There can, however, be no believer in democratic government who can take any comfort from what happened. Support for democracy is hardly in a good place right now. The USA is tottering on the brink of fascism. Neo-fascist parties are securing significant support across Europe. Romania looks as though it might fall under the control of a far-right president. There is significant political instability in Germany and France, to which the far-right is contributing. The UK is governed with indifference by a government that appears intent on promoting a far-right alternative to itself. This is not a moment when believers in universal suffrage and the right of the individual to be represented within the power hierarchies of the state can be relaxed. I am, most certainly, anything but relaxed.
The S Korean coup failed because democracy. I’d suggest – lightly, gently – that democracy looks in pretty fine fettle.
But note the ongoing lament. Voters seem to be moving in a direrction Spud doesn’t like. Therefore democracy must be in danger because the people are speaking. An odd definition of democracy really….
We’re under the worst government in human history. The scrap of comfort we cling to is the knowledge that if the likes of Murphy were in power we’d almost certainly be dead.
I’d just like a day where his evil gives it a breather – is that too much for me to ask??
@VP
“Black Easter” ? (james Blish)
In the US the outgoing Democrats seemed to have been doing a pretty close approximation of Fascism already. I don’t see how the popular vote going to someone opposed to them leaves the US tottering on the brink of fascism. Pulling back from the brink maybe.
I am, most certainly, anything but relaxed.
There’s so often a bulletin on his feelings about the world and politics. He has to share his feelings, to signal concern, care, sensitivity and virtue. Convinced of his moral superiority, he feels he can be rude and unpleasant to anyone who dares to disagree with him.
The weird thing about Korea is that it’s a real life dystopian hellhole that crushes the humanity out of people.
And so is the North.
Question for the class: how stable do we think governments and the societies they’re built on can be when the TFR is 0.78 births per woman? Do we think Western style liberal democracies can endure when society is dominated by angry/disaffected incels and childless 30something women?
It’s amusing to read accusations of fascism from someone who essentially a fascist. He gets away with it – even doesn’t realise what he is – because fascism is so often looked at through the window of Nazi Germany. So if their excesses are absent, it can’t be fascism. Any political system could result in those excesses. A thoroughly representative democracy could if voters voted for them. Communism certainly has. So have absolute hereditary monarchies. Rather a lot of them. As have societies with religious rule. There is no direct connection between the political system & the excesses. It would be entirely possible to have a benign beneficial fascism. Roughly what Spain & Portugal had. All you can say against fascism in that area is it provides an easier root to slip into the excesses. As an economic system, it is far from optimum. But again, there are plenty of other economic systems are as far from optimum.
Related:
The European Union has recorded its lowest number of births in over 60 years, with a dramatic 5.5 per cent decline from the previous year marking the largest annual drop on record. Some 3,665,142 babies were born across the EU last year, with several eastern European nations experiencing the steepest falls.
I am a 1950’s robot waving his big wavy arms and screaming “DANGER, WILL ROBINSON”.
Remember all those fuddy duddies such as Mrs Thatcher who insisted that the family was the basic unit of society?
What if they were right?
In the late 70s, when I was living in a commune and being oppressed by feminist harpies playing at being political lesbians, I had a Eureka moment. I realised that in these harpies’ right-on rants and screeds if I simply inverted the sexes, what resulted was laughable sexist bollocks. Tsis revealed to me that the original was also, therefore, laughable sexist bollocks. I’ve used this technique ever since.
So, if we apply it to Murphy’s ejaculation, we get the following, which is rather closer to the objective truth:
There can, however, be no believer in totalitarian government who can take any comfort from what happened. Support for totalitarianism is hardly in a good place right now. The USA is tottering on the brink of democracy. Neo-democratic parties are securing significant support across Europe. Romania looks as though it might fall under the control of a far-democratic president. There is significant political instability in Germany and France, to which the far-democracy is contributing. The UK is governed with indifference by a government that appears intent on promoting a far-left alternative to itself. This is not a moment when believers in universal suffrage and the right of the individual to be represented within the power hierarchies of the state can be relaxed. I am, most certainly, anything but relaxed.
