One small quibble: Xi did not crack down on Hong Kong because there was unrest there. Xi introduced massive changes to the Hong Kong system and the people reacted with unrest.
In a way, I think you are both right. Xi's repression led to unrest, that led to a perceived need for more power to repress. It's a classic feedback loop situation.
One can even claim that the march toward authoritarianism started with the Tienanman massacre. That finished off the liberals within the CCP. It took another twenty years to result in Xi.
I see your point, but I guess I'm remembering Hong Kong's political arrangements and the prosperity it underpinned as being implicitly perceived by the CCP as "unrest", inasmuch as it was a challenge to Xi's authority.
I think that’s right. Hong Kong couldn’t be allowed to continue as a democracy with greater individual freedom because it might give everyone else ideas. Not dissimilar to Ukraine.
Ever since ‘the kingship descended from Heaven’ in ancient Sumer. strongmen (an a few women) leaders have been turning their powers to self-aggrandizement and the accumulation of wealth and power, suppression of political opposition, and territorial expansion through various means of economic, social, and military aggression. It is one of the oldest stories in what we call ‘civilization’.
The United States was created as an alternative to four millennia of top down rule, some of it relatively benign, some unimaginably cruel, most somewhere in between, but but all based on some variation of either ‘the divine right of kings’ or ‘our political, financial, and/or military success entitles us to make all the decisions for everybody else’.
Our alternative (Novus Ordo Seclorum) has been stumbling along for nearly 250 years, and across the world that alternative has been a beacon to many who have attempted, with varying degrees of success to emulate it, and it remains, as one of the best of us once noted, “the last best hope of earth”.
We are just under three weeks away from the anniversary of Lincoln’s extraordinary reiteration of that alternative on a cold November day at the site of the greatest battle ever fought on the American continent - coincidentally (or perhaps not) just days after the public debut of Ken Burn’s documentary on the American Revolution.
The fact that the 250th anniversary of our alternative will be overseen by a President who has no concept of what we were founded to become, nor any concern to maintain this, the most extraordinary, the most crucial, the riskiest, and the most complex ongoing experiment in human society and government ever attempted, is perhaps, one of the greatest ironies in our history.
You seem truly depressed. Perhaps an alternative point-of-view.... we are in the golden age of mankind.... in general, people are wealthier, more powerful, and healthier than at any time in history. On Trump and Trumpism, it seems to be a reaction to long neglected problems and current orthodoxies/priesthoods
1) MAHA: was the previous system, especially in the US, promotive to health. Poking a bit in this direction seems to make sense. I don't mind the debate on this important topic. We are headed towards a world of health ownership by the individual (vs doctors).
2) Shared Defense: A bit more shared investment in defense seems like a good thing. I can certainly understand the irritation to the European rhetoric of 6-week vacations/full healthcare.
3) Shift of focus from Europe to Americas: Obviously, what happens in your neighborhood impact you way more than some far off place. Mexico is far more important to the US than anyone in Europe.
4) Education/Research: again... was the current system really working... poking a bit at reforming it makes a lot of sense. Education/Research has been a huge success and that success has bred arrogance and a lack of willingness to adapt.
5) revenue mix: Shifting the federal revenue mix from primarily income tax to some level of sales tax (tariffs), fees (everywhere), and using the US government balance sheet ... it is an interesting experiment.
Overall, I think the problems being "poked" are the right ones. Are the solutions proposed the right ones, I have my doubts, but a little experimentation is not a bad thing. The political opposition would be wise to directly address these topics as well. On governance, we do need to close the loophole of "taxation without representation" with the tariffs. Trump seems to have found a loophole which he is exploiting... I guess from years of practice in real estate.
Finally, on Russia, I just wonder if the Ukraine war is actually a process of "de-fanging" a very negative influence in the world. On China, they are navigating a massive number of problems (demographics, debt crisis, massive increase in defense spending, etc). Even their successes (EV as an example) have deep issues with profitability. Buffett just disinvested from BYD. Over the last 50 years, the world has built a dependency on low-cost, low-margin, dirty industries from China. As they try to leverage that "strength," alternatives will be built. It might get a little rough in the transition, but nothing prevents the movement elsewhere.
Overall, there is a lot of churn, but the world is not a bad place.
Disagree with the common defense of Trump. It’s not enough to pick the right problems, that’s the easy part! Your solutions have to be good too. Any policy by anyone can be justified with a “but the status quo wasn’t great either”, but there’s lots of disastrous policies.
We “poked” the Middle East quite a bit with the whole Iraq thing, for example. Mao and Stalin poked some very real problems in their countries.
fair enough. I am not a Trump supporter..I could do without all the drama. It would be nice if the democrats addressed the right problems. The party seems lost. looking for a real debate on these important issues with reasonable alternatives.
Many Americans like yourself also don't quite know what the Democrats are about. Which is mainly because they lack the 24/7 influence machine benefiting the GOP in the form of FOX News, OANN, Newsmax, Sinclair, and RW talk radio.
A "reasonable debate" over the future of healthcare makes sense, yes? The current federal shutdown, for example, is because the Democrats want to prevent health insurance premiums rising by 100-200% over the next calendar year. If you take away insurance from the bottom 10-20% of Americans, who do you think will reimburse hospitals when they show up for care and are unable to pay?
Well... I don't listen to any of the GOP or Conventional news sources...
On healthcare, you are referring to ACA subsidies... fair enough.. I am ok with this subsidy... in the short term. However, this is not a serious conversation on healthcare because it is only about insurance. Today, the healthcare system is this massive beast with little transparency with costs going out of control. A real debate would be: 1) what causes bad health ? 2) how do we reach an accommodation between the individual/society on encouraging good health ? 3) if you insist on doing things which cause bad health, do I have to pay for it ? 4) how do we reform compensation to be more transparent 5) etc...
A serious debate would go after the core underlying issues and suggest ways of addressing them.
Rahul agree with most of your post, especially with the Democrats, I am one, addressing issues. The PBS show Uncommon Knowledge, recently had a show with three historians, including Stephen Kotkin and Niall Ferguson. Excellent show and Niall echoed many of points. It was a fascinating show if you are interested.
