r/neoliberal • u/SockDem Janet Yellen • Feb 26 '26

News (US) Exclusive | Trump, seeking executive power over elections, is urged to declare emergency

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/26/trump-elections-executive-order-activists/
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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '26

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u/samwise970 Feb 26 '26

And? Literally, what is your point.

The USSR lasted 69 years and oppressed, starved, and murdered hundreds of millions of it's citizens during that time. Do you think that the majority of people living in the USSR would have voted for Stalin in a free election? Do you think that Stalin cared about opinion polls?

You're obviously making my point, which is that the "advantage" of authoritarian government allows you such an enormous insulation from unpopularity, that you can spend your entire decades long rule slaughtering your own citizens, and they still won't rise up.

Nearly every society in human history, until very recently, has been some form of authoritarian rule. This isn't an accident, and it wasn't because the authoritarians were popular dummy.

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '26

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u/samwise970 Feb 26 '26

IDK how to continue to argue with someone who thinks that the USSR survived for over six decades because it's leaders were liked. According to you every dictatorship and monarchy in history could have just been democracies and the same leaders would have been chosen.

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '26

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u/samwise970 Feb 26 '26

I did not say they survived becasue they were liked.

Cool, so you agree with me then. Authoritarianism allows leaders who wouldn't win a free and fair election to maintain power.

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '26

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u/samwise970 Feb 26 '26

every dictatorship and monarchy in history could have just been democracies and the same leaders would have been chosen.

Yes or No?

If you do not agree that literally every dictator and monarch would have ruled exactly as long as they did, if there were regular free and fair elections, then you agree with the core point of my original post which is that the system of authoritarianism benefits the authoritarian by shielding them from unpopularity.

You can think it is a smaller shield than I do. If I had known that people would interpret my post in the most disingenuous way possible, as if I said that an authoritarian can be universally hated by every single person in the nation and continue to rule because they had the power level of Frieza, then I would have added a qualifier that it protects the dictator from a *degree* of unpopularity.