The Slippery Slope to the Right...In the past, when humanity lived in more than one hundred countries, it was like living in more than 100 boats. All we needed were rules to ensure that the boats did not collide. Each boat had a captain or crew to take care of it. Today, with the shrinking of the world, 7 billion people live in 193 cabins on the same boat. We have captains and crews taking care of each cabin. But we have no captain or crew taking care of the boat as a whole. Kishore Mahbubani: the Great Convergence This page places democracy on the left in blue, and right wing, conservative, GOP politics in red on the right showing characteristics of each. Humanity has yet to learn to govern. The history of right wing government is one of addiction to war, empire, revolt,discrimination, genocide, pandemics, misery. As Population grew to overpower the environment, destructive power increased to threaten the habitability of the planet, CO2 pollution warmed the planet, shrinking biodiversity signaled extinction of life, right wing government did nothing and denied the problems. We won’t get a second chance in space. There are two types of institutions, polar opposites, with a spectrum in between. Whether called blue and red, left and right, liberal and conservative, democracies and authoritarian, it’s all the same two polar opposites. Every institution can be placed on the spectrum: countries, parties, corporations, religions, and the rest. Right wing authoritarians decisions are made by small numbers of people or even a single individual, which is why bad decisions are almost inevitable. The GOP is a far right party. Mostly, the right is driven by the worst of humanity's motives: hatred,anger,fear,lust for power, resentment,envy, greed, bigotry,vengeance, grievance, xenophobia, racism, homophobia, sexism, ... James Surowiecki’s book ‘The Wisdom of Crowds’ argues that the crowd can make better decisions than any individual. Ideally, informed individuals deliberate evidence, find consensus, and act. That’s why science is the best way to determine fact, how juries work, it’s how democracy should work, and why liberal democracy is the best kind of government. Government is only as good as the decisions it makes. The fewer the number of decision makers, the worse quality of decisions, the more right wing authoritarian, and the worse the government. That’s why international law is superior to that of individual countries. There is a steep, slippery slope to the right propelled by the unconstrained economy's tendency to extreme wealth inequality, the iron law of oligarchy, shrinking class mobility, and self-serving leaders. Conservative governance is by an individual or a small number of authoritarians driven by worst human motives, harsh to everyone but the very wealthy. They divide people by nationality, race, religion, gender, class, to extract wealth, destroy democracy, to gain power. controls media, does not tolerate political opposition, responds to autocratic leaders, and is hard to remove because it violently retaliates if people disagree. Resulting hate leads to violence and war as in Israel, Syria, Russia, and the US. It will end when we destroy each other. Public indexes by country, taken together, show successes and failures. The farther to the right, the greater the failure to serve people. Sustainable Governance Indicators Left vs RightDictatorship has, in one sense, been the default condition of humanity. The basic governmental setup since the dawn of civilization could be summarized, simply, as taking orders from the boss. Big chiefs, almost invariably male, tell their underlings what to do, and they do it, or they are killed. Sometimes this is costumed in communal decision-making, by a band of local bosses or wise men, but even the most collegial department must have a chairman: a capo di tutti capi respects the other capi, as kings in England were made to respect the lords, but the capo is still the capo and the king is still the king. Although the arrangement can be dressed up in impressive clothing and nice sets—triumphal Roman arches or the fountains of Versailles—the basic facts don’t alter. Dropped down at random in history, we are all as likely as not to be members of the Soprano crew, waiting outside Satriale’s Pork Store. Adam Gopnik writing in the New Yorker 12/23/2019 Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude towards one another, have varied from age to age: but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other.[22] From Wikipedia: the Iron Law of Oligarchy When wealth inequality becomes extreme, right wing government arises, polarizes, destabilizes, and is never good. In his first major book on the subject of income inequality Noam Chomsky skewers the fundamental tenets of neoliberalism and casts a clear, cold, patient eye on the economic facts of life. What are the ten principles of concentration of wealth and power at work in America today? They’re simple enough: reduce democracy, shape ideology, redesign the economy, shift the burden onto the poor and middle classes, attack the solidarity of the people, let special interests run the regulators, engineer election results, use fear and the power of the state to keep the rabble in line, manufacture consent, marginalize the population. In Requiem for the American Dream, Chomsky devotes a chapter to each of these ten principles, and adds readings from some of the core texts that have influenced his thinking to bolster his argument. The authoritarian playbook is an effective way for authoritarians to undermine democracy.