Actually that show devolved into an unruly shouting match among three ego-centric historians, each absolutely sure of the rightness of his own position and interpretation. It said more about them than about whatever reality actually exists.
"Overall, I think the problems being "poked" are the right ones."
Yes, the 500,000 dead women and children (at minimum, estimates vary much higher) (so far!) from USAID cuts was definitely the right problem to poke! Glad we agree! Great news for you: the deaths will continue every year until some other country steps in.
I am, just like you, glad that we have armed federal forces marching through American suburbs throwing middle-aged women to the ground whose only action was screaming at the automatic-rifle toting federal forces. That was the right problem to poke, those uppity women.
I am also, just like you, glad that we poked the problem of those non-white nannies and house cleaners - I think it's dope that we abduct them without due process, and occasionally abduct the odd American citizen by accident and send them to foreign prisons (also without due process).
I think it's dope that we poked at the problem of racial profiling and now cops can do that at will.
I think it's dope that we poked at the problem of tylenol, and that we're working to remove access to vaccines.
I could go on, but I think I'd have to buy another keyboard due to overuse of this one, once I finished typing.
By the way, I was lying above that I think it's dope and cool that we are doing these things. Get your head out of your dumb information bubble. Also, no one falls for the classic terminally online MAGA-move of calling your opponent mentally ill in your opening statement, anymore.
Well... thanks for the respectful response (not)... just to be clear, I am not a fan of the USAID cuts nor of federal troops in US cities... but I guess you don't care much. Outrage is always more interesting.
" in general, people are wealthier, more powerful, and healthier than at any time in history”
One has to ask how well that quotation would play out in Russia, Ukraine, many areas in sub-Saharan Africa, South and Central America, China, the Middle East, and a number of other places around the world including Appalachia and a number of other both rural and inner-city areas in the United States.
What is actually the case is that there are certainly substantial pockets of those who are wealthier. more powerful, and healthier, but the discrepancies between those that are and those that are not are rather a testament to a world which does indeed have the resources to make your description a reality, but in which those discrepancies are growing. One proof of that is the enormous number of refugees seeking asylum all across Europe and in the Americas, numbers that are destabilizing a number of those countries to which so many are fleeing.
Further, we are closer to nuclear war than we’ve been at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. World-wide saber-rattling is increasing rather than decreasing.
We have just recovered from a world-wide pandemic that, in addition to the millions it killed, also severely disrupted the world-wide supply chains in this increasingly interconnected world. Yet even here in the county you claim to so well served by Education/Research, the US, a leader in both, both are being decimated by the authoritarian polices of anti-intellectualism, revenge, and health cranks who seem to want to take us back to the last century.
You say that “A little experimentation is not a bad thing", and I would agree if the experimentation was not devolving into an all out war on the democratic process across the world.
Do we have problems all across the world? Of course we do. We always have had. But the solution is not to disdain, threaten, and overturn the alliances that combined to defeat the greatest evil in human history less than a century ago. It is not to disdain, disavow, and in some cases reverse the educational, technical, medical, and social progress made, however falteringly following the two greatest man-made catastrophes in human history (1914-18 and 1937-45). It is not to turn the world into warring camps armed with the potential to ‘solve' all our problems by entirely doing away with us or returning us to a radioactive Stone Age.
This is a bunch of alarmist nonsense. We are nowhere near nuclear war. Putin has been saber rattling about nukes in Ukraine for almost 4 years now and no follow through. This is completely targeted at the general public in NATO to try to drive fear and erode political support for defending Ukraine.
US nuclear guarantees are being withdrawn, and they are being followed by widespread nuclear proliferation.
This is undoing the great work at the end of the Cold War. George Bush Sr.'s greatest service to humanity was not successfully and nearly bloodlessly choreographing the end of the Cold War with Gorbachev. It was to commit the resources to ensuring that no nuclear weapons in former Soviet states ended up in the wrong hands.
Worse than a few loose Soviet nukes, we've entered the first nuclear period where the 3 greatest powers are autocratic, and one to arguably all three are in unstable transition. Thus we have a far higher risk of nuclear war today than at any time except the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Before entering this period of instability we failed to deal with the House Of Dynamite, which leaves us entirely vulnerable to rogues triggering a mass retaliation.
Then why do you suppose the number of nuclear armed countries has been rising ever since we became the first nation to build and use one?
Indeed one of the primary responses to Trump’s vacillation about NATO and his demand that Europe take on a more determined role in it’s own defense is that nuclear arms will proliferate because the US’s nuclear umbrella may no longer be assumed to exist.
Yes, Putin’s threats are an attempt to scare us, but the threat is very real, and it’s not only Putin’s Russia we are talking about.
And I note you have not replied to any of my other points. Potential nuclear warfare is only one of the problems and threats we face.
On the main point, the world as a whole is getting better...Noah and many others have written about this point.
On the rest of your points, I do agree with most of them.
1) Democratic processes to solve problems are superior and overturning these has major issues. In the longer run, authoritarian polices do not do well.
2) Anti Intellectualism is bad... questioning the current orthodoxies is not necessarily bad.. it's a fine line
3) Alliances: Here I am totally in your camp.... In the long run, values matter...no one wants to have an alliance with an unreliable partner. I have no idea what is to be gained by upsetting the Canadians as an example. This shift will have long term negative consequences.
I still think you overestimate the love people in the West actually hold for democracy. When push comes to shove voters have shown a deep indifference towards institutions and the country we've built. I don't think most voters understand it. I am not a huge Thaddeus Stevens fan, but I have a lot of empathy for that scene in Lincoln where he and the President are arguing and he looks at the President and says "you know what the people are" because he's right: the people are not as enlightened as we'd like to believe.
Amusingly the same actor offers another wonderful insight in a separate movie (Men in Black of all movies): "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it." Yep, Tommy Lee Jones was not my pick for calling our current calamity (and in many ways this doesn't 'call' it) but I find myself thinking of both lines.
> because he's right: the people are not as enlightened as we'd like to believe.
Yeah, he's right. But neither are the sanctimonious members of the upper class like Thaddeus Stevens. At least the proles don't call themselves "enlightened" so I'll give them credit for that.
