Democracy in general:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

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? 

Comments

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

History is proving cyclical. Maybe spiral. Some old things repeat over and over, only at a more advanced and somewhat transformed level every time. While this is scary in a way, I guess it is inevitable - this is just how things are. In a very general sense, of course. On the upside, we have been living in the most peaceful time in history (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/12/the_world_is_not_falling_apart_the_trend_lines_reveal_an_increasingly_peaceful.html) relative to Earth's population. The world has become so interconnected that it is no longer profitable to wage large-scale wars and commit large-scale atrocities. That still doesn't mean wars won't be waged and atrocities won't be committed, though.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

True. Though I wonder how much of that is humanity being more peaceful or the recognition that a general nuclear exchange is a genuine lose lose for everyone concerned option. I'm no believer in democratic peace theory, but the prospect of genuine illiberal and outright dictatorial politics coming back with a vengeance concerns me. The USA doesn't need to slide back into the bad old days like this. None of these states need to do that.

And that's true. One thing to know that happens and another thing to live through it.

[garote]

I don't think nuclear exchange is on the mind of the common person these days. Perhaps in the 80's...

I think levels of violence have followed an exact inverse to the rise of two things:
1. communications technology.
2. the basic idea that it is a better idea to engage in commerce with your enemies than warfare.

#2 is interesting to me because it stands in stark opposition to western religious teachings, which call for the destruction or conversion of heathens no matter what the cost...