Democracy
GovernmentLeft wing government is for the people, right wing government is for the wealthy. Democracy is better, and much less dangerous than dictatorship. Will people learn that and reject right wing government ? Typical right wing country has a wealthy, powerful leader surrounded by oligarchs, no free press, criminalized dissent, a minority group to blame, criminalized political opponents, wins elections by acclaim, high security, bloated military ready for war to expand. All those heroic empire builders in history were the heads of authoritarian, right wing government like the GOP. Right wing strong men are usually sociopaths. Their self-serving values are the problem. Putin, Victor Orban, Jair Bolsonaro, Narenda Modi, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, or Donald Trump all blame an ethnic or other minority as a threat and promise to stand up to them.
"Although they are rare in the population as a whole, malevolent, sadistic, or psychopathic actors may be disproportionately likely to gain political power. Many dictators have exhibited such traits aside from Putin, Asad, Mao and Hitler, including Genghis Khan, Saddam Hussein, Stalin, Mussolini, Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, Franscois Duvalier, Nicolae Ceausescu, Idi Amin, and Pol Pot. There is therefore high risk that malevolent people could have an outsize impact on the future." The Ukraine War was caused by yet another right wing sociopath, Putin, who will stop at nothing to expand his turf. Putin is destroying Ukraine, committing a genocide as bad as Hitler's. Because of right wing strong men, the doomsday clock stands at 90 seconds to midnight. Trump called Putin a genius. Russians, after all, helped his election. “...a handful of men each have the power to end the world in a few minutes, without having to consult anyone... including the likes of Putin and Kim Jong-un. In Washington it is a choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. They all bring a lot of human frailty, anger, fear and paranoia to a potential decision that could end the planet.” See the Democracy Index, the Global State of Democracy Economist Democracy Index, the Democracy Indices by V-Dem, or the wikipedia overview of Democracy indices. Religion
Courage
FearThe only thing we have to fear ... is fear itself" FDR Fear and resentment motivates right wing, authoritarian government. Fear that immigrants will take jobs or cost taxpayer money, LGBTQ will indoctrinate children, unwelcome information on sex education, holocaust, critical race information, genocide, must be suppressed. Religion is largely based on fear. To respond to such fears guns allowed everywhere, fortifications built, police militarized, surveillance ubiquitous, books banned, torture, death penalty, violence rages out of control, mass shootings accelerating. Highly religious countries are the most backward. Authoritarian States have an underclass that they blame, exploit, and keep down. The political right seems to be ascendant in many parts of the world. It is driven by mass migration, climate disruption, a desire to move to a better place or war. The Authoritarian Playbook is an action plan often used by the right. Freedom and human rights are indicated by Global Freedom Status. Corporations
Generosity
Greed"You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy, but you cannot have both." - Louis Brandeis Unconstrained capitalism inevitably concentrates wealth in various ways: gaming the system reduces taxes on the wealthy, corporate rollups result in monopolies, reduce competition and enable obscene CEO compensation, deregulation removes public accountability, privatization removes property or institutions from public accountability, hostility to unions keeps wages down, stock buybacks and other techniques reward investors, private equity can devour assets, corruption, and much more. Technology also powerfully concentrates wealth as seen in examples like MUsk, Zuckerburg, Bezos, Tiel, Mercer, Koch, and other oligarchs. US social programs are weak compared to the rest of the developed world. US private healthcare is the world’s most expensive, bankrupts the sick, doesn’t cover everyone, a problem for public health. In the US, schools are being privatized to the detriment of public schools, and education is becoming much weaker. Finland is a world leader in education doing the exact opposite.
