It is interesting to look at history and see the moments when societies tip into tyranny. It seems that once a certain point is reached, the chance to walk back from the brink is lost. As I wrote in my recent Medium article about why "we're all fascists now" it seems we in the West are at this particular tipping-point and I see no plausible way in which we can recover from our headlong descent into barbarism. Every commercial and political and technological incentive pushes us forward because pandering to, and exploiting, people's worst instincts and desires is the most profitable (in the widest sense of the word) thing to do. It is unrealistic to expect ordinary people to become less ignorant and less gullible and it is entirely implausible to imagine those who gain from manipulating ordinary people to do themselves harm by restraining themselves. And so, as has often been the case, the USA is presently leading the way - but many other OECD nations are very, very close behind. Italy already has an overtly fascist government, in France Marine le Pen is a leading contender for the next presidential election; in Poland the neofascist PiS rules and of course in Hungary Orban is making no effort to pretend he is anything other than a tyrannical ultra-right-wing dictator. The list goes on and on, and indeed it is now quite difficult to find an OECD nation that isn't lurching toward fascism in one way or another.

As is usually the case, we are bringing horrors down onto our own heads, oblivious as to the obvious inevitable outcomes.