Why The World is Ripping Itself Apart
Five Ways History’s Repeating Itself
Consider the following finding. A third of Americans would give up their right to vote for a 10% raise. About $5000. Troubled yet? Now imagine that a demagogue comes along and offers them exactly that. You don’t have to try very hard, do you? Bang. Democracy goes bye bye — overnight.
All that’s what’s really going wrong in the world today, in one single, alarming statistic. We are repeating history. It’s a point that we miss, given the daily news cycle, the global warming, the planet dying, the pandemic surging, the constant barrage of collapse that we’re now faced with. Yet unless we see clearly how the larger dots of human despair, folly, and prosperity are connected, we are doomed to be history’s mute puppets, not futurity’s authors — I’ll return to that, after we discuss those five exact dots, one by one.
Stagnation is producing authoritarianism. What does it mean that a third of Americans would give up their right to vote for about $5000? It means that economic stagnation produces authoritarianism. When people grow poor — absolutely or relatively — they lose faith in democracy. That democracy can offer them a working social contract — one that elevates their standards of living. They are willing to make what seem like foolish bargains later — but make sense at the time. Democracy for a better life? A functioning society for tyranny? When a democracy ceases to represent you, why not? In just this way, strongmen — who tempt people with the better lives that democracy can no longer offer them — rise, take control, and shape the destinies of nations. That is the story of the 1930s, whether in Germany, Italy, Japan, or Russia.
Authoritarianism is producing instability. People turn to authoritarians for a sense of stability — they are like wounded infants seeking safety in the arms of a strong daddy figure. But when authoritarianism ripples through nations, the result globally is instability. That is because authoritarians brook no compromise, hold no respect for democracy externally, too, not just internally. And so treaties, agreements, alliances, all get shredded. Trade wars erupt — all in the name of “us first!” Borders are closed. Exit visas are issued. And so on.
