'insidious authoritarianism' is a curious way of describing two not-unreasonable proposals that are presumably aimed at making american democracy more representative and accessible...

> The old and conservative make too powerful a voting block, and it perpetuates every corporate, oligarchic, xenophobic greed cycle one could point to as a rot in our system. I don't think old people are bad because they're just taking government money and have big fancy houses, but largely they do vote the same way and that way they are voting is causing problems.

You must have missed the part where they referred to human beings who they disagree with as "a rot in our system". The fact that you're apparently blind to such toxic rhetoric isn't surprising--it is increasingly common among progressives.

I believe you may have misread. They weren’t calling any specific group of humans a rot in our system. They said they believe a specific and overly powerful voting bloc perpetuates every corporate, oligarchic, xenophobic greed cycle one could point to as a rot in our system.

It’s not the voting humans who are labeled as the rot, it’s the cycles that result from the exercise of that bloc’s outsized voting power—as said in the second part of your quoted excerpt: “… that way they are voting is causing problems.”

I’m not suggesting the original wording was great and non-toxic, but I don’t think the poster said what you interpreted them as saying.

That fairly insidious strain of authoritarianism isn’t infecting progressives alone, sadly. Nor is it infecting progressives more. The “all problems will be solved if all my political policies are implemented” argument appears to be the starting line of most vocalized political positions.