The populist idea that “the people” are better at running things because they have a mysterious “common sense” that the “elite” ignore because it benefits them is quite old. Also quite wrong
You are right about this: "When push comes to shove voters have shown a deep indifference towards institutions and the country we've built. I don't think most voters understand it."
I am a volunteer at Independence National Park here in Philly. Feedback that I receive from the Park Rangers here support what you are saying (I generally "work" in The Visitor's Center, the E.A.Poe National Historic Site or The Thaddeus Kosciuszko Memorial Site). Many US citizens really do not understand how our government is designed to function and therefore cannot understand why democracy is such a fragile thing that must be supported!
I am curious about this part of the post: "a lot of leaders are looking eerily like Putin — Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel being classic examples." How does Netanyahu resemble Putin? Israel has historically been surrounded by and attacked by real enemies bent on its elimination. Putin has trumped up imaginary threats in order to start multiple wars of expansion and conquest. Israel citizens have rights and freedoms, and can vote, (even their sizeable Arab population). Russia is highly repressive and Putin murders his political enemies.
It's true that Arab Israelis can vote. But that alone doesn't get you very far. Northern Irish Catholics had always been able to vote. But until the power sharing executive was introduced they were second class citizens in virtually every other respect - employment, housing, civil rights - just like Arab Israelis are. This is the fate of minority ethnic-religious communities within countries beleaguered by neighbouring states of the same ethnic-religious group.
You make a good point. But compare Arab treatment in Israel with Jewish treatment in virtually all Arab countries, where they were systematically persecuted, murdered and driven almost completely out of those countries. Very few Jews now live in any Arab country.
That's true. And the Jewish communities had a new country they could go to - exit was an option even if loyalty and voice weren't. The other post-colonial governments in the region came up fairly short on most measures. And the Israeli state probably treats all its people better than a lot of governments in the region treat any of their people. But justice isn't about counting your blessings; it's about equality of treatment before the law. Plus for most Arab Israelis and inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank, exit isn't an option.
'Power sharing executive' refers to the government at Stormont (the devolved NI assembly) which has to have representatives from both sides of the Nationalist (Catholic) and Loyalist (Protestant) divide. The First Minister comes from the largest party in the assembly and the Deputy minister comes from the largest party on the other side of the divide. The two leaders' fortunes are tightly linked: if one steps down the other one has to step down. That's the bare bones of it. The arrangement is still in place and has been for about 20 years - albeit with a very lengthy suspension around the time of Brexit.
Suppose you have ever done one of those two-day retreats on decision making and taken part in the Life Raft scenario or crashed plane with survivors in the Canadian wilderness. In those cases, you come to understand that collective decision-making is better than singular decision-making.
I’m thinking that the lower GDP is a function of singular decision-making, which turns out to be less productive. As long as mercurial humans exist, we’ll have cults of power; as long as certain leaders have people willing to kill opponents, we’ll have dictators with crappy economies.
I do have a take on how populists arise and get elected. It is not social media, that is just an effective tool. Change is what is causing the dislocation that acts as a siren song for populists.
Change that never happens or change that happens too rapidly causes humans' dislocation. Rapid economic change has rendered vast swaths of the Midwest deserts for economic opportunity. Young people would not move to Silina, KS, or North Platte, NE, for job opportunities.
The young want both economic opportunities and cultural opportunities. Hence, they tend to flock to university towns in the interior of the country or big coastal cities. The depopulation of the Midwest and the nation's interior has left those who remain unnerved, angry, and open to the hyperbole of populists.
Conversely, glacial change among specific populations in our cities has left them bereft of any economic and cultural opportunities. Black or brown communities with social and economic stagnation leave those populations open to the hyperbole of populists.
Whether it's rapid or gradual change, progressive or right-leaning, populists take advantage of both.
The U.S. needs an estimated three million more houses. And how do Trump and leaders of the wealthiest corporations rise to this challenge? They build a guided ballroom for King Trump. The U.S. doesn’t have effective political and corporate leadership. Instead we have obeisance and the rabid pursuit of money and power. This won’t end well for anybody. Failed hedge fund managers and the allure of cryptocurrencies is a bubble running in parallel with the AI Bubble. When either bursts, the upper 10% will take a hit and cut back spending, which accounts for 50% of consumer spending. Two-thirds of the U.S. economy is consumption. It won’t take much to trigger a recession in an economy so skewed to the upper 10%. Even a 10% cutback in spending by the upper 10% is a big number. The income disparity and consumer spending wasn’t as skewed when the Dot Com Bubble burst. The blast radius of a cryptocurrency or AI Bubble bursting will be felt by everyone.
The media-vaunted China/Russia-Iran-North Korea alliance is a failure. Millions of Russia’s educated tech-savvy youth fled into EU countries, a majority settled in Poland. Imagine the long-term stimulus for Poland’s economy, already one of the best in the EU. That Russia’s military would attack Poland is mainstream media click bait. As Ian Bremmer put it: “If the Russian military attacked Poland, it would be crushed.” Russian proxy Syria fell. Orban is likely to be beaten in the upcoming election. So many young, educated and tech/savvy Hungarians have left the country that Orban loosened immigration restrictions. When Israel went after its enemies in Gaza, and Iran was bombed and hit by targeted assassinations, and bombed by the U.S., what did Russia and China do? (crickets.) North Korea sent some of it troops to fight in the Ukraine war. Many soldiers fled and surrendered, some of them elite troops. Could there have been a better intelligence gift to the Western alliance? Putin threatened possible use of nuclear weapons if Sweden and Finland joined NATO. And what did he do when that happened? (Crickets.)
Do the math. These so-called strongmen weakened future economic prospects for their countries. Iran’s economy is so bad that many of the youth, who chose to stay, still live with their parents. Same thing in China, which no longer publishes youth unemployment statistics. Xi’s message to them: “Eat dirt.” In other words, go back to the farm or rural villages and live with your parents. Peel away the mainstream media’s varnish for a clear view of what conditions are like in many of these countries.
As for Trump. He can barely put a sentence together. Even Marjorie Taylor Green is looking beyond Trump post-Epstein files release. MAGA is a minority cult that won’t have a charismatic leader. JD Vance certainly isn’t capable of charisma. He can brighten up a room by leaving it. Like DeSantis, Vance can’t relate to people.
