Here are Viktor Orbán’s rules for turning a democracy into an authoritarian state – rules that Donald Trump is now working to implement in the U.S.
One: take over your party and enforce internal party discipline by using political threats and intimidation to stamp out all dissent.
Two: build your base by appealing to fear and hate and branding immigrants and cultural minorities as dangers to society, and demonizing your opponents as enemies of the people.
Three: use disinformation and lies to justify what you’re doing.
Four: use your election victory to claim a sweeping mandate — especially if you don’t win a majority.
Five: centralize your power by destroying the civil service.
Six: redefine the rule of law as rule by executive decree.
Seven: eliminate checks and balances and separation of powers by taking over the legislature, the courts, the media, and civil society.
Eight: rely on your oligarchs to supervise the economy, and reward them with special access to state resources.
Nine: ally yourself with other authoritarians like Vladimir Putin and support his effort to undermine European democracies and attack sovereign countries like Ukraine.
Ten: get the public to believe all this is necessary, and resistance is futile.
I've learned that when someone lacks enough money to pay the bills and must worry constantly about surviving, their IQ goes down from the stress by as much as 14 points. If they are able to improve their situation, their IQ improves. But too much money also affects the brain. And we all have to pay the price for "the toxic money mindset." The supposedly "Big Beautiful Bill" is a good example of the rest of us paying the price for mental dysfunction of the hyper wealthy.
Author Claudia Elsig, MD writes: "There is a marked lack of compassion in wealthy circles. Research shows that many of the rich and upper classes show a lack of compassion towards others and can even behave callously. Alleged instances of routine belittlement, intimidation and vandalism were par for the course at the exclusive Bullingdon Club at Oxford University in the UK during the 1980s.
Studies show that people of lower socioeconomic classes are better at reading facial expressions than people with money. Accurately reading facial expressions and attempting to understand how another person is feeling is a key part of empathy.
Research by psychologists Paul Piff and Dacher Keltner conducted at the University of California at Berkeley found that as people accumulate wealth and power, their empathetic feelings towards people begin to decline."
Once people have a lot of money, there is an obsession to stay wealthy. Ashley Whillans, a behavioral scientist from Harvard, calls this ‘the toxic money mindset’. She says that many already-rich people have a money-centric pursuit of further wealth and that this does little for happiness.
We are not dealing with garden variety fascism. This is a hybrid monster spawned by late capitalism and tech. I did try to warn people last fall that Thiel (Musk’s old broh friend from the endless gamer days) was the BIGGEST concern with DT being the PERFECT distractor. then after the election, I tried to tell people that the election was stolen, obviously because of the technology available to the enemy and listed their motivations to do it. Democrats preferred navel gazing and self recrimination. Then the heist of the largest database in the world under the guise of the ridiculously named and implemented DOGE I tried to tell people that was going on. But who am I? Pretty much nobody and I rarely even got a response to anything that I wrote. People want proof of the obvious, and I understand the value of proof, but it is a little late in the game and as we say in the south, the horses are out of the barn. Immigrants Elon’s and Peter’s long game us playing out perfectly, even better than the old KGB who first had their eye on DT back in the late 80s as the perfect front man for a covert invasion. However, it is playing out not as a war of Nation states or even ideologies, per usual; but a war of tech, which now controls the money especially the scammy money it spawned and plans to force on the world, bitcoin. These new owners of invisible fungible non-tangibles are permanently altering the world as we know it, not just nations and governments, ideologies, jobs, ways of life, retirement plans, scientific agencies that we rely on for information and safety, education, and even humanity as a species, but also literally the planet through the greed for enormous energy to run their monstrosities. They somehow feel rightly justified to “liberate” humanity of the burdens of these systems, including the national parks and the actual planet itself.
Since they use infrastructure too but don’t want to pay taxes for it, I’m sure they will build roads, provide police and fire services, etc, and we will pay for those services. As I have written before, Musk has already prototyped a company town (and a baby/breeding mama compound for women).
