only that whatever institution of power in the US uses that power to punish the opposition.
e: on reflection, actually quite a lot of authoritarian systems permit a degree of published dissent. The regime acts when the dissenters organize under viable leadership rather than when the dissent is published, so lots of personality politics rather than ideological dispute.
States in the US gerrymander like heck, to be sure.
Yeah.
MS is involved in a nasty gerrymandering dispute now with the GOP publicly acknowledging that they're running obstruction because they don't want black people to vote. The Feds are gonna have to get involved because, hey, they had to enact a law decades ago due to the GOP's inability to fairly run the state.
And the Mississippi people keep voting these assholes in.
Like that famous line from Zimbabwe, after they squished a couple of opposition newspapers, "of course we have freedom of speech, but when they criticized the police, they went too far"
I think it was Pakistan that has the hardline bloc that proposed an amendment that would make any discussion of Islam outside of holy sites, period, an offense that carried the death penalty. Ridiculous.
Then again, the UK is remarkably restrictive in its political speech for a paragon of Western virtues.
Let's call a spade a spade. Abolishing term limits is the first step to becoming president for life. Is there any reliable evidence out there that shows this was not his intent?
This. So much this.
I mean, you can easily take this kind of argument to some idiotic and fallacious extremes to the point where it's arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin (as many as want to) or what constitutes legitimate Scottishness (killing centurions in a skirt). Authoritarianism is a scale and there is no one tipping point or prerequisite where you become an honest to goodness dictator or not.
So he may have been trying to potentially become a dictator. That's a far cry from "is."
Our dear departed leader for example.
I feel that we are gigantic hypocrites to be allies with these dictatorships and talk about our love of democracy. As seen in Egypt, one day the regime we supported will end and then what? We have a country of people who will rightfully despise us.
So you think that we should only have diplomatic relations with nice countries?
There's no "may have been" about it. He was, and he failed. It was a naked power grab that fooled no one (aside from you I guess), least of all the electorate in Venezuela.
How exactly?
The national restriction against using recorded political speech in derogatory or satirical contexts is particularly jarring.
Dictators, can't live with em, can't kill them all..
In terms of keeping people alive, as long as dictatorships aren't brutally committing violence against their own and mowing them down in the streets, and as long as resources and infrastructure are sound, there's an argument to be made that a prolonged political discourse is the best strategy for change in those regions.
Saudi Arabia is relatively safe and stable. People are being repressed left, right, and center at many levels of civil participation, and that needs to change, but there are few ways to do that with an invading force. Saudi isn't an entirely benevolent dictatorship, but it is a stable dictatorship, and it's also one that doesn't have a huge problem in dealing with Western powers or Israel.
Right now, that's a big deal, and will likely remain so for some time to come.
Are low prices of oil worth having an active role in oppressing the world while enjoying freedom at home?
Thanks for proving my point. When's the last time a dictator was shut down by losing an election?
Thanks for proving my point. When's the last time a dictator was shut down by losing an election?