Michael Harris writes that western democracies are in crisis:
Prime Minister Liz Truss held office for just 45 days, the shortest tenure of any PM in British history. The country that once prided itself on having the fifth largest economy in the world is now in post-Brexit chaos. Standard and Poor’s has downgraded the country’s debt, and savage cuts in public spending appear inevitable. Even the return of Boozing Boris, the PM who partied at Number 10 while Britains were under COVID lockdown, isn’t out of the question. The only certainty seems to be that no matter who the Conservatives choose as leader, the party will be trounced by the Labour Party in the next election.
With recession in Europe, and a cold winter looming without Russian gas, the situation is not much better on the continent. Italy just elected a far-right prime minister infamous for praising Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Amongst other things, Giorgia Meloni is anti-immigrant. Even in Sweden and France, the far-right has made advances in recent elections. Just as William Butler Yeats predicted in his great poem, The Second Coming, the centre does not seem to be holding in many democracies.
In Canada, new Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is pushing a right-wing agenda, featuring tax cuts, smaller government, and the amorphous promise of more “freedom.” And oh yes, hating Justin Trudeau. The man who stood with the “Freedom Convoy” during its slovenly and self-interested occupation of Ottawa appears to mean what he says. In a stunning example of abdication on the environment file, Poilievre recently told Quebecers that a Conservative federal government would not interfere in any of the province’s major developments on environmental grounds.
And there is a vile cauldron boiling in the United States:
The star basket-case of democracy in retreat is the United States. Britain may be in a mess, but the U.S. remains the most indebted country in the world. The national debt stands at an irredeemable $30-trillion, a significant portion of which was run up by Donald Trump’s unfunded and permanent tax cut for the rich.
If you count state and municipal debt, and Washington’s unfunded liabilities, like social security and Medicare, some debt clocks place the real number at $130-trillion in the red. The only thing that keeps things careening along is that the U.S. can still borrow the money to pay the enormous annual interest on its debt.
But government-by-credit card is not America’s greatest problem. Faced with bigger bills for gasoline and groceries, an inflation rate Americans have not seen in decades, the country seems poised to elect the ethically bankrupt Republicans to run the House of Representatives, and maybe the Senate, as well.
Why is this happening? There are lots of reasons:
A painful COVID hangover, hard economic reality, and the search for scapegoats has created a public mood where the worst thing for a politician to be is not a liar, a cheat, or a scoundrel, but an incumbent. History provides a caution. As Thomas Jefferson so famously, and ominously, put it: “The government you elect is the government that you deserve.”
It all comes down to how smart we, the voters, are. It appears that we're not very bright.
Image: Flickr
8 comments:
One week ago:
"Michael Harris writes that Pierre Poilievre won't bring Justin Trudeau down:
“I don’t see any signs of traction for Pierre Poilievre.”"
Today - Lil'PP is the bogey man?
"It all comes down to how smart we, the voters, are. It appears that we're not very bright"
Lack of brightness or simply willfully ignorant, the outcome is the same.
"We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar"
Eliot knew who we are -- sometimes, PoV.
I love it when a plan comes together.
Good Days
Finally read where "the center cannot hold " came from.
Was always a favorite mutterings as entropy ruled my day.
And that "POWER an exercise in INTEGRITY" t-shirt in Thailand
More power, more revolutions
And greater the chance without integrity to explode
The Sixth Seal: Terror ( $130 TRILLION!!!)
…15Then the kings of the earth, the nobles, the commanders, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and free man hid in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains.
16And they said to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of the One seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.
17For the great day of Their wrath has come, and who is able to withstand it?”…
I was just talking to a friend of mine who lives in Manitoba, Owen. In our infrequent chats, we always turn to politics, and today's talk included the observation that critical thinking is an endangered capacity. Those of us who have it seem, increasingly, to be the dinosaurs of our era.
Continuing down this path will not end well, lungta.
It seems to me, Lorne, that we are increasingly out of place in this brave new world.
Why people vote the way they do? Who knows but I suspect it maybe that they don't want to accept responsibility for their own lives, actions, etc. Its easier to blame the governments and then switch governments. Then when they don't delivery the voters go back to the parties they voted for before. The other problem is taxes in our coutries aren't fair or equitable. They favour the rich, as do most politicians. During COVID there was an increase of how much the 1% or the 1% gained financially. Then there were the rest of us. Will people vote for a different tax system, not so much.
It is scarey to see some of these racist, maga, facist types take over the government in countries. Being an aging baby boomer, I recall hearing parental units and their friends discuss what the war was like in Europe and how many lost their lives. Now we want to go down the same road by electing the same type of people who caused that war.
Last evening I watched the news reporting on the "watchers" at American polling stations where people could put their ballots in drop boxes. They were armed. OMG. There was nothing the police could do because Arizona has open carry. Those who object to armed people around these drop boxes will have to "prove" these armed idiots are detering others from voting to get them removed. Am not looking forward to the American voting day or the counting. There are way too many guns around.
Fascism is on the march again, e.a.f.
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