2021 American Political Scene

[zraver]

Again no Trump family statements support Russia Russia Russia.

Dude, innocent until proven guilty. Dude was demoted for cause I've he had his day in court before an AL judge and was found guilty.

[TopHatter]

Again no Trump family statements support Russia Russia Russia.

And Russia Russia Russia can mean anything you want it to. I notice you've stopped claiming Trump was honest about his ties with Russia. That's progress, I guess.

Dude, innocent until proven guilty. Dude was demoted for cause I've he had his day in court before an AL judge and was found guilty.

Doesn't mean he's "guilty". Just means his supervisor had a hardon for him. Honestly I don't give a shit either way. He's just one more person telling us what we already know about Trump's Administration: Corrupt as hell, unconcerned about COVID or white supremacists and very much in love with Putin and Russia.

[zraver]

Actually it does mean he was found guilty.

I've never claimed Trump was an honest individual. Russia Russia Russia: working with Russia to affect the 2016 election. Russia Russia Russia was HRC/ DNC collusion with Russians to affect the 16 election not Trump.

[TopHatter]

Actually it does mean he was found guilty.

And therefore anything negative he says about the Dear Leader is automatically false. Gotcha.

I've never claimed Trump was an honest individual.

Man you've got that goalpost thing down pat. Don't you ever get tired of backtracking on what you've just said?

Trump was honest about his ties being limited to Miss Universe and a failed Hotel/Casino venture.

Russia Russia Russia: working with Russia to affect the 2016 election. Russia Russia Russia was HRC/ DNC collusion with Russians to affect the 16 election not Trump.

So shit like Don Jr. meeting with Russian operatives for dirt on HRC was no big deal, right?

[zraver]

If he had come forward when it/if it happened.... Post facto with no evidence sounds like sour grapes.

He was honest about that. That does not make him an honest individual.

He was told it was about the Maginski Act. That Russian operative met with Fusion GPS ie the HRC16 campaign before and after that meeting. The Special Counsel looked into it and found no links between the Trump Campaign and Russia.

All the supposed Trump Russia Collusion acts tie directly back to Hillary's dirty tricks and actual collusion with Russians.

[TopHatter]

If he had come forward when it/if it happened.... Post facto with no evidence sounds like sour grapes.

And therefore easily dismissed, yeah read you loud and clear. Because it couldn't possibly be true....

He was honest about that. That does not make him an honest individual.

No, he wasn't. He lied through his teeth about his involvement with the Russians. But I understand that you have to ignore all the sources I posted that say otherwise.

He was told it was about the Maginski Act. That Russian operative met with Fusion GPS ie the HRC16 campaign before and after that meeting.

That's exactly not what happened. Don Jr went to the meeting expecting dirt on Clinton. Once he got there, that's when it turned out to be about the Magnitsky Act.

To everyone, in order to be totally transparent, I am releasing the entire email chain of my emails with Rob Goldstone about the meeting on June 9, 2016. The first email on June 3, 2016 was from Rob, who was relating a request from Emin, a person I knew from the 2013 Ms. Universe Pageant near Moscow. Emin and his father have a very highly respected company in Moscow. The information they suggested they had about Hillary Clinton I thought was Political Opposition Research. I first wanted to just have a phone call but when that didn't work out, they said the woman would be in New York and asked if I would meet. I decided to take the meeting. The woman, as she has said publicly, was not a government official. And, as we have said, she had no information to provide and wanted to talk about adoption policy and the Magnitsky Act..”

By his own admission the little prick went to the Russians for dirt on a political opponent. (Cue the goal post move)

The Special Counsel looked into it and found no links between the Trump Campaign and Russia.

That's exactly not what happened. (Seems to be pattern here...).

Mueller Report Shows Depth of Connections Between Trump Campaign and Russians

Donald J. Trump and 18 of his associates had at least 140 contacts with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks, or their intermediaries, during the 2016 campaign and presidential transition, according to a New York Times analysis.

The report of Robert S. Mueller III, released to the public on Thursday, revealed at least 30 more contacts beyond those previously known. However, the special counsel said, “the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges.”

Very few, if any, of these interactions were publicly known before Mr. Trump took office.

