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ck4829

(34,977 posts)
Sun Apr 28, 2019, 08:09 AM Apr 2019

A reading from Gene Sharp's "From Dictatorship to Democracy"

Necessary sources of political power

The principle is simple. Dictators require the assistance of the people they rule, without which they cannot secure and maintain the sources of political power. These sources of political power include:

•Authority, the belief among the people that the regime is legitimate, and that they have a moral duty to obey it;

•Human resources, the number and importance of the persons and groups which are obeying, cooperating, or providing assistance to the rulers;

•Skills and knowledge, needed by the regime to perform specific actions and supplied by the cooperating persons and groups;

•Intangible factors, psychological and ideological factors that may induce people to obey and assist the rulers;

•Material resources, the degree to which the rulers control or have access to property, natural resources, financial resources,the economic system, and means of communication and transportation; and

•Sanctions, punishments, threatened or applied, against the disobedient and noncooperative to ensure the submission and cooperation that are needed for the regime to exist and carry out its policies.

https://www.aeinstein.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FDTD.pdf


Trump may not be a dictator (yet), but his administration relies on these same sources of power, this also goes to show that Trump is just a symptom, not the root problem. Many of these sources of power are entities unto themselves and working together to keep Trump in place. Right wing evangelicals, white nationalism, the Republican Party, the erroneous belief that being rich makes you more of an expert on everything, prosperity gospel, IOKIYAR, etc.

They all need to go.
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