Losing Ground

Creeping authoritarianism is gaining; democracy is losing

The Media

Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller website ran this headline: “’60 Minutes’ Anchor Ruins Graduation With Deranged Anti-Trump Tirade”

I believe this is the best illustration of the power of right wing media in the absence of a modern liberal media. They rake 60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley over the coals and make it seem as though the students hated his commencement address (they didn’t), and that he’s the deranged one (he isn’t).

New communication technologies have caught traditional defenders of democracy flat-footed. Our country’s survival as an imperfect democracy that has struggled—sometimes successfully, as in Brown v. Board of Education, and sometimes unsuccessfully, as in Dred Scott—to live up to its core values for 250 years, is at risk.

One viral tactic being used is licensing anyone and everyone to use their stories, which is how they become force-multiplied. Via that mass-platforming, lies get spread across multiple sites so quickly, and make the stories bigger and more widespread through algorithms that favor controversy and rapidly rising stories.

Now we’re in an all-hands-on-deck moment. Democracy is on the line, and it’s currently losing to right-wing cable television, a jillion podcasts, X, Instagram, Facebook, Snap Chat, and YouTube. We all need to stand up, and that’s made even more important by the fact that the Democratic Party has shown up for a digital battle with analogue weapons wielded by the OG Dems. They need a youth-movement. They have no bench. Holding a séance to bring back Edward R. Murrow is not enough.

Just when we need a two party system to really engage all Americans with the traditional values represented by each (low tax, low regulation, robust defense, balanced budget for the Republicans, and higher taxes on the wealthy, regulations to keep businesses from polluting our air and water, and to ensure user safety, consumer financial protections, and a robust defense for the Democrats), both seem to have lost the thread.

The Republican Party is now a transparent shill for whatever Donald Trump wants, and the Democrats are watching a historical decline in membership, having gained in only 57 counties in the last five years as Republicans have made gains in over a thousand. The GOP has risen on traditional Democratic Party values, as the Democrats fail to engage rural America, leaving an opening for the faux populism of the MAGA right.

The Pardon Non-Scandal.

If you thought that freeing the violent felons from the January 6th Capitol riot and insurrection—felons duly convicted by juries of their peers, not “radical left lunatics”—would be the end, think again. As I’ve written previously, whether you’re a killer cop or cop killer, a combination of flattery and cash will buy your freedom. In the hands of a president more concerned with personal loyalty, the rule of law turns out to be surprisingly fragile.

Judicial Independence

Journalist Doug Porter notes that, “political scientist Adam Bonica has calculated that the Trump administration suffered a 96% loss rate in federal courts in the month of May. Those losses were nonpartisan: 72.2% of Republican-appointed judges and 80.4% of Democratic-appointed judges ruled against the administration.

To the Strongman, whether he’s here in the USA or Hungary, Russia, or Turkey, the rap is always the same: judges who disagree with the dictator must be communists, leftists, lunatics, socialists, or just plain “nasty,” as Trump likes to say. When not going after the media, he assails “disloyal” judges. That is textbook authoritarianism. We must stand against it while we still can, because the so-called Big Beautiful Bill contains 53 words intended to strip the judiciary of independence.

Academic Freedom

Not missing a beat, this Republican Party is in lockstep with the President’s desire to crush academic freedom and scientific research. He wants no accountability anywhere, because accountability requires an informed electorate, and that’s the last thing MAGA wants.

In addition to media and judicial intimidation, we are now sending scientists and advanced research students packing for other countries. Destroying our network of scientific and medical research may seem insane at first, but there is a method to their madness: Remove the smart people, and there will be no one left to complain or hold a mirror up to the blatant power grab and corruption. Now, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of HHS, is planning to stop doctors and researchers from publishing in the world’s most credible medical journals (JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, etc.). It will prompt them to leave for foreign shores if they wish to continue to share their studies. Kennedy also made a seat-of-the-pants ruling on Covid before a scheduled meeting of experts from FDA and CDC. Couched as removing all aspects of DEI from government websites and research, Kennedy has also taken down actuarial information on more than a dozen data-gathering programs that track deaths and disease.

None of this is normal.

©2025 Jon Sinton