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Thank God Trump’s so incompetent
Things could be worse
Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s then-chief of staff and later Mayor of Chicago, said in 2008, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. It provides the opportunity to do things that were not possible to do before.”
At the time, Emanuel was referring to the financial crisis, until now the biggest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. He was arguing that the crisis was an opportunity to pass important financial reform legislation that had been blocked for years by the banking lobby.
This truism, however, can apply to more insidious motives. Consider the case of Hungary. There, Viktor Orban has taken advantage of the current crisis to further erode Hungary’s democracy. For all intents and purposes, there is no longer a free press, an independent legislative check on his powers, or a viable opposition. Hungary, the country for which there were such high hopes in the late 1980s, has devolved into a true fascist dictatorship.
We need not go so far afield to see how unchecked power, especially during a crisis, can lead to diminished democracy. In Wisconsin, dubbed “Hungary on the Great Lakes” by Paul Krugman, the efforts of former Governor Scott Walker (R-WI) and his followers have hobbled organized opposition to Republican rule.
