Putin opines that “liberalism is obsolete.” Interviewed by the Financial Times, on the eve of the G20 meeting in Osaka, he encouraged nationalist politicians and the denial of asylum to migrants, who all “kill, plunder, and rape with impunity.”
Leaders of other attending nations objected. Donald Tusk, European council president and former prime minister of Poland, contrasted the principles of liberal democracy with rule through “personality cults… Whoever claims that liberal democracy is obsolete also claims that freedoms are obsolete, that the rule of law is obsolete and that human rights are obsolete.”
(A leader who did not object was Mr. Trump. He “joked” with Putin that they both need to “get rid” of their journalists. 26 journalists have been murdered in Russia since Putin first became president.)
My retort to Putin would be that top-down regimes such as his belong to the past.
There were long ages when the typical polity was an autocracy or oligarchy. The Inca empire; the Assyrian empire; the Hellenistic empires; the Mongol empire; the Holy Roman empire; the Ashanti empire; the Ottoman empire; and countless other despotic states. Some recent ones have words like “socialist” and “democratic” in their titles.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR or Soviet Union, was a continuation of the Russian empire. It was not communist – for the common good.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was for the first sixteen years of his career an officer of the KGB, Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnost, Committee for State Security. The vast KGB, a part of the military, was intended for protection against outside powers, but it was used heavily for repressing dissent.
Putin came to the top after the break-up of the USSR. A wave of kleptocrats was able to seize the oil assets of the old state; Putin co-opted some of them, eliminated other. He hankers for the old Russian empire, for the lost provinces of central Asia and eastern Europe, especially Ukraine, which almost separates Russia from the southern seas. He wants to be an emperor as of old. He resents the rebirth of Europe as a peaceful, co-operative, and prosperous superpower, attractive to neighbors that would like to join it. How dare they look admiringly west instead of east! He has co-opted electronic technologies invented in the West as a new kind of remote weapon, like a far-creeping odorless gas, to weaken democratic societies across the world, by poisoning people’s minds with lies that true journalists could not get away with.
Putin and his like are the past. Europe is the future.
There is constantly the danger that human progress will be reversed, the good future is never achieved, we slip back into that long age under Inca emperors and Nazi fuehrers and Big Brothers. It seemed an even chance in 1939.
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
Trump has demonstrated his scorn, not just for human rights, but for the democratic-republican form of government itself and the U.S. constitution on which it is based. He is a political savage–rather uncharacteristic of leaders in the U.S., even of the conservative stripe. Every indication is that he truly aspires to become a tyrant, admires the ruthless brand of autocrat that we see in Russia, North Korea and elsewhere. So there has never been such a challenge to the American system–perhaps never before in U.S. history. Indications are, however, that there is considerable support for this brand of politics across Europe and elsewhere. We should do what we can to oppose it–as many people are.
Putin is an idiot! Dumber than Trump!
Well said. Democratic rights and freedoms need to be preserved, defended, and practiced. Democracy only survives as a verb, not as a noun.
Yesterday the US Supreme Court ruled five to four that the federal courts have no ability to reverse even the most blatant partisan gerrymandering of legislative districts by state legislatures. In the November 2018 election, clear majorities of voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina supported Democratic party candidates but, thanks to skillful drawing of district boundaries, Republicans won comfortable majorities in the state legislatures. Politicians now use big data to pick their voters, rather than the other way around. We have an entrenched minority party that will continue to rule and to impose their reactionary, oppressive, discriminatory, ecologically destructive policies without any possible check. Yesterday was a sad day for democracy in these United States.
While there is undoubtedly a rising tide of authoritarianism/illiberalism around the world, that wave has nearly crested. The progressive/liberal wave, much larger than the former, has not even begun its crest. We will swamp these faux-populists and sweep them into the dustbin of history. Their expiration date is nigh.
We are witnessing the transition of ages, from the Piscean to the Aquarian. People are freaked out. Freaked-out people will fall for populists talking a good game. Many folks are confused. Earth changes are only exacerbating the shock of this transition.
The progressive wave, however, will keep rising — it will continue to crest. A new world is on the horizon. Those of us alive to witness this transition are here for a reason. Keep your energies high.
I really hope you are right and I incline to think you are. I may not be able to classify myself as optimist, but I find that my reaction to good news is acceptance and improved spirits, and to bad news anger and impulse to do something. The rising liberal tide is with the young, as it was in the 1960s. However, previous threats such as the rise of Nazism were within humanity and within humanity’s power to overcome. Climate change may soon not be.
I feel like we’re in a 50 year return cycle (of sorts) to what was started and advanced in the 60’s. That was a magical moment in history, and its spirit is very much alive. There are still older activists who lived through it, and young people seem to be channeling it.
I was a very young lad at the time (born in ’62), yet remember the spirit of the times vividly. To the point where I feel the 60’s were a prelude to what is happening now. I cannot help but feel/think/intuit that we, the people, are rising again, just 50 years later. We allowed ourselves to be co-opted then; perhaps it was naivete, perhaps it just wasn’t time yet, enough people weren’t awakened.
Now, however …. my goodness, look at the world! Protests are rising globally. On every continent, almost in every nation, people are rising up against corruption, imperialism, unjustified wars/aggression, inept/puppet governments. Who knows what the coming years will bring. I feel there is the potential to make the ’20’s the ’60’s on rocket fuel! In any case, this is what we must work towards. It feels like the entire world is waking up to civilization’s potential. Conscious evolution —> Cosmic evolution.
This is my site: http://earth-evolution.net/, and this is a more formal work-up of what I’ve been proposing since ca 1998. We can do this. I would say we are meant to do this, even born specifically *to* do this.
Well said, Steven. I do look at the younger politicians stepping up to ask for election. They will be taking the place of the crusty old guard. May the ‘youngins’ do well for our future! I was born in 1951, high school graduating class of ’69. And, yes, what a time that was!
Indeed! Here in the USA, we are experiencing a gaspingly appalling example of entropy trying to take hold. This next election year will be quite interesting!