Who will do the building and the menial manual labor (cleaning, etc) and the fruit and vegetable picking when the plan to remove all the immigrants is complete? US! That’s the new jobs Trump is promising, not to be filled by humble immigrants or even illegals desperate to leave a horrifying situation in their home country and willing to do anything, but to be filled by average and even skilled and highly educated Americans who have lost their jobs to the mediocre AI they’ve created out if the fantasy dream world sci fi of their youth. Then they will truly be the gods of Asgard, no longer cosplaying, but truly ruling the rest of us with the planet as their live-action game board
Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a very knowledgeable person. Trump is a very stupid person who must have flunked world history. Go back to school, fool, stop pretending to be a president!
Even babies grow up, though. I'm looking forward to my weekend: a ballet photography workshop, a small party with friends that evening; a bike ride Sunday.
Hope you find solace and creativity, too. Thank you.
Great discussion…..I was hoping somehow that our former DOJ would make a deal with DT before he ran for reelection that they would drop all criminal charges in exchange for him not running for president again. looking back on Merrick Garland, I see that was fairly hopeless. A lot 0f the reason he ran again was to stay out of jail. Anyway, is there any of that kind of deal still possible in the future, if he becomes extremely unpopular and more influential-people are standing up to him??
Trump would never accept a deal. He's the deal maker, oopps, I meant US breaker. He'll never change, the best we can hope for is Democratic majorities in Congress to tame his power lust.
I am a registered voter and have been a Democrat for many years thanks to my parents as they campaigned for JFK. We have a lot of pictures here in our home
Here are Viktor Orbán’s rules for turning a democracy into an authoritarian state – rules that Donald Trump is now working to implement in the U.S.
One: take over your party and enforce internal party discipline by using political threats and intimidation to stamp out all dissent.
Two: build your base by appealing to fear and hate and branding immigrants and cultural minorities as dangers to society, and demonizing your opponents as enemies of the people.
Three: use disinformation and lies to justify what you’re doing.
Four: use your election victory to claim a sweeping mandate — especially if you don’t win a majority.
Five: centralize your power by destroying the civil service.
Six: redefine the rule of law as rule by executive decree.
Seven: eliminate checks and balances and separation of powers by taking over the legislature, the courts, the media, and civil society.
Eight: rely on your oligarchs to supervise the economy, and reward them with special access to state resources.
Nine: ally yourself with other authoritarians like Vladimir Putin and support his effort to undermine European democracies and attack sovereign countries like Ukraine.
Ten: get the public to believe all this is necessary, and resistance is futile.
Thanks Martha... and here we are!!! GH
I've learned that when someone lacks enough money to pay the bills and must worry constantly about surviving, their IQ goes down from the stress by as much as 14 points. If they are able to improve their situation, their IQ improves. But too much money also affects the brain. And we all have to pay the price for "the toxic money mindset." The supposedly "Big Beautiful Bill" is a good example of the rest of us paying the price for mental dysfunction of the hyper wealthy.
Author Claudia Elsig, MD writes: "There is a marked lack of compassion in wealthy circles. Research shows that many of the rich and upper classes show a lack of compassion towards others and can even behave callously. Alleged instances of routine belittlement, intimidation and vandalism were par for the course at the exclusive Bullingdon Club at Oxford University in the UK during the 1980s.
Studies show that people of lower socioeconomic classes are better at reading facial expressions than people with money. Accurately reading facial expressions and attempting to understand how another person is feeling is a key part of empathy.
Research by psychologists Paul Piff and Dacher Keltner conducted at the University of California at Berkeley found that as people accumulate wealth and power, their empathetic feelings towards people begin to decline."