Mind you, for all the wrong reasons, his last sentence is entirely correct.
Steve
Spot on as ever (as indeed are all the comments on this thread) a childless acquaintance of mine was as you do bemoaning the state of women’s rights in Afghanistan. I made the point that that is exactly what the future holds for radical feminists in Europe. TMV (Muslim Block) has 5 MPs and if you add in the Greens and sundry Labour sympathisers they’re in the 20s or 30s. Does anyone think that number is going to diminish in the next election? As Mark Steyn points out ‘Demography is destiny’
I am tired of the unrelenting evil and stupidity of the likes of Murphy but as a student of history the future has never looked as bereft of hope as it does now. These are the ‘End Times’ predicted in a certain holy book for sure,
I can only agree. Leftists like Murph are simply a brand of fascist.
I also agree that democracy is very useful in reining in the worst of the nonsense. I’m thinking here of the first action of the present Labor government here in Oz. An attempt to enshrine racial privileges for a particular part of the population in the Constitution. Luckily this required a referendum so we voted it down.
Of course there was then the mad panic to push some of the legislation they wanted through on the last day of the year. About thirty bills, so I understand.
The terminology used in political discourse has become hopelessly debased, on all sides, terms are bandied around in ways far removed from their original semantic meanings. Fascists don’t actually have to subscribe to genuine fascist ideological positions, Nazis may not have any relationship with actual Nazis, same goes for Communists. Colonialism doesn’t need actual colonies, Imperialism is more likely to be cultural diffusion rather than the hard imposition of imperial power etc, etc. The Daily Fail (allegedly) recently determined some sandwich fillings to be ‘woke’ (WTF)! Perversely, there’s also a tendency to avoid applying the terminology where it may be usefully applied because it’d upset people e.g. Islamists are often far closer to genuine fascists than right wing parties in the West, Iran’s proxies are genuine Imperialist instruments etc, etc.
“He gets away with it – even doesn’t realise what he is – because fascism is so often looked at through the window of Nazi Germany. So if their excesses are absent, it can’t be fascism.”
I remember one of my first comments over at Samizdata two decades ago was along the lines of, “Some people seem to think that as long as they aren’t goose-stepping through the streets in jackboots, everything’s just dandy”. The fascist concept of government – Mussolini’s corporatist pyramid model, with the Leader and his Ministers at the top, “running the country” – is almost universal nowadays.
BIS,
“He gets away with it – even doesn’t realise what he is – because fascism is so often looked at through the window of Nazi Germany. ”
I like that Canadian bloke’s quote “everyone likes to think they were Schindler”. Everyone hates the Nazis in hindsight, but I think a lot of people who favour state over individual would have supported them. Lots of job creation, lots of state providing things for people. Never mind that colossal pile of debt. Closing down the scouts to have the government do their own bits of indoctrination. Government controlling the movies. The average Momentum type would love all that stuff.
It’s like “that wasn’t real socialism” that is always said long after they say “this is socialism” for years, until it turns sour. Which always happens because they turn countries to shit and then the people rise up against them and they have to use force against them.
Democracy would be just fine if only these wretched proles would stop voting for the wrong people? Have I got that right?
The lack of self-awareness is almost unbelievable – if only we hadn’t heard it so many times already, from Hilary Clinton and many many others, right down to the Spudmeister.
Wot’s the difference between populism and democracy?
“Populism” is from Latin and “democracy” is from Greek.
“Closing down the scouts”: this reminds me of an old colleague, a socialist from a keen Labour family.
He once told me, a little forlornly, that his father wouldn’t let him join the Scouts because they were fascist.
VP – thank you, I think feminism (and antifeminism) is going to seem quaint in future. Women blaming men and men blaming women is a game nobody wins.
