GOING FROM DEMOCRACY TO DICTATORSHIP

[Bruce Tuncks]

I reckon we've seen in Trump and in Putin just how easily this can happen. Well it didn't happen with Trump, but there are lots of examples in history where it has happened.

Maybe the modern media, with its concentration at the top, makes it more likely these days? Maybe the Westminster system is better than the Presidential system?

AND, is a dictatorship necessarily weaker than a democracy?

[Bruce Tuncks]

To attempt to answer the last question first, I think the answer is "yes, because a dictatorship has no means of transfer of power except a big fight or a murder"

Who wants to be ruled by a murderer?

[facthunter]

Hence the number of skilled/educated people who have left Putins GRIP. Once someone changes the rules to get to stay there. Heed the warning and DITCH them before it's too late. These people need a great  enemy to keep them in Power.   Nev

[old man emu]

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination. Voltaire

 

“The concept of the benevolent dictator, just like the concepts of the noble thief or the honest whore, is no more than a meaningless fantasy.” ― Alaa Al Aswany, On the State of Egypt: A Novelist's Provocative Reflections

 

"I'm a benevolent dictator." — Harvey Weinstein

 

Dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify. Gerard K. O'Neill

 

“Wild animals look good in the jungle, not in the Oval Office.” ― Abhijit Naskar

[red750]

The same applies in China and Indonesia if I'm not mistaken. (I probably am.)

[spacesailor]

England TRIED a Republic / dictatorship. 

SO

If Australia TRIES a republic system. 

Can we go back to what has been Good for the last 200 years .

Will the Republicans give back , that CHOICE,  that IT has, under our present system. 

spacesailor

[Jerry_Atrick]

Bruce - you've hit the nail on the head; the transition from democracy to dictatorship is rarely an overnight transition, but has the seeds planted many years before it happens. Franklin D Roosevelt is credited as saying "In Politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can be it was planned that way.". At the moment, there is a bit of a political storm brewing in the UK with the Secretary of State (minister) of the Home Office. She uses racially inflammatory rhetoric, which has has drawn the public ire of celebrities, but, more importantly, a lone Holocaust survivor, who confronted the Home Secretary at a public meeting.

 

She likens the rhetoric to that of Germany pre-war; According to her, it started well before the war ans Kristallnach, but that like told often enough and long enough brainwashed people. From there, people seemed to turn a blind eye to the continually incremental grabs of power, missing opponents, etc. Of course, it's more complicated than that; the terms and conditions that Germany lived under after WW1 was helping breed resentment and the search for a leader to take them out of their situation, etc. But, Germans didn't  just turn on Jews overnight...

 

Similarly with Putin; it was a plan, little by little until he was in an unassailable position...

 

The US avoided it because, despite the turmoil, it has very strong democratic institutions; those of other countries, including I would think the UK, may well have crumbled.

 

I could write a thesis if I had the time.. It is a worrying world we live in; Not quite 8- years on, and we still don't learn from history,.

[old man emu]

2 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

told often enough and long enough brainwashed people.

That's the message of "Advertising 101" (Yuk, I've been brainwashed into using that American terminology.) Who of us hasn't had their life molded by repetitive messages from religion to politics to household purchases? 

 

The eighteenth-century Irish philosopher Edmund Burke wrote in his “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents” (1770): “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” This is more commonly paraphrased as “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

 

But the evil of dictatorship is that its creation follows the path taken by so many cancers. First it is one cell that mutates. Then it divides to give two. Then four, then eight until that single cell has given rise to a tumour, or has dispatched its daughter cells to infect the surrounding good cells. A cancer goes unnoticed until it has spread its malevolence throughout its local surrounds and then moves out to attack the whole body.

[Bruce Tuncks]

Yes, the UK was a dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell and they came back from it, unfortunately planting the seeds of puritanism in the USA.

Apparently there was a time in England  where you could look out and see a bunch of Cromwell's thug-soldiers trampling your kitchen garden. If they found a herb, you would be tortured till you admitted to being a secret Catholic.

[Old Koreelah]

3 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

The US avoided it because, despite the turmoil, it has very strong democratic institutions…

You sure about that Jerry?

 

This article shows how easily one city in America was taken over by the far right:

(Even more worrying, I recently overheard a group of Australians who were on the same trajectory.)

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/21/california-journalist-far-right-takover-shasta-county

 

 

 

 

[nomadpete]

Point 1.

Totally agree that control and misuse of media is rife in our brave new world. And it is not making our world a nicer place.

 

Point 2.

Due to the above, public perception of everything is moulded by the (mostly) ultra wealthy, whose main interest is their own wealth.

 

Point 3.

Due to points 1 & 2, genuine journalism has steadily degraded into  'voices' that are crafted to stir up emotions and bring attention to advertisements. The advertisements have the primary motive of making money. Media is all about making money, not about making truth.

 

Civility in society is a casualty.

[facthunter]

Civil behaviour is a thin veneer. Quickly discarded and lost. Propaganda pure and simple is what it's still about. Goebbels would be smiling..   Populism rather than good policy and finally enslavement.  The government RUNS you. Thats why DEMOCRACY must  prevail. It's the least worst thing. The thing Despots fear is to be made answerable .  Nev

[nomadpete]

In war, truth is the first casualty.

(Not my words)

 

Is democracy a civilised way to wage civil war without actually firing bullets?

 

Because truth seems to be the first casualty of democracy, too.

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

I reckon Nev, as usual, has it right when he says " democracy is the least worst thing"

[Old Koreelah]

3 hours ago, facthunter said:

Civil behaviour is a thin veneer. Quickly discarded and lost…

Unfortunately so true.