G.O.P.-Led Senate Panel Details Ties Between 2016 Trump Campaign and Russia

WASHINGTON — A sprawling report released Tuesday by a Republican-controlled Senate panel that spent three years investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election laid out an extensive web of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and Kremlin officials and other Russians, including at least one intelligence officer and others tied to the country’s spy services.

The report by the Senate Intelligence Committee, totaling nearly 1,000 pages, drew to a close one of the highest-profile congressional investigations in recent memory and could be the last word from an official government inquiry about the expansive Russian campaign to sabotage the 2016 election.

It provided a bipartisan Senate imprimatur for an extraordinary set of facts: The Russian government disrupted an American election to help Mr. Trump become president, Russian intelligence services viewed members of the Trump campaign as easily manipulated, and some of Mr. Trump’s advisers were eager for the help from an American adversary.

The report portrayed a Trump campaign that was stocked with businessmen with no government experience, advisers working at the fringes of the foreign policy establishment and other friends and associates Mr. Trump had accumulated over the years. Campaign figures, the report said, “presented attractive targets for foreign influence, creating notable counterintelligence vulnerabilities.”

You can make a case for the lack of criminal charges, sure.

But claiming that there were no links between the Trump Campaign and Russia, and that the Mueller Report said nothing about it, is the height of cult-induced denial.

[zraver]

And therefore easily dismissed, yeah read you loud and clear. Because it couldn't possibly be true....

An honest man would have come forward when it happened.

No, he wasn't. He lied through his teeth about his involvement with the Russians. But I understand that you have to ignore all the sources I posted that say otherwise.

Again the Mueller report does not agree with you.

That's exactly not what happened. Don Jr went to the meeting expecting dirt on Clinton. Once he got there, that's when it turned out to be about the Magnitsky Act.

Yup, I had that one backwards. Funny how you ignore the fact that the Russian Lawyer met with Fusion GPS ie the HRC16 campaign before and after the meeting. Just like you ignore all the other collusion links tied to Clinton. Its almost like you don't actually care about Russia and its all just posturing.

By his own admission the little prick went to the Russians for dirt on a political opponent. (Cue the goal post move)

Yup I had that one wrong, still not collusion and not illegal though.

That's exactly not what happened. (Seems to be pattern here...).

How many times does Mueller need to say no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia?

You can make a case for the lack of criminal charges, sure.

But claiming that there were no links between the Trump Campaign and Russia, and that the Mueller Report said nothing about it, is the height of cult-induced denial.

If there was any fire to the smoke, Mueller would have said so. His team was filled with partisans who wanted to. The best he came up with is tangential links. Meanwhile over in the Clinton camp we have a major presidential campaign actively working with Russian assets to influence an election and a presidency. But you don't care about that.

[zraver]

The Experts Somehow Overlooked Authoritarians on the Left

(Zraver reaction: you don't say!)

Sally Satel 2 days ago
Like24 Comments|28

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GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz said Tucker Carlson is correct about white nationalist…

Pro-Trump Congressional Candidate Says 'Audit All 50 states' and 'Execute All…© Getty ; The Atlantic

Donald Trump’s rise to power generated a flood of media coverage and academic research on authoritarianism—or at least the kind of authoritarianism that exists on the political right. Over the past several years, some researchers have theorized that Trump couldn’t have won in 2016 without support from Americans who deplore political compromise and want leaders to rule with a strong hand. Although right-wing authoritarianism is well documented, social psychologists do not all agree that a leftist version even exists. In February 2020, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology held a symposium called “Is Left-Wing Authoritarianism Real? Evidence on Both Sides of the Debate.”

An ambitious new study on the subject by the Emory University researcher Thomas H. Costello and five colleagues should settle the question. It proposes a rigorous new measure of antidemocratic attitudes on the left. And, by drawing on a survey of 7,258 adults, Costello’s team firmly establishes that such attitudes exist on both sides of the American electorate. (One co-author on the paper, I should note, was Costello’s adviser, the late Scott Lilienfeld—with whom I wrote a 2013 book and numerous articles.) Intriguingly, the researchers found some common traits between left-wing and right-wing authoritarians, including a “preference for social uniformity, prejudice towards different others, willingness to wield group authority to coerce behavior, cognitive rigidity, aggression and punitiveness towards perceived enemies, outsized concern for hierarchy, and moral absolutism.”