South Korea looks like a society that has badly gone off the rails, because it has. They’ve got all of our problems of modernity in spades – young people unable to afford to get on the property ladder, poisonous social trends, cratering birthrates. If a population of endangered animals was ostentatiously failing to reproductive, environmentalists, busybodies and gov would be all over trying to find a solution.
The fate of the honey bee is currently a much higher priority to European policymakers than the imminent demographic collapse of their own societies. That can’t be right.
But, I don’t think these are the end times. I think it’s more of a Great Funnel. A lot of people are self selecting out of the future gene pool (more the fool them), but the ones who pass through the eye of the needle that is marrying a woman and having regular heterosexual sex with her to create children are also self selecting.
Young people, even children, are surprisingly switched on to the danger and most of them are decidedly not woke. I believe the children are our future.
Steve.. The worrying about the honey bee is one of the few things policy makers are correct about.
The domesticated beastie and its wild cousins are a very important pillar in the productivity of the land we live off, and its decline or disappearance, by our hands or not, would make Malthus get his right dues..
The problem is that the usual busybodies equate the importance of Apis Mellifica and friends to Nature and us, to the importance of say… the three-toed sixspotted swamp newt ( not to be confused with the three-toed sixspotted *pond* newt) or rather more famously: the [censored] Panda Bear.
They. Are. Not. The. Same.
The world will happily tick over if the Panda joined the vast armies of extinct species.
The honey bee…… not so much…
fascism is so often looked at through the window of Nazi Germany. So if their excesses are absent, it can’t be fascism. Any political system could result in those excesses. A thoroughly representative democracy could if voters voted for them.
The French political system is often described as “democratic fascism”. Not least by the French themselves.
Grikath – The problem is that the usual busybodies equate the importance of Apis Mellifica and friends to Nature and us, to the importance of say… the three-toed sixspotted swamp newt
Yarp. Environmentalists have it arse backwards, because they’re evangelical misanthropes.
The honey bee is important because human needs and wants are important. The environment is important because we live here. Human beings aren’t some sort of interlopers on this planet who need to feel guilty for disrupting nature, it’s our planet and we’re entitled to do up our own home.
Unless the dinosaurs come back in a big dino spaceship and start eating the UN General Assembly during the welcome ceremony. Given the mad events of the last 4 years, I give Dinogeddon one chance in three.
It isn’t “our” planet.
More like we’re lucky to have survived it so far.
“Mother” Earth is a cold, fickle bitch who doesn’t give a fuck whether we’re here or not, or the panda, or the three toes sloth, or the clown fish, or mosquitos or COVID or any of the other animals or life.
99% of all species to have lived are extinct.
On several occasions, nearly all then-existing species went at once. Almost total planet sterilisation.
We’ve barely been here for an eyeblink in terms of the planet. The idea that we’re some terrible force that is having a terrible effect on the Earth is just human hubris. We might make it a bit worse for ourselves, but the forces the Earth or space can unleash on us are genuinely terrifying.
Two million year volcanic eruptions. Planet killing asteroids. Genuine killer viruses (and I don’t mean Flu with a marketing strategy).
And that’s if we don’t just nuke ourselves into oblivion.
Ultron said it best.
“Like the dinosaurs, When life begins to settle, God throws a stone at it.”
“Like the dinosaurs, When life begins to settle, God throws a stone at it.”
Or, what’s the Jewish version?
If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.
Thank you, PF!!
Steve, BBoy and others, some sound observations. When my wife and I went to vote in the referendum our polling booth had over a dozen angry women waving “yes” signs. Just one exhausted bloke with his “no” sign, Reslt for our electorate a resounding “No”. Our electorate has a large AustralianChinese population. Take from that what you will.(The “yes” women were all Anglos.
Tuberous tears taste the sweetest.
“Democracy is best when everyone thinks just as I do and does just as I would.
Kinda makes the case for limiting immigration from radically different cultures.