How to keep a lid on the worst of human behaviour?
Religion didn’t work. Western liberal democracies did a reasonable job of taming the beast, but now the likes of Trump, Murdoch and others have demonised the very basis of our tolerant, orderly society. 

 

Even the most civilized of us can quickly be turned nasty, as Goebels proved.

 

https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/5-psychological-experiments-that-show-the-dark-side-of-human-nature-10aedf864bd5

 

 

[spacesailor]

O M E

' WHO HASN'T been indoctrinated by religion or politics ' 

ME

I missed out nearly all of those informative years , due to hospitalization. 

From 3 ish to 9 ish , no primary education  & only the 4 or 5 years of secondary education  

By bloody demobed  army men !. Who taught them how to teach anything ?.

spacesailor

 

[facthunter]

It least they'd teach you that war is a dumb idea.  I started  teaching in 1959 in Western Sydney. How old were YOU then?.  Nev

[Jerry_Atrick]

21 hours ago, Old Koreelah said:

You sure about that Jerry?

I didn't say it was impenetrable, nor that every institution was strong enough. Jeez, even Australia let itself get taken to the line before they finally ousted a serially corrupt federal and set of state governments. Here, the conservatives have changed electoral laws to make it harder for younger people to vote, and as it is not mandatory, there turnout amongst the younger crowd is expected to reduce.. and guess what demographic doesn't have much support for the Conservatives? Yet, no one is batting an eyelid.

 

But, in spite of the attack on the US federal system, even Republican led institutions, on balance, held firm. Odd, since the election of the democrats, some Trump stooges as judges have tried to usurp the system; one in Florida is the subject of a no-confidence motion and the Supreme Court justice whose name eludes me at the moment is looking like he will be investigated for corruption.

 

The US institutions have been attached from within for a few decades and some damage has to have been done.. but it, on the whole, was weathered the storm.. how long it will continue to do so is another question.

 

 

Edited April 25, 2023 by Jerry_Atrick

[Bruce Tuncks]

Nice story Jerry...  I reckon a corrupt judge is the worst of the worst.

I also like the notion that while 2000 years of christianity didn't make people better, a hundred years of capitalism sure did. You have to be nice to make somebody a repeat customer.

The thing that Trump and Murdoch both have is distance from the sales-point.  This distance enables their true personalities to shine out, and what terrible men we see... mind you, Murdoch shows flashes of brilliance now and then. Getting rid of Tucker was one.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Just now, Bruce Tuncks said:

The thing that Trump and Murdoch both have is distance from the sales-point. 

Do you remember Bob Ansett and Budget Rent-A-Car? Whether it was true or not, his marketing campaign was about how the execs had to spend, was it a week per month - behind the counter dealing with customers. I am not sure it is true, but I hope it is for two reasons - one, they see what crap customers have to put up with... and 2) they see what crap their coal-face staff have to put up with.. and hopefully set about fixing it.

 

How many corporates are sticking chat bots (and have been for a while) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) onto their websites ans phone systems? To get to talk to them, one has to send in the lawyers.. Well, Amazon is now decommissioning their chat bot; I had an issue with a product I bought from them about 9 months ago, When I clicked describe the problem, which normally brings up a chat bot, there was a page apologising for decommissioning the chat bot (they should have apologised for commissioning it), and I chatted (messaged) a real person; problem was solved in about 30 seconds. Other corporates and service providers will also learn the hard way.

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

I was just starting school in Alice Springs in 1950 Nev.... gosh, you are even older than me.

This was reception, so I was in grade 1 in '51 etc, grade 11 in '61'. This is how I can remember what happened when, well a bit anyway.

[red750]

At least the chat bots are easier to understand than many of the Asian customer service operators on some company's Help? lines - Indian, Philipino, etc. Usually have to ask them 3 or 4 times to repeat.

[facthunter]

Bruce I was exceptionally YOUNG when I started teaching. Did you fly gliders at Bond Springs during 1969?   Nev

[old man emu]

Side-slipping into land back on topic, what politicians fail to realise that in a democracy we delegate various tasks so that a society is the sum of its parts. When we have elections, we are going through a staff selection process. Once chosen by the majority of the electors, a public official becomes the employee of the electorate. They are not the master of the electorate. The electorate is quite within its rights to sack an underperformer, and there's not "unfair dismissal" crap.

 

Perhaps over the door of the Members' Entrance to the Chamber of Parliament should be written large; "O quam cito transit gloria mundi "  (Oh how quickly the glory of the world passes away.)

[Bruce Tuncks]

Not in "69 Nev.  In about "65 or '66 I flew at the old town strip in a brand-new Bocian, with Nobby Orchard as the instructor. There were 12,000 ft cu and the thermals were visible! Well you could see a very-wide column of dust going gradually to yellow to about 7,0000 ft Then above this, you could see the cumulus. Wow I never saw that again, not even at Alice Springs. Shortly afterwards they moved to Bond Springs, and the old town strip, plus the old grazing commons, became housing etc. This was my first real glider flight, and I loved it.

 

Then, in later years, ( I was there in 2001 when 9/11 happened) I used to enter the Alice Springs Master's games, as gliding was a sport there. One year, I am proud to say how these games made the national news, as the whole town ran out of condoms!  Nothing to do with the Bond Springs gliding, I am sorry to say. A typical task for the master's games competition was to fly up the Stuart Highway and then cross the scrub to return via the Tanami . This put the scrub crossing at the peak of the day.

I remember some impressive thermals and some impressive sink too....  once I lost a 22:1 final glide 2 or 3 times in a 42:1 glider.