Putin Wins

Vladimir Putin, Tzar of All the Russias, opined recently that liberal democracy has run its course and is now obsolete.

Sadly, he is perfectly correct.

Failure was always going to be the fate of any system of governance that requires no qualification whatsoever from either those standing for election or those doing the voting. In a complex inter-connected world, most people are simply incapable of understanding even the basic realities of life. As we don’t like to feel stupid or confused, we naturally gather around those who tell us there are simple answers to complex problems. The fact that these people are lying doesn’t trouble us because we want to believe them.

Our brains hurt when we try to think and we’re overwhelmed by complexity; ergo the obvious course of action is to let the blustering demagogues take power and save us with their magnificent stable genius.

If we take a quick look around the world we see Orban has turned Hungary into a one-party neofascist state and PiS in Poland is rapidly following the same game plan. Turkey is already a Sultanate under Erdogan, who has locked up hundreds of thousands of people and is torturing thousands daily in order to keep a deathly grip on power. Africa is, and likely always will be a basket case with nearly every country ruled by dictators in all but name; South America isn’t really much better…