As wealth disparities increase, there is a shift toward the political right. The US has shifted from a large middle class to an oligopoly. Stiff progressive taxes could keep the economy more fair, stable, and sustainable. High concentrations of wealth consolidates power and removes decision making from democracy. The fewer the decision makers, the more authoritarian the government, and the worse the decisions. When extreme, wealth disparities over power government resulting in fascist government. Minority far right government controls police, military, and covert agencies, and is capable of violent action against its own people. Once in place, it is almost impossible to remove. That's why government has a fundamental obligation to regulate capitalism. “Arguments in defense of the centralization of power and rising authoritarianism are always different, but the results are always the same: corruption, stagnation, dictatorship, repression, violence.” Gary Kasparov Wealth disparities are roughly measured by the gini coefficient, which, as Piketty asserts has a natural tendency to increase as can readily be seen in the game of monopoly. The corruption index ranks 180 countries and territories around the world by their perceived levels of public sector corruption. The results are given on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty Free Press
Media"the press is owned by wealthy men who have every interest in not having certain ideas expressed." Noam Chomsky Media and culture have a symbiotic relationship. People tend to believe and vote according to the media they consume. Religion is media. Press freedom and the toleration of dissent diminish with RW governance. See the index on censorship. The right controls media with not much regard for the truth, their propaganda embeds trivia, distraction, misinformation, conspiracies, and lies. US has right wing media that edits history to diminish the story of slavery, genocide of native Americans, and more. Censorship, book bans, and school curriculum have become part of the culture war. In Putin’s Russia, State media is not allowed to oppose the war in Ukraine. Dissenters risk prison. Victor Orban has effectively taken over media, and expelled the Central European University. Religion is media and delivers considerable misinformation because it has no interest in evidence, is in denial of science including the creation, evolution, climate, population, pandemic. Faith healing is dangerous and makes the faithful vulnerable to quack medicine, a traditional GOP ally. Women, LGBTQ, trans, and other minorities are kept down. Conspiracy theories about race and gender have incited frequent, deadly mass shootings. Media has some responsibility. Churches are tax free and many are wealthy. As seen packing the Supreme Court, they are politically active, the cause of wars, which is why they should be taxed. They align with authoritarian leaders like Trump, sometimes making them divine. They would create a theocracy if they could. Notice some of the most backward countries in the world are theocracies: Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. See the Press Freedom Index Militarism
Peace
SecurityFascists spend most resources on police, , arms, the military, border controls, or nuclear weapons, not for people. It is relatively easy for governments to decide to increase security, but It is much harder for them to decrease it. Republicans want guns in schools. After a wall on the Mexican border will there be a wall across Canada ?. Dictators, and it's always a dictator, who threaten nuclear war are a threat to all of us, as is right wing government. That's why it is disturbing that the GOP sides with authoritarians like Putin. Humanity had better reject right wing gov. to survive. Cruelty
General Welfare"The refusal to provide very minimal living standards to people who are caught in this monstrosity — that's just pure savagery." – The right has disdain for human rights for 'some people', an underclass that includes women in religious countries, LGBTQ, formerly jews in Germany, blacks and other people of color in the US, but censorship blinds many to that. Corporate elite are passionate about keeping unions down, which suppresses workplace democracy. Just about everywhere in the West except the United States, where there is no mandatory paid time off, workers not only get vacations but also short work weeks, government health care, large pensions, high minimum wages, subsidized childcare, and so forth. Why is the United States the exception?" Claude S Fischer, Boston Review In democracies, like Nordic countries, empathy assures people of strong social supports, taxpayer funded universal health, education, welfare and decent living conditions. They are the happiest countries, have a free market, well educated, healthy people, trust their government, and get a good deal for their high taxes. The happiness index reflects that. Resources..."the costs of climate change, if not addressed, will be equivalent to losing 5 percent (and potentially as much as 20 percent) of the global gross domestic product (GDP) each year, now and forever." Hundreds of millions of people could be threatened with hunger, water shortages, and severe economic deprivation. "Climate change is the greatest example of market failure we have ever seen." from the Stern Report on the Economics of Climate Change. (updated 8/2011 in Technology Review Magazine). UtopiaForecastThere’s been nothing like this in history. It’s kind of an outrageous statement, but it happens to be true, that the Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in human history. Nobody, not even the Nazis, was dedicated to destroying the possibility of organized human life. It’s just missing from the media. In fact, if you read, say, the sensible business press, the Financial Times, Businessweek, any of them, when they talk about fossil fuel production, the articles are all just about the prospect for profit. Is the U.S. moving to number one and what are the gains? Not that it’s going to wipe out organized human life. Maybe that’s a footnote somewhere. It’s pretty astonishing. Noam Chomsky We have been warned what the challenges are, and the response has been inadequate. Fires, heat, storms, drought, floods, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, loss of biodiversity, will render much of the earth uninhabitable resulting in mass migration. With every degree of temperature increase, roughly a billion people will be pushed outside the zone in which humans have lived for thousands of years. We are running out of time to manage the coming upheaval before it becomes overwhelming and deadly. Migration is not the problem; it is the solution. Nomad Century, How Climate Migration will Reshape Our World by Gaia Vince The unlikely possibility of reform.see https://gopiswrong.net/SeshatDataBank |