Is this the opening crawl of the film you are proposing?
Tech, the global revolutionary force, has freed information, threatened the elites, and disrupted the social order. Autocrats arise, and with all the apparatus of the state at their disposal, use repressive force to bring back order. A small band of tech geniuses..yada yada yada.
Somehow casting tech as the hero just isn't working for me anymore, Noah.
Has anyone recently reread Bill Joy’s famous (infamous?) essay from the April 1, 2000 issue of Wired? “Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us.” Food for thought, again.
That's not an immutable characteristic of AI—it's simply a matter of the material that the AI is trained on and the parameters that are set for it. When Musk Wanted to remove the leftist slant of Grok he ended up with something that was instantaneously pro-Nazi. Trump is now trying to influence the slant of mainstream media and maybe he'll go after AI as well.
I would argue it is an immutable characteristic of AI as a viable commercial product. It's so expensive to run it needs a huge consumer and business customer base.
You can keep something acceptable as a commercial product by simply keeping it bland and vanilla. One AI product that I have used refused to answer any question in 2024 that was “election related" according to that product's categorization. I seldom use this product.
AI by definition is the probabilistic middle ground. When we had far fewer media outlets, those few outlets had to target a broad range of opinions and diluted extreme opinions. It's quite possible that AI, as a media aggregator and reporter, can play that same part
Of course, there's a lot of caveats there - especially around accuracy and hallucinations. Also, the average of mass misinformation on the internet (which could also be generated from AI) would end up being just as bad. And it would be very easy to train a model on propaganda.
...but if there ever was a way out of rage-bait social media, responsible AI is probably it.
Funny to mention Frederick I of Prussia as a stylistic imitator of Louis XIV, seeing as much of the success of the Prussian state during his tenure could be linked to the administrative brain-drain of Hugenots as his father responded to the Sun King's Edict of Fontainebleau with the highly tolerant Edict of Potsdam.
1. "Democracy" has never been very democratic, at least if by that term you mean majorities determining how things are going to be. (Even if you limit this to the subjects that the public is paying attention to.) For better or worse, this IS a democratic revolution. It's just that some very important groups (the educated and cosmopolitans) are facing the fact that they do not constitute a majority and must face an identity crisis where they realize that, in truth, they are much like the Founders, hostile to excessive democracy because... human nature, ignorance, disrespect for scientific evidence and facts. However, the fact remains that voter turnout it high and it is getting very difficult to find 50% of the voters who prioritize rights and freedoms in the same order as has been the norm for quite some time.
2. A very consequential effect of electronic media is everyone seeing into everyone else's lives. This goes back halfway into the 20th century, with the more educated and cosmopolitan increasingly scandalized by the way the rest of the populace lived, leading to a long series of reforms which, combined with technological innovation, altered working class lives and rural lives in myriad ways. (Keep in mind that, for many of those communities, things have fallen apart during the intervening decades, even if medicine and entertainment improved immeasurably....
As long as media venues were somewhat limited, vision in the other direction was more limited -- gatekeepers put a lot more limits on what was appropriate when it came to peering into the mores of the elites (as opposed to celebrities who invited such), but that eventually fell apart and now the whole idea of separate neighborhoods seems quaint. All kinds of people see into the way all kinds of other people live, and unfortunately human beings do not seem hard wired to accept differences under such circumstances. Those who live in ways that feel "other", people are driven to treat as OTHER and not US. If individuals were to be of a mind to let this pass, politicians and media experts know just how to leverage that otherness, to make it more salient, to motivate people to care about this otherness.
3. The two above trends in combination spell serious trouble, not just because of Trump, and not just in America. It's going to be tough to avoid having a genuine majority who are driven to shut down internal "others." Noah takes some solace in the fact that the Putin/Trump style does not work out very well, but who says that "what works" is to be the basis for what happens? How can you have a democratic system when neither side is willing to concede that the other side ought to get its way if it has a majority? When both sides see any given loss as quite possibly existential for the movement (there might be no more real elections) as well as for particular leaders (criminal charges for opponents all but required by the base)?
The idea that the 17th century mirrored the 20th century in many ways is not new. In 2011 the historian Geoffrey Parker published “Global Crisis,” a book which makes that claim. History doesn’t repeat itself, so it’s not possible to know whether the current trend toward authoritarianism will be succeeded by an Age of Enlightenment, as the 18th century turned out to be. But, at least the fact that a historical parallel to our present predicament ushered in its wake a positive outcome should be a cause for hope.
The current would be Triumvirate is indeed old. Putin seems to be in trouble. If so, whoever takes over is more likely to seek a peace agreement than continue the war. Xi seems to have lost a lot of recent supporters, especially in the military. If so, he might not make it past the end of his term, if that far. Trump is just old, sooner or later he dies, in or out of office. Who ever succeeds him, can not fill those shoes and would be best served by an entirely new edifice, for a total separation.
What seems solid and steady could break asunder in a month or in years to come, but having a successor who could carry on in like mode is quite unlikely, if only because in history it has so rarely happened.
Size matters. America is a big country,as is France, China or Russia. Also lots of rural places with a population that is conservative and religious but not connected to the latest ideas and advances like technology. When you look at a map of America with counties labeled just by party, red and blue, big cities easily stand out. The internet and especially Social Media enabled these rural places to connect with other places and I believe what they found is not an alternative world and those different ideas but like minded people. With the help of the algorithms in Social Media feeding you what you already think and like. This also makes it easier for "bad actors" to connect and energize voters in these rural pockets. This is an uprising of a population that until a decade ago had a voice on a local level but rarely on a national level.
One small quibble: Xi did not crack down on Hong Kong because there was unrest there. Xi introduced massive changes to the Hong Kong system and the people reacted with unrest.
In a way, I think you are both right. Xi's repression led to unrest, that led to a perceived need for more power to repress. It's a classic feedback loop situation.
One can even claim that the march toward authoritarianism started with the Tienanman massacre. That finished off the liberals within the CCP. It took another twenty years to result in Xi.
With respect Kathleen, isn't that a distinction without much difference?
It's a gigantic difference. You don't step on my foot because I'm feeling pain. I'm feeling pain because you stepped on my foot.
