Competitive Authoritarianism, an All-Too-Fancy Name for Putting Your Thumb on the Scales

Shakespear’s ‘what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive’ comes to mind when I am presented with a tongue-twister that quite properly should have been made simple. I’m not badly educated, but if someone at a cocktail party asked me, in ordinary conversation, whether I agreed that competitive authoritarianism was a good or bad idea, I’d excuse myself, walk over to the bar for another glass of wine, and spear a cheese-cube with a toothpick.

The Term seems to be an definition for how The Orange Man does presidential business, but let’s look deeper.

The dictionary definition calls it “a hybrid political regime that combines elements of authoritarianism and democracy, where formal democratic institutions exist but are heavily manipulated to ensure the ruling party’s dominance.” Admittedly, words are all we have to communicate, but that definition leans as far to the right as you can lean without falling over.

Authoritarianism is a sort of hair-rising word to begin with, as are many of the ‘isms:’ Communism, McCarthyism, plagiarism, absolutism, alcoholism, barbarianism, dogmatism, and the much feared embolism, that kills you midstride on a run through the park. But you get my drift, the word needs a softening modifier. The modifier is ‘competitive.’

Competitive authoritarianism sounds so much more like a football match, or the final round of a golf tournament, than what it actually is, which is the march from Weimar Germany to Hitler’s Third Reich. But that’s far too touchy a comparison in the highly charged emotions of our current social media.

Musn’t muss the hair of the radicals (both right and left) lurking behind each tree in the social forest.

What are examples of nations practicing competitive authoritarianism?

Nations that have practiced that dark art include Russia, Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, though Venezuela has since shifted to full authoritarianism, like a pure bred thoroughbred horse. Other historical examples include Peru under Fujimori and Serbia under Milošević, while some current cases may be seen in Guinea, Kyrgyzstan, and Uganda.

Not great examples to emulate.

Not to leave the Iron Curtain nations behind, such as Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania, all of whom claimed ‘free’ elections under communism. I live in the Czech Republic, and my wife is Czech. “We were free,” she claims, “in the sense that there was no monetary charge to enter a polling booth to vote for either of two pre-selected communist candidates.”

But the above examples chill the spirit, if not the spine.

And, as for thumbs on the scales, who has smaller-but-more-active little thumbs than the Orange Man, who now sits as our president?

The framers of our enshrined Constitution intended to set up a three-part government of “checks and balances,” because they distrusted the common citizen to guard the republic sufficiently. They feared the ordinariness of his education and tendency to be distracted by the shiny objects of personal gain.

Smart fellows. They knew both kings and commoners, and remembered them well.

So, they gave us a republic instead of a democracy, electing representatives of the common man to create the laws, a House of Representatives for the many, and a Senate to guard against the passions of those many. Not satisfied to end there, a Supreme Court would stand ready to inform the nation of which laws satisfied the constrictions and constructions of that holy constitution.

What could possibly go wrong?

The opening statement that “all men are created equal” went wrong, before the ink was even dry on our Bill of Rights. We were (at our inception) a slave nation, and Virginia (the seat of political power at the time) was a slave state. But, without the support of Virginia at that moment, the remaining colonies had no hope of establishing the nation General Washington had fought so hard to create.

And so our founders made a deal with the Devil.

Stay with me, this is key to many future events.

Virginia hadn’t enough white owners to outvote their black slaves. So, the Constitutional Convention agreed that ‘slave owners’ would be given control over three fifths of every slave vote. Thus, all men were created equal, with the exception of those who were 2/5 equal. And, like so many deals with the underworld, that determination would create the circumstances that brough on the Civil War in America, the bloodiest war we ever fought. With families fighting families, more were killed than in all the wars we have fought since, including both World Wars.

Other stuff happened more recently, between Johnny Carson and Saturday Night Live.

The rich chop-shopped America, selling off its parts at a profit, like a stolen car, so millionaires might become billionaires. Not twice as rich, which would have been excessive in itself, but a thousand times as rich, flying low under the radar.

Until the radar could be redirected.

American production, the major strength of our country, was packed up, loaded on ships, and sent off to China for cheaper labor and additional profit. Big Money convinced the Supreme Court that companies had the same rights as people, and could spend vast amounts to support political candidates.

So, they did.

Immediately, Congress made a law that allowed unlimited campaign contributions, which made what used to be called bribes and corruption, absolutely legal. As we all know, since then we are among the few squeaky-clean nations in the world devoid of bribery and corruption. Renamed ‘contributions,’ words still matter.

As a result, the train finally left the station for business to take over Congress, and every government institution was up for sale.

Washington became anti-union, Big Oil crushed environmental protections, and single wage-earner families disappeared, along with the boat in the driveway that took their kids fishing on weekends. The Mercedes I bought for $10,000 in 1972, costs over $200,000 today, but everyone knows inflation has been controlled. The national minimum wage has remained stuck at $7.25 per hour since July 2009, unchanged for over 16 years. This is the longest period in history without a federal increase since the minimum wage was established in 1938.

Truth became statistics, and we know that when you torture statistics, they will confess to anything.

During the 2008 recession, the big banks that caused it with subprime lending and investment vehicles were bailed out financially by the government. Ten million of the Americans who provided that bailout, lost their homes. Another statistic.

Essentially, the billionaire class paid for the tools to be stolen from the toolboxes that formerly allowed government agencies to serve and protect American citizens.

Democrats co-conspired with Republicans in a self-serving forty-year attack on the Middle Class.

The Middle Class has since declined to near disappearance, as families are now supported by both parents working. Average student loan debt in America is approximately $39,075 for federal loans, or about $42,673 for a total that includes private loans. Average credit card debt is around $6,500 to $7,300, and personal bankruptcies average 542,529 broken homes .annually.

China, on the other hand, and particularly because of having been given America as an outlet for manufactured goods, built its own Middle Class. In only seven years, China’s Middle Class grew to 700 million, not twice America’s Middle Class, but twice its total population.

That, in the brief time allotted to me, is the result of the American version of Competitive Authoritarianism.

Not quite so competitive, but overwhelmingly authoritarian.

All on little cat feet, all when we were busy elsewhere…