Published last month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Costello team’s paper is persuasive, to the point that you have to wonder: How could past researchers have overlooked left-wing authoritarianism for so long? “For 70 years, the lore in the social sciences has been that authoritarianism was to be found exclusively on the political right,” the Rutgers University social psychologist Lee Jussim, who wasn’t involved in the new study, told me in an email. In the 1950 book The Authoritarian Personality, an inquiry into the psychological makeup of people strongly drawn to autocratic rule and repressive politics, the German-born scholar Theodor W. Adorno and three other psychologists measured people along dimensions such as conformity to societal norms, rigid thinking, and sexual repression. And they concluded that “the authoritarian type of human”— the kind of person whose enthusiastic support allows someone like Hitler to exercise power—was found only among conservatives. In the mid-1990s, the influential Canadian psychologist Bob Altemeyer described left-wing authoritarianism as “the Loch Ness Monster of political psychology—an occasional shadow, but no monster. ” Subsequently, other psychologists reached the same conclusion.

[Zeynep Tufekci: America’s next authoritarian will be much more competent]

The Trump era likely deepened psychology’s conventional wisdom that authoritarians are almost always conservatives; the insurrection at the Capitol earlier this year showed the urgency of understanding the phenomenon. And yet calls to de-platform controversial speakers and online campaigns to get people fired for heterodox views suggest that a commitment to open democratic norms is eroding, at least in some quarters, on the left. Much further along the authoritarian continuum, people purporting to be antiracist or antifascist protesters have set fires and committed other acts of violence since the summer of 2020. These acts stop short of, say, the 1970s bombing campaign by the far-left Weather Underground, but surely call the prevailing wisdom into doubt. (Supporters of revolutionary regimes overseas have demonstrated even more clearly that some people on the left try to get their way through intimidation and force.)

But one reason left-wing authoritarianism barely shows up in social-psychology research is that most academic experts in the field are based at institutions where prevailing attitudes are far to the left of society as a whole. Scholars who personally support the left’s social vision—such as redistributing income, countering racism, and more—may simply be slow to identify authoritarianism among people with similar goals.

One doesn’t need to believe that left-wing authoritarians are as numerous or as threatening as their right-wing counterparts to grasp that both phenomena are a problem. While liberals—both inside and outside of academia—may derive some comfort from believing that left-wing authoritarianism doesn’t exist, that fiction ignores a significant source of instability and polarization in our politics and society.

In the research that led to The Authoritarian Personality, Adorno and his colleagues developed an “F-scale” to measure fascist attitudes; Altemeyer later drew on that research to create a scale measuring right-wing authoritarianism by assessing certain personality traits—including feelings of aggression, willingness to submit to authority, and a quality that he called “conventionalism”—not strictly related to a subject’s political conservatism. Altemeyer’s right-wing authoritarian (RWA) scale remains “the gold standard for conceptualizing and evaluating all kinds of authoritarianism,” Costello told me. But when Altemeyer later turned his attention to left-wing authoritarianism (LWA), he erroneously assumed it would be identical to the right-wing variety. His LWA scale barely identified any subjects. He either had set the threshold too high or was measuring the wrong attitudes.

Costello and his colleagues started fresh. They developed what eventually became a list of 39 statements capturing sentiments such as “We need to replace the established order by any means necessary” and “I should have the right not to be exposed to offensive views.” Subjects were asked to score the statements on a scale of 1 to 7. They showed a trait that the researchers described as “anti-hierarchical aggression” by agreeing strongly that “If I could remake society, I would put people who currently have the most privilege at the bottom.” By agreeing with statements such as “Getting rid of inequality is more important than protecting the so-called ‘right’ to free speech,” they showed an attitude called “top-down censorship.” And they showed what the research team called “anti-conventionalism” by endorsing statements such as “I cannot imagine myself becoming friends with a political conservative.”