I see your point, but I guess I'm remembering Hong Kong's political arrangements and the prosperity it underpinned as being implicitly perceived by the CCP as "unrest", inasmuch as it was a challenge to Xi's authority.
I think that’s right. Hong Kong couldn’t be allowed to continue as a democracy with greater individual freedom because it might give everyone else ideas. Not dissimilar to Ukraine.
Ever since ‘the kingship descended from Heaven’ in ancient Sumer. strongmen (an a few women) leaders have been turning their powers to self-aggrandizement and the accumulation of wealth and power, suppression of political opposition, and territorial expansion through various means of economic, social, and military aggression. It is one of the oldest stories in what we call ‘civilization’.
The United States was created as an alternative to four millennia of top down rule, some of it relatively benign, some unimaginably cruel, most somewhere in between, but but all based on some variation of either ‘the divine right of kings’ or ‘our political, financial, and/or military success entitles us to make all the decisions for everybody else’.
Our alternative (Novus Ordo Seclorum) has been stumbling along for nearly 250 years, and across the world that alternative has been a beacon to many who have attempted, with varying degrees of success to emulate it, and it remains, as one of the best of us once noted, “the last best hope of earth”.
We are just under three weeks away from the anniversary of Lincoln’s extraordinary reiteration of that alternative on a cold November day at the site of the greatest battle ever fought on the American continent - coincidentally (or perhaps not) just days after the public debut of Ken Burn’s documentary on the American Revolution.
The fact that the 250th anniversary of our alternative will be overseen by a President who has no concept of what we were founded to become, nor any concern to maintain this, the most extraordinary, the most crucial, the riskiest, and the most complex ongoing experiment in human society and government ever attempted, is perhaps, one of the greatest ironies in our history.
So well put.
You seem truly depressed. Perhaps an alternative point-of-view.... we are in the golden age of mankind.... in general, people are wealthier, more powerful, and healthier than at any time in history. On Trump and Trumpism, it seems to be a reaction to long neglected problems and current orthodoxies/priesthoods
1) MAHA: was the previous system, especially in the US, promotive to health. Poking a bit in this direction seems to make sense. I don't mind the debate on this important topic. We are headed towards a world of health ownership by the individual (vs doctors).
2) Shared Defense: A bit more shared investment in defense seems like a good thing. I can certainly understand the irritation to the European rhetoric of 6-week vacations/full healthcare.
3) Shift of focus from Europe to Americas: Obviously, what happens in your neighborhood impact you way more than some far off place. Mexico is far more important to the US than anyone in Europe.
4) Education/Research: again... was the current system really working... poking a bit at reforming it makes a lot of sense. Education/Research has been a huge success and that success has bred arrogance and a lack of willingness to adapt.
5) revenue mix: Shifting the federal revenue mix from primarily income tax to some level of sales tax (tariffs), fees (everywhere), and using the US government balance sheet ... it is an interesting experiment.
Overall, I think the problems being "poked" are the right ones. Are the solutions proposed the right ones, I have my doubts, but a little experimentation is not a bad thing. The political opposition would be wise to directly address these topics as well. On governance, we do need to close the loophole of "taxation without representation" with the tariffs. Trump seems to have found a loophole which he is exploiting... I guess from years of practice in real estate.
Finally, on Russia, I just wonder if the Ukraine war is actually a process of "de-fanging" a very negative influence in the world. On China, they are navigating a massive number of problems (demographics, debt crisis, massive increase in defense spending, etc). Even their successes (EV as an example) have deep issues with profitability. Buffett just disinvested from BYD. Over the last 50 years, the world has built a dependency on low-cost, low-margin, dirty industries from China. As they try to leverage that "strength," alternatives will be built. It might get a little rough in the transition, but nothing prevents the movement elsewhere.
Overall, there is a lot of churn, but the world is not a bad place.
Disagree with the common defense of Trump. It’s not enough to pick the right problems, that’s the easy part! Your solutions have to be good too. Any policy by anyone can be justified with a “but the status quo wasn’t great either”, but there’s lots of disastrous policies.
We “poked” the Middle East quite a bit with the whole Iraq thing, for example. Mao and Stalin poked some very real problems in their countries.
fair enough. I am not a Trump supporter..I could do without all the drama. It would be nice if the democrats addressed the right problems. The party seems lost. looking for a real debate on these important issues with reasonable alternatives.
Many Americans like yourself also don't quite know what the Democrats are about. Which is mainly because they lack the 24/7 influence machine benefiting the GOP in the form of FOX News, OANN, Newsmax, Sinclair, and RW talk radio.
A "reasonable debate" over the future of healthcare makes sense, yes? The current federal shutdown, for example, is because the Democrats want to prevent health insurance premiums rising by 100-200% over the next calendar year. If you take away insurance from the bottom 10-20% of Americans, who do you think will reimburse hospitals when they show up for care and are unable to pay?
Well... I don't listen to any of the GOP or Conventional news sources...
On healthcare, you are referring to ACA subsidies... fair enough.. I am ok with this subsidy... in the short term. However, this is not a serious conversation on healthcare because it is only about insurance. Today, the healthcare system is this massive beast with little transparency with costs going out of control. A real debate would be: 1) what causes bad health ? 2) how do we reach an accommodation between the individual/society on encouraging good health ? 3) if you insist on doing things which cause bad health, do I have to pay for it ? 4) how do we reform compensation to be more transparent 5) etc...
A serious debate would go after the core underlying issues and suggest ways of addressing them.
We are an unhealthy society, and we spend a vast sum of healthcare resources on the last year of peoples lives.
Rahul agree with most of your post, especially with the Democrats, I am one, addressing issues. The PBS show Uncommon Knowledge, recently had a show with three historians, including Stephen Kotkin and Niall Ferguson. Excellent show and Niall echoed many of points. It was a fascinating show if you are interested.
Actually that show devolved into an unruly shouting match among three ego-centric historians, each absolutely sure of the rightness of his own position and interpretation. It said more about them than about whatever reality actually exists.
Thanks... not surprisingly, I love this show !
"You seem truly depressed." (Citation Needed)
"Overall, I think the problems being "poked" are the right ones."
Yes, the 500,000 dead women and children (at minimum, estimates vary much higher) (so far!) from USAID cuts was definitely the right problem to poke! Glad we agree! Great news for you: the deaths will continue every year until some other country steps in.
