Democracy in general:
Does seem to be hitting a bit of a rough patch.
In the Baltic States, the concept of Double Genocide is leading to the idea that Jews are the misfortune of the region and brought the massacres in the 1941-5 period on themselves by supporting the Soviet Union.It also, of course, leads to the presentation of everything the USSR did as evil and associated with Jews. This is even official policy as per the Prague Declaration:
http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/analysis/128663/double-genocide-has-become-deadliest-form-denial
http://www.webcitation.org/64otCtAyz
In the USA, of course, Ferguson was right out of the old Soviet Union's playbook including the use of chemical weapons in American streets. And the nullifcation of the Civil Rights Act was a danger point missed in most of the whining and crying about foreign policy, because of course there's nothing dangerous in an overmighty surveillance state negating by default one of the key things restraining people from doing what they wanted to do.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/us/supreme-court-ruling.html.
And now France is joining the list of countries like Poland enshrining autocratic powers into the state and reviving the concept of Volksgemeinschaft from the grave it didn't rest long enough in.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/10/french-mps-to-vote-on-controversial-changes-to-constitution
These trends deeply worry me and I'm afraid that the era I'm living in is one where the democracy that was at one point while nowhere near what it could have been at least seen as the ideal to strive toward, is now falling apart at the seams. The idea that the sum total of all the changes for the better in the last century equals a return to the worst elements of the past in this one is, to put it crudely, terrifying. But it also looks like an international trend. So what, if anything, can be done to resolve it? I put no faith in the US Democrats as opposing this, especially when one factors in that Sanders and Clinton both loved hardline policies before it became convenient to oppose them.
Why did things start to go so spectacularly wrong so fast?
In the Baltic States, the concept of Double Genocide is leading to the idea that Jews are the misfortune of the region and brought the massacres in the 1941-5 period on themselves by supporting the Soviet Union.It also, of course, leads to the presentation of everything the USSR did as evil and associated with Jews. This is even official policy as per the Prague Declaration:
http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/analysis/128663/double-genocide-has-become-deadliest-form-denial
http://www.webcitation.org/64otCtAyz
In the USA, of course, Ferguson was right out of the old Soviet Union's playbook including the use of chemical weapons in American streets. And the nullifcation of the Civil Rights Act was a danger point missed in most of the whining and crying about foreign policy, because of course there's nothing dangerous in an overmighty surveillance state negating by default one of the key things restraining people from doing what they wanted to do.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/us/supreme-court-ruling.html.
And now France is joining the list of countries like Poland enshrining autocratic powers into the state and reviving the concept of Volksgemeinschaft from the grave it didn't rest long enough in.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/10/french-mps-to-vote-on-controversial-changes-to-constitution
These trends deeply worry me and I'm afraid that the era I'm living in is one where the democracy that was at one point while nowhere near what it could have been at least seen as the ideal to strive toward, is now falling apart at the seams. The idea that the sum total of all the changes for the better in the last century equals a return to the worst elements of the past in this one is, to put it crudely, terrifying. But it also looks like an international trend. So what, if anything, can be done to resolve it? I put no faith in the US Democrats as opposing this, especially when one factors in that Sanders and Clinton both loved hardline policies before it became convenient to oppose them.
Why did things start to go so spectacularly wrong so fast?