An Amazing Lack of Self Awareness

I've switched over to my second blog because my readership through facebook is down about 80% for the last three postings. I'm sure I'm just being paranoid.

Here is an opinion piece by Yalie math major David Leonhardt writing from Budapest. He thinks the Republicans are the authoritarian party here. He compares us to the right wing government in Hungary. Here's his complaint about the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán:

What Orbán has done is to squash political competition. He has gerrymandered and changed election rules, so that he doesn’t need a majority of votes to control the government. He has rushed bills through Parliament with little debate. He has relied on friendly media to echo his message and smear opponents. He has stocked the courts with allies. He has overseen rampant corruption. He has cozied up to Putin. To justify his rule, Orbán has cited external threats — especially Muslim immigrants and George Soros, the Jewish Hungarian-born investor — and said that his party is the only one that represents the real people.
None of that sounds too particularly horrible. In fact is sounds just like normal politics for much of the World.

Here is his comparison with President Trump's administration so far:

The list includes: rushing unpopular bills through Congress with little debate; telling bald lies about those bills; stealing Supreme Court seat to maintain a Republican majority; trying to keep American citizens from voting; gerrymandering; campaigning on racism and xenophobia; refusing to investigate President Trump’s corruption and Russian ties.
OK, let's take those in order.

Doesn't "rushing unpopular bills through Congress with little debate" and "telling bald lies about those bills" remind anyone of Democrat activity during the first two years of the Obama Administration? I'll give a clue, the bill's initials are ACA.

"Stealing" a Supreme Court seat to maintain a Republican majority? Did the Democrats own that seat? Why didn't they nominate someone who the other side might vote for? Is the "advise and consent" part of the Constitution mandatory and no one told me?

Would Democrats quit implying black Americans are less capable of obtaining photo IDs than white Americans are. That's so racist. Also, requiring a photo ID to vote is completely constitutional. See Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 553 U.S. 181, (2008) a 6-3 decision.

And about "gerrymandering," has no Democrat dominated state legislature every drawn federal congressional boundaries in the state so as to help out Democrat candidates win? Really, never? It's only Republicans who have done that? Sounds like the Democrats are pretty stupid then.

How is it racist or xenophobic to show a completely real video of an actual murderer wishing he could have killed more police officers and threatening to escape and kill more? So if the Democrats showed a tape of Dylann Roof talking about killing church goers, that would be racist too?

I looked at the links he put in for the words "corruption" and "Russian ties" in that paragraph and laughed. I guess some myths never die.

The main problem underlying Leonhardt's unconvincing comparison of the Trump administration with the Orbán administration, is that very few readers know anything about Hungarian politics, so it's comparing what we know to what we don't. Not at all eddifying.

Oh, and the Yalie's complete inability to see that the things he complains of about Republicans apply also to Democrats with the same or greater frequency; that's largely fatal to his credibility. So his complaints are completely unconvincing regarding a threat to democracy in our pretty wonderful constitutional republic.

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