How Much Longer?

​Recently I shared a post on BlueSky sharing my view that the rise of the populous authoritarian right at home in the United States and around the world is in large part due to the failure of the center-left parties to deliver on the promise of the liberal movement to create broadly fair just and good lives for all.

Essentially my proposition is that center-left parties have failed to vigorously fight and repeal the Reagan Thatcher revolution of trickle down, financial sector deregulation and corporate globalism and all too often gone along with it from deregulating banking to trade legislation like NAFTA.

I was asked to explain why I was blaming the liberal center-left and not the right and not blaming the progressives for being too impatient and lacking “solidarity” to accept slow gradual progress over the long term.

My response to this good faith question was that I did not intend to hold the right especially as its become an authoritarian far right blameless. There are only so many characters I had in a post to use to make a point.

It is my strong belief that the authoritarian rightwing movements in America are in fact a mortal threat to our freedom as individuals and our democracy. More than that it threatens to erode the relatively peaceful order among nations we’ve managed to maintain in Europe since World War II and drive the…