Once people have a lot of money, there is an obsession to stay wealthy. Ashley Whillans, a behavioral scientist from Harvard, calls this ‘the toxic money mindset’. She says that many already-rich people have a money-centric pursuit of further wealth and that this does little for happiness.
https://caldaclinic.com/the-psychology-of-wealth-and-how-it-affects-mental-health/?fbclid=IwY2xjawLCeuhleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFtbUNmeGJORzZydUtkOG13AR5ITDS_N5gf1Q8wnrYF4Px3nnia6Z_aNr7oQt9oiug1rwCL-zL2qsp0KtVF7A_aem_wvai0YwDJ5y1t6fiZ_p6_w
Moral collapse needs to be reversed by exercising our moral muscles 💪🏼
We are not dealing with garden variety fascism. This is a hybrid monster spawned by late capitalism and tech. I did try to warn people last fall that Thiel (Musk’s old broh friend from the endless gamer days) was the BIGGEST concern with DT being the PERFECT distractor. then after the election, I tried to tell people that the election was stolen, obviously because of the technology available to the enemy and listed their motivations to do it. Democrats preferred navel gazing and self recrimination. Then the heist of the largest database in the world under the guise of the ridiculously named and implemented DOGE I tried to tell people that was going on. But who am I? Pretty much nobody and I rarely even got a response to anything that I wrote. People want proof of the obvious, and I understand the value of proof, but it is a little late in the game and as we say in the south, the horses are out of the barn. Immigrants Elon’s and Peter’s long game us playing out perfectly, even better than the old KGB who first had their eye on DT back in the late 80s as the perfect front man for a covert invasion. However, it is playing out not as a war of Nation states or even ideologies, per usual; but a war of tech, which now controls the money especially the scammy money it spawned and plans to force on the world, bitcoin. These new owners of invisible fungible non-tangibles are permanently altering the world as we know it, not just nations and governments, ideologies, jobs, ways of life, retirement plans, scientific agencies that we rely on for information and safety, education, and even humanity as a species, but also literally the planet through the greed for enormous energy to run their monstrosities. They somehow feel rightly justified to “liberate” humanity of the burdens of these systems, including the national parks and the actual planet itself.
Since they use infrastructure too but don’t want to pay taxes for it, I’m sure they will build roads, provide police and fire services, etc, and we will pay for those services. As I have written before, Musk has already prototyped a company town (and a baby/breeding mama compound for women).
Who will do the building and the menial manual labor (cleaning, etc) and the fruit and vegetable picking when the plan to remove all the immigrants is complete? US! That’s the new jobs Trump is promising, not to be filled by humble immigrants or even illegals desperate to leave a horrifying situation in their home country and willing to do anything, but to be filled by average and even skilled and highly educated Americans who have lost their jobs to the mediocre AI they’ve created out if the fantasy dream world sci fi of their youth. Then they will truly be the gods of Asgard, no longer cosplaying, but truly ruling the rest of us with the planet as their live-action game board
Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a very knowledgeable person. Trump is a very stupid person who must have flunked world history. Go back to school, fool, stop pretending to be a president!
trump is remarkably incompetent, unbelievably evil, and extraordinarily intellectually feeble....
True.... like an emotionally disturbed 2 year old with a cry baby snit fit. Happy Weekend!
Even babies grow up, though. I'm looking forward to my weekend: a ballet photography workshop, a small party with friends that evening; a bike ride Sunday.
Hope you find solace and creativity, too. Thank you.
Thanks Stephanie... and you also just described the 77 million folks who voted for this monster. Good luck to all... GH
Where are the proud boys?
Great discussion…..I was hoping somehow that our former DOJ would make a deal with DT before he ran for reelection that they would drop all criminal charges in exchange for him not running for president again. looking back on Merrick Garland, I see that was fairly hopeless. A lot 0f the reason he ran again was to stay out of jail. Anyway, is there any of that kind of deal still possible in the future, if he becomes extremely unpopular and more influential-people are standing up to him??
Trump would never accept a deal. He's the deal maker, oopps, I meant US breaker. He'll never change, the best we can hope for is Democratic majorities in Congress to tame his power lust.
This wasn’t a coup? You mean ours? I thought we were IN the coup part now 🤔
The Proud Boys were pardoned by Donald J. Trump
I am a registered voter and have been a Democrat for many years thanks to my parents as they campaigned for JFK. We have a lot of pictures here in our home
Trump pardoned The Oathkeepers and Proud Boys that’s why I am on Bluesky as it’s not X
I am on Bluesky so I don’t have X because of Elon Musk