After expressing my worries on the development of extreme leftism and Wokeness, I thought I should also express my concerns about the aftermath of the elections.
What worries me is how people responded to Trump’s loss, both in the US and in the rest of the world. I have seen images of people going out on the streets, cheering and chanting, and attacking Trump dolls and such.
There’s also a site “Trump Accountability” that wants to attack Trump supporters.
As I grew up during the Cold War, and I saw the demise of Communism and its dictators, this sort of thing reminds me very much of those days.
The big difference is: the US was not under dictatorship, and although Trump may have lost the elections, a LOT of people voted for him. I suppose this is the result of 4 years of sowing hatred against a president and his politics. And now that Trump is gone, it seems they want to go after his supporters. But for what? It is a democracy, and these people simply cast their democratic vote. That’s how it works. If you start oppressing people with the ‘wrong’ vote, you are actually CREATING a dictatorship, not getting rid of one, oh the irony.
At the time of writing, Trump has received around 71 million votes, and Biden has received around 74 million votes. And that is what troubles me. Are these people serious about persecuting such a large group? There aren’t 71 million fascists, racists, or whatever you think in the US. That just doesn’t make sense at all. Most of these 71 million people are just normal people like you and me. They could be your neighbour, your hair dresser, your plumber, etc.
And that’s where I think things go wrong, badly. As a European, I live in a country that is FAR more leftist than the US. We are at Bernie Sanders level, if that. So theoretically I couldn’t be further removed from Trump/Republican/conservative voters. People who are generally quite religious, pro-life, anti gay-marriage etc. And then they are often patriotic. I’m not even American, let alone a patriot for that country. So in that sense I suppose I have very little if anything in common with these people, and my views are very different.
Nevertheless, I had some interesting talks with some of these people. I recall one discussion where a religious Republican sincerely did not understand how you can value life if you don’t believe in God. That’s interesting, I never even gave that any thought, since I’m not religious, yet I do value life. And I can understand that to them, if God didn’t create life, then they don’t see how life is in any way holy, or however you want to put it. Perhaps it is actually true that non-religious people value life less, who knows?
Thing is, they did make me think about it, and we had a discussion. I suppose my explanation is one of ‘theory of mind’: I know how it feels if I get hurt, and I know that I don’t want to die. So I can understand how that must feel for others as well, so I do not want to do that to them either. Which in some way comes back to what Christians already know: Don’t do unto others what you don’t want done unto you.
But the key here is that we could have this discussion, and we had mutual respect and understanding for our different views.
And I suppose that is also the problem with the people who are now cheering on the Democrat win… or actually Trump’s loss. While as a European, I may be closer to the Democrat political view than the Republican one, this is something that goes COMPLETELY against who I am, and how I want the world to be. I grew up with the value of tolerance and understanding. I suppose political views aren’t everything. I cannot get behind you if I share the basic views, but reject the way in which you actually conduct yourself (which I think is against these very views anyway).
If half of the US cannot tolerate the other half simply for having different ideas on what is best for their country, then that is a recipe for disaster.
Getting back to the Cold War, the song Russians by Sting comes to mind:
Back when this song came out, the Cold War also set up the US against the USSR with lots of propaganda in the media. Not everything you heard or read was true. In this song, Sting makes some very good points. Mostly that Russians are just people like you and me. Their government may have a certain ideology, but most Russians just try to lead their lives and mind their own business, just as we do.
As he says:
“In Europe and America there’s a growing feeling of hysteria”
“There is no monopoly on common sense
On either side of the political fence
We share the same biology, regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too”
“There’s no such thing as a winnable war
It’s a lie we don’t believe anymore”
I think these lines still contain a lot of truth. There’s hysteria in the US as well now, fueled by the mainstream media and social media, much like in the Cold War back then.
No monopoly on common sense on either side of the political fence. That’s so true. You can’t say the Democrat voters have all the common sense and the Republican voters have none, just based on who won an election.
And indeed, he says “we share the same biology”, that is of course even more true for Democrats vs Republicans than it was for the US vs USSR situation, as both are Americans. They may even be related.
And the most powerful statement: “I hope the Russians love their children too”. Of course he was referring to nuclear war, and mutually assured destruction. But it is very recognizable: Russians are humans too, of course they love their children, they are just like us. And it’s the same with Democrats and Republicans.
So I hope this also remains only a Cold War between Democrats and Republicans, and both sides will accept the results, and try to find ways to come together again, understand and tolerate eachother, and work together for a better world.
Update: Clearly I am not the only one with such concerns. Douglas Murray has also written an article about his concerns of this polarization, division and possible outcomes. I suggest you read it.