I am, just like you, glad that we have armed federal forces marching through American suburbs throwing middle-aged women to the ground whose only action was screaming at the automatic-rifle toting federal forces. That was the right problem to poke, those uppity women.
I am also, just like you, glad that we poked the problem of those non-white nannies and house cleaners - I think it's dope that we abduct them without due process, and occasionally abduct the odd American citizen by accident and send them to foreign prisons (also without due process).
I think it's dope that we poked at the problem of racial profiling and now cops can do that at will.
I think it's dope that we poked at the problem of tylenol, and that we're working to remove access to vaccines.
I could go on, but I think I'd have to buy another keyboard due to overuse of this one, once I finished typing.
By the way, I was lying above that I think it's dope and cool that we are doing these things. Get your head out of your dumb information bubble. Also, no one falls for the classic terminally online MAGA-move of calling your opponent mentally ill in your opening statement, anymore.
Well... thanks for the respectful response (not)... just to be clear, I am not a fan of the USAID cuts nor of federal troops in US cities... but I guess you don't care much. Outrage is always more interesting.
Super easy to say things like:
"You seem truly depressed"
"Outrage is always more interesting"
To push aside what might have real merit. Quit it!
Easy fellas.
" in general, people are wealthier, more powerful, and healthier than at any time in history”
One has to ask how well that quotation would play out in Russia, Ukraine, many areas in sub-Saharan Africa, South and Central America, China, the Middle East, and a number of other places around the world including Appalachia and a number of other both rural and inner-city areas in the United States.
What is actually the case is that there are certainly substantial pockets of those who are wealthier. more powerful, and healthier, but the discrepancies between those that are and those that are not are rather a testament to a world which does indeed have the resources to make your description a reality, but in which those discrepancies are growing. One proof of that is the enormous number of refugees seeking asylum all across Europe and in the Americas, numbers that are destabilizing a number of those countries to which so many are fleeing.
Further, we are closer to nuclear war than we’ve been at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. World-wide saber-rattling is increasing rather than decreasing.
We have just recovered from a world-wide pandemic that, in addition to the millions it killed, also severely disrupted the world-wide supply chains in this increasingly interconnected world. Yet even here in the county you claim to so well served by Education/Research, the US, a leader in both, both are being decimated by the authoritarian polices of anti-intellectualism, revenge, and health cranks who seem to want to take us back to the last century.
You say that “A little experimentation is not a bad thing", and I would agree if the experimentation was not devolving into an all out war on the democratic process across the world.
Do we have problems all across the world? Of course we do. We always have had. But the solution is not to disdain, threaten, and overturn the alliances that combined to defeat the greatest evil in human history less than a century ago. It is not to disdain, disavow, and in some cases reverse the educational, technical, medical, and social progress made, however falteringly following the two greatest man-made catastrophes in human history (1914-18 and 1937-45). It is not to turn the world into warring camps armed with the potential to ‘solve' all our problems by entirely doing away with us or returning us to a radioactive Stone Age.
This is a bunch of alarmist nonsense. We are nowhere near nuclear war. Putin has been saber rattling about nukes in Ukraine for almost 4 years now and no follow through. This is completely targeted at the general public in NATO to try to drive fear and erode political support for defending Ukraine.
US nuclear guarantees are being withdrawn, and they are being followed by widespread nuclear proliferation.
This is undoing the great work at the end of the Cold War. George Bush Sr.'s greatest service to humanity was not successfully and nearly bloodlessly choreographing the end of the Cold War with Gorbachev. It was to commit the resources to ensuring that no nuclear weapons in former Soviet states ended up in the wrong hands.
Worse than a few loose Soviet nukes, we've entered the first nuclear period where the 3 greatest powers are autocratic, and one to arguably all three are in unstable transition. Thus we have a far higher risk of nuclear war today than at any time except the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Before entering this period of instability we failed to deal with the House Of Dynamite, which leaves us entirely vulnerable to rogues triggering a mass retaliation.
Then why do you suppose the number of nuclear armed countries has been rising ever since we became the first nation to build and use one?
Indeed one of the primary responses to Trump’s vacillation about NATO and his demand that Europe take on a more determined role in it’s own defense is that nuclear arms will proliferate because the US’s nuclear umbrella may no longer be assumed to exist.
Yes, Putin’s threats are an attempt to scare us, but the threat is very real, and it’s not only Putin’s Russia we are talking about.
And I note you have not replied to any of my other points. Potential nuclear warfare is only one of the problems and threats we face.
On the main point, the world as a whole is getting better...Noah and many others have written about this point.
On the rest of your points, I do agree with most of them.
1) Democratic processes to solve problems are superior and overturning these has major issues. In the longer run, authoritarian polices do not do well.
2) Anti Intellectualism is bad... questioning the current orthodoxies is not necessarily bad.. it's a fine line
3) Alliances: Here I am totally in your camp.... In the long run, values matter...no one wants to have an alliance with an unreliable partner. I have no idea what is to be gained by upsetting the Canadians as an example. This shift will have long term negative consequences.
My wife always sums up this kind of argument saying “ where you stand depends on where you sit.“ A lesson learned over many years on Capitol Hill.
I still think you overestimate the love people in the West actually hold for democracy. When push comes to shove voters have shown a deep indifference towards institutions and the country we've built. I don't think most voters understand it. I am not a huge Thaddeus Stevens fan, but I have a lot of empathy for that scene in Lincoln where he and the President are arguing and he looks at the President and says "you know what the people are" because he's right: the people are not as enlightened as we'd like to believe.
Amusingly the same actor offers another wonderful insight in a separate movie (Men in Black of all movies): "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it." Yep, Tommy Lee Jones was not my pick for calling our current calamity (and in many ways this doesn't 'call' it) but I find myself thinking of both lines.
> because he's right: the people are not as enlightened as we'd like to believe.
Yeah, he's right. But neither are the sanctimonious members of the upper class like Thaddeus Stevens. At least the proles don't call themselves "enlightened" so I'll give them credit for that.
