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Jennifer Mercieca

1 Oct, 8 tweets, 2 min read

I'm proud to sign this letter: American Democracy at Risk: An Open Letter to the American Public by Steven Rosenzweig link.medium.com/J8nFqMxQeab

Written by faculty/scholars of democratic erosion/democratic backsliding (how democracies fail): democratic-erosion.com/syllabus/

Taking Page From Authoritarians, Trump Turns Power of State Against Political Rivals nytimes.com/2020/10/10/us/…

Authoritarians:
1. Violate the democratic rules of the game.
2. Deny the legitimacy of political opposition.
3. Encourage/tolerate political violence.
4. Violate the civil liberties of the people & press.

Trump’s done all of this just this week.

Violating the democratic rules of the game: like trying to prevent people from voting or ballots from being counted or creating doubt about the integrity of the vote.

Denying the legitimacy of political opposition: like calling your opponents names like “monster” or “sleepy” or saying your opposition is a stooge for a different candidate or agenda.

Encourage/tolerate political violence: like not condemning militia terrorists plotting to kidnap a governor or telling Proud Boys to stand by.

Curtailing the civil liberties of the people or press: threatening voting rights, preventing peaceful protest, threatening the press, withholding information from the people.

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More from @jenmercieca

Jennifer Mercieca

@jenmercieca

8 Oct

Trump is having a difficult re-election campaign because he lacks ethos--credibility--in a way that he didn't in 2016. In 2016 a lot of Americans thought of Trump as a successful businessman who would run the nation like a business. Experience now shows he wasn't that guy.

Credibility is important in persuasion because people trust speakers who they believe are knowledgeable and who have good will in communicating what they know to the audience/electorate. Trump hasn't cared about his credibility.

You build credibility with an electorate--it's a long-term strategy of proving yourself to be a trustworthy source of information, with good intentions. You build credibility by providing useful & accurate information over time.

Read 8 tweets

Jennifer Mercieca

@jenmercieca

30 Sep

I wouldn’t normally share this, but I’m in such great company here ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Leftists Call to Cancel Debates: They Are a 'Danger to Public Safety and a Direct Threat to Black Life' breitbart.com/politics/2020/…

ps: advocating for democratic norms is actually conservative.

2020 Plot-twist: the “leftists” are the conservatives and the “conservatives” are the radicals.

Read 4 tweets

Jennifer Mercieca

@jenmercieca

30 Sep

I feel a little bit of relief every time the world gets to see what a dangerous authoritarian Trump is because it confirms that I'm not the only one who sees it.

Here's a piece I wrote about that: justsecurity.org/63860/mueller-…

And, if you haven't read my essay on "weaponized communication" and dangerous demagogues like Trump, here it is (open access): oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/bitstream/hand…

I explain all of this more fully in my book, available at your favorite local or in ereader, audio, or regular book form here: amazon.com/Demagogue-Pres…

Read 4 tweets

Jennifer Mercieca

@jenmercieca

29 Sep

#Debates2020 advice for Biden:

1. Fact-check Trump (but not a lot) to show reality exists
2. Call him out for his fallacies to show the ways he cheats in debate
3. Laugh at him to throw him off

Trump typically uses aggressive debate cheats--things that would get someone disqualified from high school or collegiate debate. Two of the worst are ad hominem & ad baculum:

All "ad" fallacies are distraction techniques--"ad" means "to"--debaters seek to re-route our attention from the central issue of the debate and to the person of the opposition or to the threat made to intimidate. #Debates2020

Read 4 tweets

Jennifer Mercieca

@jenmercieca

28 Sep

In my book I explain that Trump's whole 2016 campaign hinged on his hero narrative: the story he told about his heroic journey and how he had been purified to fight corruption, for his people.

Trump claimed that because he was once a corrupt insider he knew how corrupt the system was & how to fix it. Trump explained repeatedly that he had gone from being the "ultimate insider" to the "ultimate outsider." What purified Trump, according to Trump?

This escalator ride.

Whaaaaat? You might think. Like, how did the escalator purify Trump to fight corruption? Obviously it didn't, but that is the ONLY reason Trump gave for his supposed shift from corrupt insider to heroic outsider.

Read 6 tweets