More update: Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying also comment on some of these anti-Trump sentiments and actions. And they make a good point about what the REAL left is, or is supposed to be (and as I said, that is also more or less my political position, I am by no means right-wing, certainly not by American standards), and how these far left people have lost the plot.
And another update: James Lindsay, one of the authors of the book Cynical Theories, which I mentioned before, has actually decided to vote for Donald Trump, despite being a liberal rather than a conservative/Republican. He explains in the video below how he sees Wokeness as possibly the biggest threat to the country, and how Biden is unlikely to stop its rise. So at least some people who voted Trump, aren’t actually Trump/Republican/conservative supporters, they just thought the alternative was worse.
And yet another update: Here Jordan B Peterson talks about how liberals and conservatives should listen to eachother, and keep eachother balanced. One side is not necessarily wrong, the other side is not necessarily right. They each have a different focus in life, and they need each other. Ideas may be good or bad depending on the situation in which they are applied. Very much the message I wanted to give. I will probably return to this in more detail in a future post.
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I personally think liberal democracies are overrated and won’t survive in the future. If humans keep seeing each other as been unequal as long as these sources (ethnic origin, sex, class, etc) keep persisting then the minority will always be disenfranchised. Democracy is contingent on it’s social contract of majority being able to prey upon the minority and this model simply isn’t sustainable. Democracy isn’t meant to unite people, it is a huge sham that only divides the minority from the majority. Let’s face it, democracy is often the result of these two groups failing to come to an understanding of each other’s needs …
Democracy doesn’t have room anywhere in the future where it is being undermined by other concepts like technocracy or transhumanism. Soon liberal democracies will face their own reckoning once machines potentially become the superior decision makers than any humans or politicians can ever hope to be. Since when did the majority always chose the best outcome ?
Well, I tried to keep liberalism separate from democracy, or politics altogether. Classical liberalism is a secular worldview as opposed to a religious one.
It gave birth to humanism, which specifically does NOT see people as unequal.
What ‘liberal politics’/’liberal democracy’ means these days, has little to do with this, and I cannot identify myself with that at all.
I also share your concerns about democracy in the sense that too many people simply do not inform themselves properly, and as such, do not really understand what they’re voting for, or what the long-term consequences will be.
Technocracy is dangerous though, because it’s still humans creating the computer models, the decision making algorithms, and humans will interpret the results.
Another problem with technocracy is that politics will be politics. I’ve already seen that scientists and experts were pressured by politicians to work towards certain specific results, or make certain claims.
Technocracy is no more dangerous than democracy and might eventually show itself to have more upsides than we initially thought. It is arguably one of the least explored and experimented system out of all the others. The process of creating models or algorithms don’t necessarily need to involve humans. Even if it did, having experts designing that system would be a far better failsafe rather than having a system that’s dictated by the unwashed masses since they are mostly incapable of reflecting on the data …
Scientists and experts that have to answer to higher powers other than their own kind isn’t a technocracy. These people would be defined as bureaucrats in a bureaucracy. Technocrats may very well exhibit a fault of being ideologically distorted but even the biggest regime demonstrated a solution in this case. The threat of a declining state falling into failure will serve as enough motivation for the ruling elites to change their policies or face the possibility of being violently ousted from power if they keep retaining ideological purity …
A regime does not necessarily have to be fixed to a specific ideology as long as it is able to operate on a technical basis which serves as the main strength behind a technocracy. How can liberal democracies compete with such a system in the future if elected representatives keep emulating the irrational thoughts behind their people ? Irrationalism in liberal democracies leads to a self fulfilling prophecy of reversion. If our current predicament is to be taken as a reference then it has only made an argument that elected representatives are shams at being effective for governance regardless of political affiliation. What we will see in the future may not be a proliferation of democratic systems but it may very well be an ending to them …
If people keep turning a blind eye to ineptitude at the behest of an ideology then I think offering universal suffrage to the people was mistake rather than a virtue. The recent events have placed me in a disillusioned state with democracy altogether because it has shown me that just about every politician are incapable of leading their own people no matter where they hold their political affiliation …
I think you can have a ‘fake democracy’ just as you can have a ‘fake technocracy’.
In the end, democracy depends on the free flow of information. People can cast their vote, but they can only make their mind up on the basis of the information that is available to them. Politicians have long figured that out, so they know that the key is to control the media, and thereby control the information that the voters get, in order to manipulate their opinions to get their vote.
In my country I’ve already witnessed the first ‘fake technocracy’. They wanted to fight off COVID-19 by going off the information from our national institution for public health, which is where the top virologists, pandemic experts etc. work. And they have the equipment and statistic models etc. to monitor and forecast the progress of the virus etc.
It turned out to be a complete failure. Not only because these ‘experts’ didn’t actually know all that much about the virus, and often made poor choices, but also because politicians would pressure them to make certain statements or manipulate data/facts.