Anyone else feel like democracy everywhere is an underdog nowadays? Solidarity with anyone anywhere fighting against the oppressors, whether it’s Hong Kong or Ukraine or the United States of America.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Yet somehow the United States still finds time to lecture and destabilize Venezuela and Bolivia.
I think you’re confusing democracy with the National Endowment for Democracy which is absolutely not affiliated in any way with the CIA.Which is how they want it.
Climate change is fueling a cycle of increased tensions, violence, refugees.
Western democracies are controlled by a few powerful people, who have little interest in dealing with the problem and in fact see the opportunity for more power grabs.
The commoners are starting to feel the pressure and look for culprits, and find them according to their political leaning:
– Left: it’s the fault of the rich. Eat the rich.
– Right: it’s the fault of those who look different. Rich people like the idea for obvious reason. Fascism ensues.
Hong Kong, Ukraine, United States, Bolivia, Venezuela, Iraq, the Philippines, Brazil, the UK, Israel, Egypt, South Sudan, Syria, North Korea, the DRC, Turkey, Somalia, Saudi Arabia… where do you stop? It’d be easier to list the countries with stable, non-oppressive governments.
@3: Climate change, unchecked growth of how much wealth is captured by the rich reaching crippling levels, people who first-hand remember the Nazi regime and how terrible it was starting to die off, much more pervasive social media done by algorithms with no interests except keeping people watching…it feels like we have managed to line up a lot of problems all at the same point in time.
@monad #5: yes, power and wealth were becoming more concentrated before climate change started accelerating things.
Maybe with the fall of the USSR, neo-liberalism lost any restraint?
Also, every single one of the new far-right proto fascists seem to have a host of legal problems.
It is fucking scary how selling hate enables someone to get away with any kind of corruption.
@#7, F.O.:
Ah, it isn’t just “selling hate”. You forget that in much of the world, the postwar “liberal” order died or retired around the 80s, and nearly everywhere there were movements to push what had been the resisting force against right-wing corruption into acquiescence with the desires of the very rich. Since, naturally, the very rich tend to love them some corruption, it meant that in essence the western democracies spent decades without any leadership which made any serious effort to stop corruption. It’s not a surprise at all that we got Donald Trump and Boris Johnson a few decades after New Deal Democrats were displaced by New Democrats and Labour was taken over by New Labour. As the old Persian proverb says: when cat and mouse agree, the grocer is ruined.
tl;dr version: the new far-right proto-fascists were created by the people who now pretend to oppose them, like Biden and Blair.
In Hong Kong, people rallied in front of the US consulate with Trump 2020 banners. I’m not going to apologize for the actions of the PRC or for Hong Kong’s governmental structure, but when I see things like that and hear protestors gush about the virtues of American politics…let’s just say that I have concerns.
“When did this become the default?”
https://youtu.be/L2BU2HK8agE?t=48