Guide to Saving Freedom and Democracy

The second election of Donald Trump should leave no doubt in anyone's mind that liberal democracy is now in decline.  No matter where you sit on the political spectrum, if you value your personal freedoms and want societies where pluralism is welcome, this should be a wake-up call.

Trump and other authoritarian politicians around the globe are not aberrations.  Nor are they in themselves the problems.  They are symptoms of economic and cultural precarity. Economic insecurity, created by a globalization that left nations unable to protect their citizens, coupled with unprecedented population migration and culture wars have left masses of people feeling discombobulated and adrift.  The result has been an epidemic of nihilism, addiction, and despair. This has created a vacuum where authoritarians can attract a following with simplistic messaging that taps into the anger.

If we're to  prevent further decline into world authoritarian governance, we need to be honest with our selves about the role we all have played in producing the problems.  Neoconservative economics has been "successful" in producing growth but it's been a growth where most of the people haven't shared the benefits.  Excessive "wokeism" has left many feeling they don't matter.  There's been a sense that while the entire working class feels like they've been left behind, liberals and progressives are focusing only on particular demographics.

 With that background, here are my humble suggestions for defending and advancing the cause of democracy.

1. Take a timeout.  If you're angry and afraid, it's not a good time to engage.  Find a way to be in nature and get some perspective.
2. Find support.  It's easy to feel helpless if you feel isolated.  Develop a network of people who sympathize with your views. Make a pact to stay involved and, above all, VOTE.
   
3. Stop defending the status quo and the politicians who brought us here.  The economy might look good according to the GDP growth but if people can't afford their rent or have to work three jobs, it isn't good for them.  A social media post complaining about how you think Hillary was treated unfairly might get you lots of likes from your fellow Democrats but it's a pointless feel-good exercise.
4. Stop demonizing opposing voters, no matter how angry you may get or how self-defeating they may seem. We need to win them back.
   
5. Develop a positive vision that recognizes the legitimate concerns that people face and plan for how to address them.  
6. End identity politics.  Stop slicing voters up into demographics.  Develop policies and messages with broad appeal.
7. Focus the attacks on the authoritarians.  To confuse and demoralize their opposition, they create a barrage of controversies that either energize or are irrelevant to their supporters. Center on simple issues of broad appeal.  Most authoritarians are corrupt and incompetent; and present easy targets.  
8. Make institutions relevant to voters.  This isn't easy but if authoritarians can delegitimize and corrupt institutions, they can get public support to eliminate them.  People need to be reminded why the institutions were created in the first place.

 Assuming that we're successful,  how do we prevent authoritarians from rising again?  A few thoughts.

1. Get money and corporations out of politics.
2. Develop political systems which support a number of voices but not a cacophony.  Two parties is too few but twelve is too many.
3. Address disinformation and foreign interference.  We need to understand that truth is a public good and it has to be defended.
4. Enormous wealth and income disparities are politically destabilizing, particularly when economic mobility is limited.  Meritocracy is a laudable goal but it can only exist when people have equitable access to education and healthcare.
   

 

 

What's Wrong With the World?

 I'm writing in the wake of having watched Americans select an erratic convicted felon who's displayed traits of narcissism, racism, misogyny and authoritarianism as their head of state and commander in chief.  This isn't hyperbole and these are not trivial shortcomings.  He's promised to politicize the public service, enact high tariffs and conduct mass deportations, moves which economists assure us will do enormous damage to the US and world economies.  However, he's so unpredictable that nobody knows to what extent he'll actually go through with it and and many of his voters revel in the fear and worry this uncertainty instills in the broader population.  Even if he scales back on tariffs and deportations, there are other, potentially much more damaging actions he will almost certainly take like:

1. Sabotaging climate measures to address and mitigate climate change
2. Undermine world efforts to shore up democracy and stand up to authoritarianism
3. Further divide the US and the world along racial, gender and ideological lines
   

It hurts.  It hurts to know there are millions of people out there who for whatever reason would support this type of degeneracy.  It hurts to know this will harm my children's futures.  It hurts that this shakes my faith in democracy and lowers my opinions of the people with whom I share this planet.  What makes it even worse is in all of the online chatter I've read (and there's been a lot), I've yet to see a credible, comprehensive attempt at even understanding this mess, let alone fixing it.

One of the traits I've inherited from my father is my urge to fix things. When something I own breaks, my first tendency is to take it apart, understand how it works and see if I can fix it. Even when I can't (which is often), it helps me understand how things work so I'm positioned to get a better version of it next time.

So, I sit here and wonder.  What is causing our democratic institutions to fail?  Why are governments (which are supposed to be representing the will of the people) failing to make changes that make people happier? What causes people to turn to ridiculous billionaire saviours?

 Certainly, misinformation and disinformation are a significant part of the problem. Pollsters reported that Trump voters believed that economic benchmarks were much worse than they actually were.  Elon Musk bought Twitter (and renamed it X so I refer to it as Xitter) and weaponized it.  He's reportedly amplified his own voice and other commentators on the far right. Even before this, though, a swamp of right wing news sites, bloggers and other commentators have created an entirely separate reality for right wing viewers.  According to researchers, this is a direct threat to democracy.

Working class citizens felt they were being left behind.  It didn't help that Democrats spent billions forgiving student loans while the majority of Americans don't attend college. Trump voters reported that rent and groceries kept going up while billionaires got ever richer.  The Democrats attracted a majority of voters that made over $100,000 per year - which is a small minority of Americans.

In news reports, Trump voters claim that the Democrats heavy reliance on identity politics has turned them off.  Republicans were successful in branding the Democrats as the party of the elite and the out of touch.  While, Democrats have positioned themselves as champions of racial minorities, Republican support among many minorities (particularly Latinos and native Americans) has ballooned.

 There are no shortage of other theories.  On social media, every center and left account is shoehorning this loss into their favourite world view.  Socialists are blaming this on excessive capitalism.  Supporters of Palestine claim that it's because Democrats supported genocide in Gaza.  Feminists blame misogyny. Others blame racism.  Harris backers blame Biden for hanging on too long.  Biden loyalists blame Democrats for abandoning Biden.  I could go on.

No doubt there is truth in some or all of these claims.  However, it doesn't help to point at a dozen different problems without identifying the key ones.  And it doesn't explain why Americans would be seduced by an explicitly anti-democratic con man backed by billionaires into voting against their interests. 

We need social scientists to get back to evidence-based truth finding and help us figure out what's gone wrong.  Post-modernist thinking has produced a line of thinking where truth can't be ascertained and so it provides foundation from which to set a direction. 

We need real answers, supported by solid data and transparent analysis; compiled by people who aren't ideologically captured.