[Read: The world is experiencing a new form of autocracy]

Costello and his colleagues administered their new LWA index and Altemeyer’s original RWA scale. Some differences emerged between left-wing and right-wing authoritarians; the former were more open to new experiences and more receptive to science than the latter, for example. Yet the new research documents a large overlap in authoritarian structure—a “shared psychological core,” as the authors put it—between high scorers on their new LWA index and Altemeyer’s original RWA scale, which they also administered. The authoritarian mentality, whether on the far left or far right, the authors conclude, exerts “powerful pressures to maintain discipline among members, advocate aggressive and censorious means of stifling opposition, [and] believe in top-down absolutist leadership.”

Perhaps the most compelling insight emerged from trying to separate subjects’ political ideology from authoritarianism. They found that your ideology—whether you’re a progressive or a Trumpist—is a secondary matter. Whether your values and beliefs are authoritarian or not is more fundamental. “Psychologically speaking, authoritarianism comes first,” Costello told me.

I asked Costello whether left-wing and right-wing authoritarians exist in equal proportions. “It is hard to know the ratio,” he said, making clear that a subject’s receptivity to authoritarianism falls on a continuum, like other personality characteristics or even height, so using hard-and-fast categories (authoritarian versus nonauthoritarian) can be tricky. “Still, some preliminary work shows the ratio is about the same if you average across the globe,” he said. In the U.S., though, Costello hypothesizes that right-wing authoritarians outnumber left-wing ones by roughly three to one. Other researchers have concluded that the number of strident conservatives in the U.S. far exceeds the number of strident progressives and that American conservatives express more authoritarian attitudes than their counterparts in Britain, Australia, or Canada.

That psychologists have been slow to acknowledge the existence of left-wing authoritarians at all is “puzzling,” Costello and his colleagues write. But here, I would argue, is where the pronounced leftward orientation of researchers in social psychology comes in. “Academic psychology once had considerable political diversity, but has lost nearly all of it in the last 50 years,” according to a comprehensive 2014 review. Universities have long tilted to the left, but that tendency has deepened as education has become ever more highly correlated with political ideology. Whatever its origin, this political imbalance makes truth-seeking harder. Studies have repeatedly shown that investigators’ sociopolitical views influence the questions they ask. What’s more, ideologically concordant reviewers are more likely to rate abstracts and papers highly if the findings comport with their own beliefs, all else being equal.

Ideological blind spots can indeed affect researchers with a strongly conservative or merely right-of-center outlook, but there just aren’t enough of them to matter. If academic psychology had more viewpoint diversity, the political biases that distort researchers’ work would all counterbalance one another. In American universities today, those biases generally point in the same direction. In psychology, the belief that only conservatives can be authoritarians, and that therefore only conservative authoritarians warrant serious study, has proved self-reinforcing over the course of decades.

As both left- and right-wing autocracies metastasize around the globe—a “pandemic of global authoritarianism” that has “persisted and deepened” over the past 15 years, in the words of the Stanford sociologist Larry Diamond—and as the speed of radicalization of recruits has hastened, the modest cadre of researchers interested in the subject will likely grow. By recasting left-wing authoritarianism in more specific terms—anti-hierarchical aggression, top-down censorship, and anti-conventionalism—Costello and his colleagues offer other researchers and the general public a new vocabulary for discussing antidemocratic attitudes on that side of the political spectrum.

[Read: A study guide to the rise of authoritarianism]

The other virtue of the Costello team’s work is its status as a sobering demonstration of how social psychology’s dominant ideological orientation has constrained the scope of inquiry. “The dominant view of RWA as the ‘gold standard’ of authoritarianism writ large is not merely an influential theoretical framework or a historical quirk,” the authors write. “It limits the questions we ask as scientists [and] the types of theories we use to interpret our results.” For many years, what was perfectly obvious to many outside the field—that extremist mindsets exist on both ends of the political spectrum—was at best downplayed by the majority of social psychologists. An ideological monoculture within the discipline has damaged our collective understanding of political psychology—and, by extension, American politics.

The Experts Somehow Overlooked Authoritarians on the Left (msn.com)

[TopHatter]

An honest man would have come forward when it happened.

Subjective observation on your part. Still doesn't mean that it isn't true, and it still jibes with documented history of Trump and his Administration.

Again the Mueller report does not agree with you.