The populist idea that “the people” are better at running things because they have a mysterious “common sense” that the “elite” ignore because it benefits them is quite old. Also quite wrong
You are right about this: "When push comes to shove voters have shown a deep indifference towards institutions and the country we've built. I don't think most voters understand it."
I am a volunteer at Independence National Park here in Philly. Feedback that I receive from the Park Rangers here support what you are saying (I generally "work" in The Visitor's Center, the E.A.Poe National Historic Site or The Thaddeus Kosciuszko Memorial Site). Many US citizens really do not understand how our government is designed to function and therefore cannot understand why democracy is such a fragile thing that must be supported!
I am curious about this part of the post: "a lot of leaders are looking eerily like Putin — Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel being classic examples." How does Netanyahu resemble Putin? Israel has historically been surrounded by and attacked by real enemies bent on its elimination. Putin has trumped up imaginary threats in order to start multiple wars of expansion and conquest. Israel citizens have rights and freedoms, and can vote, (even their sizeable Arab population). Russia is highly repressive and Putin murders his political enemies.
It's true that Arab Israelis can vote. But that alone doesn't get you very far. Northern Irish Catholics had always been able to vote. But until the power sharing executive was introduced they were second class citizens in virtually every other respect - employment, housing, civil rights - just like Arab Israelis are. This is the fate of minority ethnic-religious communities within countries beleaguered by neighbouring states of the same ethnic-religious group.
You make a good point. But compare Arab treatment in Israel with Jewish treatment in virtually all Arab countries, where they were systematically persecuted, murdered and driven almost completely out of those countries. Very few Jews now live in any Arab country.
That's true. And the Jewish communities had a new country they could go to - exit was an option even if loyalty and voice weren't. The other post-colonial governments in the region came up fairly short on most measures. And the Israeli state probably treats all its people better than a lot of governments in the region treat any of their people. But justice isn't about counting your blessings; it's about equality of treatment before the law. Plus for most Arab Israelis and inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank, exit isn't an option.
Curious here…who was the power sharing executive?
'Power sharing executive' refers to the government at Stormont (the devolved NI assembly) which has to have representatives from both sides of the Nationalist (Catholic) and Loyalist (Protestant) divide. The First Minister comes from the largest party in the assembly and the Deputy minister comes from the largest party on the other side of the divide. The two leaders' fortunes are tightly linked: if one steps down the other one has to step down. That's the bare bones of it. The arrangement is still in place and has been for about 20 years - albeit with a very lengthy suspension around the time of Brexit.
Thanks, Jon...Looks like I have some catching up to do...and just when I thought I knew everything...(*sigh*)
Also think Netanyahu is, if anything, more popular with the general population now than in 2023.
Israel's treatment of almost half the people under their rule is far worse than any of the dictators you mentioned.
Noah;
Suppose you have ever done one of those two-day retreats on decision making and taken part in the Life Raft scenario or crashed plane with survivors in the Canadian wilderness. In those cases, you come to understand that collective decision-making is better than singular decision-making.
I’m thinking that the lower GDP is a function of singular decision-making, which turns out to be less productive. As long as mercurial humans exist, we’ll have cults of power; as long as certain leaders have people willing to kill opponents, we’ll have dictators with crappy economies.
I do have a take on how populists arise and get elected. It is not social media, that is just an effective tool. Change is what is causing the dislocation that acts as a siren song for populists.
Change that never happens or change that happens too rapidly causes humans' dislocation. Rapid economic change has rendered vast swaths of the Midwest deserts for economic opportunity. Young people would not move to Silina, KS, or North Platte, NE, for job opportunities.
The young want both economic opportunities and cultural opportunities. Hence, they tend to flock to university towns in the interior of the country or big coastal cities. The depopulation of the Midwest and the nation's interior has left those who remain unnerved, angry, and open to the hyperbole of populists.
Conversely, glacial change among specific populations in our cities has left them bereft of any economic and cultural opportunities. Black or brown communities with social and economic stagnation leave those populations open to the hyperbole of populists.
Whether it's rapid or gradual change, progressive or right-leaning, populists take advantage of both.
At least that is my two cents.
Might you have change for a penny.
Sorry, all I have is a $100
The U.S. needs an estimated three million more houses. And how do Trump and leaders of the wealthiest corporations rise to this challenge? They build a guided ballroom for King Trump. The U.S. doesn’t have effective political and corporate leadership. Instead we have obeisance and the rabid pursuit of money and power. This won’t end well for anybody. Failed hedge fund managers and the allure of cryptocurrencies is a bubble running in parallel with the AI Bubble. When either bursts, the upper 10% will take a hit and cut back spending, which accounts for 50% of consumer spending. Two-thirds of the U.S. economy is consumption. It won’t take much to trigger a recession in an economy so skewed to the upper 10%. Even a 10% cutback in spending by the upper 10% is a big number. The income disparity and consumer spending wasn’t as skewed when the Dot Com Bubble burst. The blast radius of a cryptocurrency or AI Bubble bursting will be felt by everyone.
The media-vaunted China/Russia-Iran-North Korea alliance is a failure. Millions of Russia’s educated tech-savvy youth fled into EU countries, a majority settled in Poland. Imagine the long-term stimulus for Poland’s economy, already one of the best in the EU. That Russia’s military would attack Poland is mainstream media click bait. As Ian Bremmer put it: “If the Russian military attacked Poland, it would be crushed.” Russian proxy Syria fell. Orban is likely to be beaten in the upcoming election. So many young, educated and tech/savvy Hungarians have left the country that Orban loosened immigration restrictions. When Israel went after its enemies in Gaza, and Iran was bombed and hit by targeted assassinations, and bombed by the U.S., what did Russia and China do? (crickets.) North Korea sent some of it troops to fight in the Ukraine war. Many soldiers fled and surrendered, some of them elite troops. Could there have been a better intelligence gift to the Western alliance? Putin threatened possible use of nuclear weapons if Sweden and Finland joined NATO. And what did he do when that happened? (Crickets.)
Do the math. These so-called strongmen weakened future economic prospects for their countries. Iran’s economy is so bad that many of the youth, who chose to stay, still live with their parents. Same thing in China, which no longer publishes youth unemployment statistics. Xi’s message to them: “Eat dirt.” In other words, go back to the farm or rural villages and live with your parents. Peel away the mainstream media’s varnish for a clear view of what conditions are like in many of these countries.
