Re: [OT] Trump's third term

On 2025-03-31 12:47 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

On 2025-03-31 11:19 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

On 2025-03-31 12:01 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

shawn <nanoflower@notforg.m.a.i.l.com> wrote:

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 22:49:20 -0400, Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com>:

On 2025-03-30 10:05 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

 

. . .

 

Was FDR a dictator when he ran for his third and fourth terms?

 

No, because it was permissible for FDR to run for those terms.

 

By the low bar of it wasn't unconstitutional, then you don't believe
Viktor Orban is a dictator. Right?

 

. . .

 

My perception is that elections in Hungary are not yet believed to be
corrupt so that a sufficiently popular candidate *could* still defeat
him at the polls. If that is true, then I wouldn't call Orban a dictator.

 

He made subtle gradual changes in civil law to give himself political
advantage and completely changed the judiciary to eliminate neutral
judges, replacing them with his partisans. And yes, it's very difficult
to participate in an election as a member of the opposition.

 

He simply took a number of years to rewrite laws instead of just
declaring the constitution no longer in force and presenting a
replacement constitution.

 

The effect was the same. It simply took a lot longer to close society.

 

I don't follow Hungary very closely so I didn't know any of that. I saw
stories when they had their last election that implied the opposition
candidate had a real chance, although he ultimately lost, so I didn't
realize things were quite so dire.

 I don't think anybody would have characterized it as a free and fair
election.
 

In Poland, they had a dictator for close to a decade but somehow got the
government out and they're trying to put laws back to the way they were.

 

The "somehow" in that sentence is that they had an election which the
PiS (Law and Justice Party) lost. A presidential election is on the near
horizon and the PiS candidate has made a fool of himself, which may cost
him the election.

 Right. Why wasn't it made impossible for the opposition party to win
when previous elections weren't free and fair? They had a peaceful
transfer of power that time. I'm glad but I have no idea why.
 

I simply don't follow Polish politics closely enough to venture a guess. FWIW, I noticed an English language news channel from Poland in YouTube the other day. I may have to start watching that although it may be too much to expect that they'd go back into historical topics.
By the way, did you know that American historian Anne Applebaum, who has written many books on Eastern Europe and especially the Gulag, is married to a Polish politician? He was in the cabinet of Tusk's government the last time he was PM and may well be this time too.

I would have said the same about Erdogan until the last week or so but
he seems to have borrowed a page from the Dictator's Handbook by locking
up his chief credible rival.

 

He's had mass arrests of presumed political opponents on flimsy excuses.
The army is no longer a neutral force in society. The top officers are
all his partisans.

 

I've learned over the years that military coups are not always as bad as
we tend to think. In many countries, they are essentially the government
of last resort, meaning that if the civilian government messes up badly
enough, people actually count on the military to take over, clean things
up, and then restore civilian rule.

 In the case of Turkey, the army had been used to reign in governments
that tended to introduce enforcement of Islamic law to maintain the
secular society that Ataturk wanted. Erdogan was able to change the
army's role and has been able to introduce plenty of religious law into
civil society.
 Turkey was never an entirely free society but it used to be significantly
better than a lot of majority Islamic countries.
 

That's essentially what happened
when the Muslim Brotherhood president, Morsi, attracted the biggest
demonstrations in human history - substantially bigger than anything
we've seen in the West - and the military toppled him.

 Morsi was no democrat and false claimed he had public support for all
those pro-religious policies implemented in the new constitution. Then
he was actively discriminating -- and murdering -- Coptic Christians,
who were close to 1/6 of the population. Even Mubarket protected them.
 

But the top Field
Marshal apparently liked running things and ran to replace Morsi as a
civilian. He's still in charge today.

 Yeah. Egypt's a shithole.
 

. . .

You'll get no argument from me ;-) Mind you, I've never been there and it may be better than we think. Anything's possible, right?
--
Rhino