Your TSD (Trump Supporter Derangement) is apparently affecting your ability to read.

What do you suppose is the meaning of this headline?

---------> Mueller Report Shows Depth of Connections Between Trump Campaign and Russians<----------

How about this collection of words?

---------> G.O.P.-Led Senate Panel Details Ties Between 2016 Trump Campaign and Russia<----------

Yup, I had that one backwards. Funny how you ignore the fact that the Russian Lawyer met with Fusion GPS ie the HRC16 campaign before and after the meeting.

Yup I had that one wrong, still not collusion and not illegal though.

Still a blatant link between the Trump Campaign and Russia. But one that you can give a pass to, because after all, it's Trump.

Just like you ignore all the other collusion links tied to Clinton. Its almost like you don't actually care about Russia and its all just posturing.

Yup I had that one wrong, still not collusion and not illegal though.

You've scoffed at me going after Trump because Trump is no longer president and out of power (1 out of 2 is correct), but you want me to get all righteously indignant about Clinton, who was never president and has been effectively a non-player with the Dems since 2016.

Yeah, nice double standard you've got there...

How many times does Mueller need to say no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia?

How many times do I have remind you what you said?

Trump was honest about his ties being limited to Miss Universe and a failed Hotel/Casino venture.

The Special Counsel looked into it and said nope, no contacts and conspiracy to work with Russia.

This of course is exactly not what the Special Counsel, nor the GOP-led committee found. I know you have to deal in "alternative facts" when it comes to Trump though.

If there was any fire to the smoke, Mueller would have said so. His team was filled with partisans who wanted to. The best he came up with is tangential links.

Yeah, let's see what Mueller said about Trump:

"As set forth in the report, after that investigation, if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,"

"The special counsel's office is part of the Department of Justice, and by regulation, it was bound by that department policy. Charging the president with a crime was, therefore, not an option we could consider."

"In fact, the campaign welcomed the Russian help, did they not?" Schiff asked.

"I think we report, in the report, say indications that that occurred, yes," Mueller answered.

"The president's son said when he was approached about dirt on Hillary Clinton, that the Trump campaign would love it," Schiff said.

"That's generally what was said, yes," Mueller said.

"The president himself called on the Russians to hack Hillary's emails?," Schiff said.

"There's a statement by the president in those general lines," Mueller responded.

"Numerous times during the campaign, the president praised the releases of the Russian-hacked emails through Wikileaks?" Schiff asked.

"That did occur," Mueller said.

"Director Mueller, the president has repeatedly claimed that your report found there was no obstruction and that it, completely and totally exonerated him. But that is not what your report said, is it?" Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., asked.

"Right, that is not what the report said," Mueller said.

Nadler then asks if the report totally exonerates Trump of obstruction of justice as the president has claimed.

"So. the report did not conclude that he did not commit obstruction of justice? Is that correct," Nadler said.

"That is correct," Mueller answered.

"And what about total exoneration? Did you actually totally exonerate the president," Nadler asked.

"No," Mueller said.

Willing cooperation between the Trump Campaign and Russia? Yes.

Attempted Obstruction of Justice by Trump to interfere with the Special Counsel's investigation? Pretty much, yep.

Gonna put this one to rest now. Trying to argue with a Trump supporter about Trump's documented misdeeds is like wrestling with a pig and about as useful.

[TopHatter]

Gen. Milley says he was 'certain President Trump did not intend on attacking the Chinese'

In his opening testimony before the Senate Armed Service Committee on Tuesday, Gen. Mark Milley - chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - defended his decisions to call his Chinese counterpart twice during the final months of the Trump administration.

"I know, I am certain, that President Trump did not intend on attacking the Chinese," Milley said emphatically, explaining that the calls to the Chinese were generated by "concerning intelligence" that China believed an attack was imminent.

Milley said the calls were made to assure China that the US had no plans to attack it to try to reassure worried Chinese leaders. China has one of the world's largest militaries and like the US is armed with nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Milley also addressed his call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on January 8, noting the speaker made numerous personal references about the then-President during the call. "I am not qualified to determine the mental health of the President of the United States," Milley says he told Pelosi.

The remarks came during a hearing on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan as Milley testified alongside Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and General Kenneth McKenzie, commander of US Central Command.