As for Trump. He can barely put a sentence together. Even Marjorie Taylor Green is looking beyond Trump post-Epstein files release. MAGA is a minority cult that won’t have a charismatic leader. JD Vance certainly isn’t capable of charisma. He can brighten up a room by leaving it. Like DeSantis, Vance can’t relate to people.
Is this the opening crawl of the film you are proposing?
Tech, the global revolutionary force, has freed information, threatened the elites, and disrupted the social order. Autocrats arise, and with all the apparatus of the state at their disposal, use repressive force to bring back order. A small band of tech geniuses..yada yada yada.
Somehow casting tech as the hero just isn't working for me anymore, Noah.
Just admit that you want censorship
That's some leap of logic, especially for a falling knife.
Has anyone recently reread Bill Joy’s famous (infamous?) essay from the April 1, 2000 issue of Wired? “Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us.” Food for thought, again.
No, I haven't, but it doesn't sound fun, Wolfsdread.
Just a thought - AI seems far more even tempered than social media, might that be a moderating force?
That's not an immutable characteristic of AI—it's simply a matter of the material that the AI is trained on and the parameters that are set for it. When Musk Wanted to remove the leftist slant of Grok he ended up with something that was instantaneously pro-Nazi. Trump is now trying to influence the slant of mainstream media and maybe he'll go after AI as well.
I would argue it is an immutable characteristic of AI as a viable commercial product. It's so expensive to run it needs a huge consumer and business customer base.
You can keep something acceptable as a commercial product by simply keeping it bland and vanilla. One AI product that I have used refused to answer any question in 2024 that was “election related" according to that product's categorization. I seldom use this product.
I think there's actually something to do this.
AI by definition is the probabilistic middle ground. When we had far fewer media outlets, those few outlets had to target a broad range of opinions and diluted extreme opinions. It's quite possible that AI, as a media aggregator and reporter, can play that same part
Of course, there's a lot of caveats there - especially around accuracy and hallucinations. Also, the average of mass misinformation on the internet (which could also be generated from AI) would end up being just as bad. And it would be very easy to train a model on propaganda.
...but if there ever was a way out of rage-bait social media, responsible AI is probably it.
Funny to mention Frederick I of Prussia as a stylistic imitator of Louis XIV, seeing as much of the success of the Prussian state during his tenure could be linked to the administrative brain-drain of Hugenots as his father responded to the Sun King's Edict of Fontainebleau with the highly tolerant Edict of Potsdam.
My gloomy outlook:
1. "Democracy" has never been very democratic, at least if by that term you mean majorities determining how things are going to be. (Even if you limit this to the subjects that the public is paying attention to.) For better or worse, this IS a democratic revolution. It's just that some very important groups (the educated and cosmopolitans) are facing the fact that they do not constitute a majority and must face an identity crisis where they realize that, in truth, they are much like the Founders, hostile to excessive democracy because... human nature, ignorance, disrespect for scientific evidence and facts. However, the fact remains that voter turnout it high and it is getting very difficult to find 50% of the voters who prioritize rights and freedoms in the same order as has been the norm for quite some time.
2. A very consequential effect of electronic media is everyone seeing into everyone else's lives. This goes back halfway into the 20th century, with the more educated and cosmopolitan increasingly scandalized by the way the rest of the populace lived, leading to a long series of reforms which, combined with technological innovation, altered working class lives and rural lives in myriad ways. (Keep in mind that, for many of those communities, things have fallen apart during the intervening decades, even if medicine and entertainment improved immeasurably....
As long as media venues were somewhat limited, vision in the other direction was more limited -- gatekeepers put a lot more limits on what was appropriate when it came to peering into the mores of the elites (as opposed to celebrities who invited such), but that eventually fell apart and now the whole idea of separate neighborhoods seems quaint. All kinds of people see into the way all kinds of other people live, and unfortunately human beings do not seem hard wired to accept differences under such circumstances. Those who live in ways that feel "other", people are driven to treat as OTHER and not US. If individuals were to be of a mind to let this pass, politicians and media experts know just how to leverage that otherness, to make it more salient, to motivate people to care about this otherness.
3. The two above trends in combination spell serious trouble, not just because of Trump, and not just in America. It's going to be tough to avoid having a genuine majority who are driven to shut down internal "others." Noah takes some solace in the fact that the Putin/Trump style does not work out very well, but who says that "what works" is to be the basis for what happens? How can you have a democratic system when neither side is willing to concede that the other side ought to get its way if it has a majority? When both sides see any given loss as quite possibly existential for the movement (there might be no more real elections) as well as for particular leaders (criminal charges for opponents all but required by the base)?
The idea that the 17th century mirrored the 20th century in many ways is not new. In 2011 the historian Geoffrey Parker published “Global Crisis,” a book which makes that claim. History doesn’t repeat itself, so it’s not possible to know whether the current trend toward authoritarianism will be succeeded by an Age of Enlightenment, as the 18th century turned out to be. But, at least the fact that a historical parallel to our present predicament ushered in its wake a positive outcome should be a cause for hope.
The current would be Triumvirate is indeed old. Putin seems to be in trouble. If so, whoever takes over is more likely to seek a peace agreement than continue the war. Xi seems to have lost a lot of recent supporters, especially in the military. If so, he might not make it past the end of his term, if that far. Trump is just old, sooner or later he dies, in or out of office. Who ever succeeds him, can not fill those shoes and would be best served by an entirely new edifice, for a total separation.
What seems solid and steady could break asunder in a month or in years to come, but having a successor who could carry on in like mode is quite unlikely, if only because in history it has so rarely happened.
Size matters. America is a big country,as is France, China or Russia. Also lots of rural places with a population that is conservative and religious but not connected to the latest ideas and advances like technology. When you look at a map of America with counties labeled just by party, red and blue, big cities easily stand out. The internet and especially Social Media enabled these rural places to connect with other places and I believe what they found is not an alternative world and those different ideas but like minded people. With the help of the algorithms in Social Media feeding you what you already think and like. This also makes it easier for "bad actors" to connect and energize voters in these rural pockets. This is an uprising of a population that until a decade ago had a voice on a local level but rarely on a national level.