Democracy, or "Democracy"?
Did the people have any choice in the Patriot Act and many others? On the actions following the 2007 crisis and the extraordinary bailout? Do EU citizens have any choice in the actions of the EU Comission, like Chat Control?
Democracy only exists for a short time after a revolution. After a while, the power permanently consolidates in a number of elites and the democracy becomes "democracy", that is, little more than a show.
The only time democracy works incorruptibly is in small groups where everyone knows each other and everyone knows what's going on.
Generally a nice short post of unmitigated moral clarity, but then it's jarring to see this equivocation about "the arguably autocratic China". "Arguably".
Are we being asked to call a spade a spade here, or what? If so, why these weasel words?
When emulating those "who went to Spain to fight Franco in the 1920s [sic]", is the idea that we should denounce fascism, but only in ways that won't offend the Party?
A whole of stuff here feels... emotionally loaded in a way that's designed to be manipulative rather than heartfelt. Saying "A gun craves to be shot" is a clear example -- guns don't crave anything. I'm a pro-gun leftist, so maybe I'm just sensitive to this specific example.
Another example, much of the article uses "China" to suggest a broad, villainous other. Like so much American media, this reads like, "What are we, China?" or alternatively, "Surely we are better than China..." Which assumes a level of backwater, out of date, poorly run culture in China.
As a concrete example, the author says something to the effect of, "China claims to have quickly built a hospital, which I very much doubt." And explains nothing further -- why do you doubt that? What evidence do you have? Or are you just relying on your audience to credulously agree that because it came out of China, it's bad or a lie?
Additionally, the article appeals to the idea that we are all self interested by our fundamental nature. That we're all programmed to survive at all costs, and the means of that survival is individual self interest. Plenty of folks (myself included) believe that our survival instinct is one of social cohesion -- we survive because we band together into social groups.
So I agree with the conclusion -- we should be fighting fascists, and we should be doing it with strong policy and aggressively pushing fascists out of shared spaces (a bar that permits one nazi to be there is a nazi bar), I just think this article doesn't make the case for that very effectively.
Democracy thrives on information, reason, and participation. A democracy that concludes it should "[f]abricate and / or blow out of proportion any issue that comes [it's] way to blame the fascists" is dying. A society where the winners of elections are the most egregious liars is broken. Its days are numbered. I'd rather we pull a random general's name out of a hat and make them Supreme Leader than watch some pathological liar take power when such a decaying democracy falls apart.
The truth is our greatest ally. We need to harness it as a weapon, not abandon it in a pathetic attempt to insult our enemies and preserve the status quo.
I’ve been thinking about democracy and LLMs lately. What will be the ripple effect on society now that more than 500 million people are actively using LLMs instead of their previous sources for information? Does training on massive amounts of knowledge inevitably push a model toward a particular viewpoint or is it a system prompt? https://www.trackingai.org/political-test
>The outside world can't tell the difference anyway
Why not, plurality of the outside world has PRC as their biggest trading partner, seeing increasingly higher tier goods. Some even visit and see delivered goods with their own eyes. It's convenient for democracies to pretend the knowable isn't knownable, that non democratic systems can deliver some things better. That failed democracies are actually autocratic failures are when slide into authoritarianism is democratic system failing. And really if one peers back throughout history, many democracies were built off the imperialism/extractive base from when countries were not democracies / periods when country was more authoritarian. Sometimes that base is substantial enough to snowball durable advantages from, sometimes the runway runs out and populist start questioning the system that squandered the lead. Or dismiss concerns because autocrats are faking their orgasms.
>The playbook of a democratic leadership should be to crack down on fascists and others as hard as possible. Brand them the enemy of the people, in the name of societal order, zero tolerance. Don't waste your time on creating stupid values that you can rally people around.
The tl;dr is that Western societies sort of developed liberalism as a reaction to the vast destruction of the early modern wars of religion, and it persisted because liberal democraties tend to be more productive and better at war than their autocratic counterparts, and way better than their fascist counterparts.
And yes.
Everything I like is good-label, everything I don't is bad-label. I happen to like democracy and value viewpoints from conservative to leftist. I don't like fascism.
11 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 25.5 ms ] threadDemocracy only exists for a short time after a revolution. After a while, the power permanently consolidates in a number of elites and the democracy becomes "democracy", that is, little more than a show.
The only time democracy works incorruptibly is in small groups where everyone knows each other and everyone knows what's going on.
Are we being asked to call a spade a spade here, or what? If so, why these weasel words?
When emulating those "who went to Spain to fight Franco in the 1920s [sic]", is the idea that we should denounce fascism, but only in ways that won't offend the Party?
Another example, much of the article uses "China" to suggest a broad, villainous other. Like so much American media, this reads like, "What are we, China?" or alternatively, "Surely we are better than China..." Which assumes a level of backwater, out of date, poorly run culture in China.
As a concrete example, the author says something to the effect of, "China claims to have quickly built a hospital, which I very much doubt." And explains nothing further -- why do you doubt that? What evidence do you have? Or are you just relying on your audience to credulously agree that because it came out of China, it's bad or a lie?
Additionally, the article appeals to the idea that we are all self interested by our fundamental nature. That we're all programmed to survive at all costs, and the means of that survival is individual self interest. Plenty of folks (myself included) believe that our survival instinct is one of social cohesion -- we survive because we band together into social groups.
So I agree with the conclusion -- we should be fighting fascists, and we should be doing it with strong policy and aggressively pushing fascists out of shared spaces (a bar that permits one nazi to be there is a nazi bar), I just think this article doesn't make the case for that very effectively.
The truth is our greatest ally. We need to harness it as a weapon, not abandon it in a pathetic attempt to insult our enemies and preserve the status quo.
Why not, plurality of the outside world has PRC as their biggest trading partner, seeing increasingly higher tier goods. Some even visit and see delivered goods with their own eyes. It's convenient for democracies to pretend the knowable isn't knownable, that non democratic systems can deliver some things better. That failed democracies are actually autocratic failures are when slide into authoritarianism is democratic system failing. And really if one peers back throughout history, many democracies were built off the imperialism/extractive base from when countries were not democracies / periods when country was more authoritarian. Sometimes that base is substantial enough to snowball durable advantages from, sometimes the runway runs out and populist start questioning the system that squandered the lead. Or dismiss concerns because autocrats are faking their orgasms.
>also we need to do fascism against the fascists
I hate leftists like this the most.
>The playbook of a democratic leadership should be to crack down on fascists and others as hard as possible. Brand them the enemy of the people, in the name of societal order, zero tolerance. Don't waste your time on creating stupid values that you can rally people around.
https://acoup.blog/2024/07/05/collections-the-philosophy-of-...
The tl;dr is that Western societies sort of developed liberalism as a reaction to the vast destruction of the early modern wars of religion, and it persisted because liberal democraties tend to be more productive and better at war than their autocratic counterparts, and way better than their fascist counterparts.
"Everything I like is good-label, everything I don't is bad-label" level of discourse.