Ahead of the publication of "Peril" by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa earlier this month, reports emerged that Milley made calls to his Chinese counterpart out of fear that Trump might start a war with the country during his final months in office. The former president has falsely said that Milley may be guilty of "treason" for his actions, while some congressional Republicans called for the general to be court martialed.
___________

[Parihaka]

But one reason left-wing authoritarianism barely shows up in social-psychology research is that most academic experts in the field are based at institutions where prevailing attitudes are far to the left of society as a whole. Scholars who personally support the left’s social vision—such as redistributing income, countering racism, and more—may simply be slow to identify authoritarianism among people with similar goals.

Colour me absolutely shocked.
Right wing governments can sometimes lead to authoritarianism. For the left, authoritarianism is the goal.

[Parihaka]

Loved this link


As both left- and right-wing autocracies metastasize around the globe—a “pandemic of global authoritarianism” that has....

If Joe Biden becomes the next president, he can and will do many things, literally on day one, to reverse the downward spiral of freedom in the world and begin to restore democratic hope and momentum. Where Trump heaped praise on dictators and scorn on our allies, Biden will once again embrace fellow democracies in Europe and Asia while speaking truth to the bullying power of global autocrats. He will restore some of America’s moral credibility in the world by reversing “the Trump administration’s cruel and senseless policies” on immigration, reinstating the ban on torture, strengthening government ethics, combatting global kleptocracy, and reaffirming core American values of press freedom, judicial independence, and respect for human rights—including the most precious democratic right, the right to vote. He has pledged to convene during his first year as president a “Summit for Democracy” to “bring together the world’s democracies to strengthen our democratic institutions, honestly confront nations that are backsliding, and forge a common agenda.” All of these steps will breathe fresh life and purpose into what is now a dispirited and leaderless global community of democracies.

Yet another left wing messiah apparently

[Albany Rifles]

Loved this link


As both left- and right-wing autocracies metastasize around the globe—a “pandemic of global authoritarianism” that has....




Yet another left wing messiah apparently

Interesting. I tried hitting that link...and I got a message from the Defense Information Security Agency telling me it is blocked as it is a site which promotes racism & hate speech.

[zraver]

Interesting. I tried hitting that link...and I got a message from the Defense Information Security Agency telling me it is blocked as it is a site which promotes racism & hate speech.

Bio of the author

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. His is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford. He leads the Hoover Institution’s programs on China’s Global Sharp Power and on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region. At FSI, he leads the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, based at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for more than six years. He also co-leads with (Eileen Donahoe) the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He is the founding coeditor of the Journal of Democracy and also serves as senior consultant at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. His research focuses on democratic trends and conditions around the world and on policies and reforms to defend and advance democracy. His latest edited book (with Orville Schell), China's Influence and American Interests (Hoover Press, 2019), urges a posture of constructive vigilance toward China’s global projection of “sharp power,” which it sees as a rising threat to democratic norms and institutions. He offers a massive open online course (MOOC) on Comparative Democratic Development through the edX platform and is now writing a textbook to accompany it.

Diamond’s book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad. A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has also edited or coedited more than forty books on democratic development around the world, most recently, Dynamics of Democracy in Taiwan: The Ma Ying-jeou Years.

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has also advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other governmental and nongovernmental agencies dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.


Larry Diamond | (stanford.edu)

[zraver]

MBFC rating Highly accurate and Left of Center

Bias Rating: LEFT-CENTER
Factual Reporting: HIGH
Country: USA (44/180 Press Freedom)
Media Type: Website
Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic
MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY

History


Founded in 2020 by Dr. Francis Fukuyama, American Purpose is an online magazine covering news, politics, and culture. Dr. Fukuyama is a political theorist and author of The End of History and the Last Man. He is also one of the 25 figures on the Information and Democracy Commission launched by Reporters Without Borders. According to their about page, “First, we aim to defend and promote liberal democracy in the United States. Second, we seek to better understand and address the challenges to liberal democracy abroad. Finally, we intend to offer criticism and commentary on history and biography, high art and pop culture, science, and technology.”


American Purpose - Media Bias/Fact Check (mediabiasfactcheck.com)