Back in 2016 I professed concerns about the survival of democracy, especially if it is not given both competent people to run it and a proper advocacy. It is both disturbing and reassuring to see the President of the United States shares similar concerns:
This is a defining question of our time: Can democracies come together to deliver real results for our people in a rapidly changing world? Will the democratic alliances and institutions that shaped so much of the last century prove their capacity against modern-day threats and adversaries? I believe the answer is yes. And this week in Europe [during the President’s trip], we have the chance to prove it. [WaPo]
Although my concerns are more granular: can the citizens of democracies drop their delusions, learn the new information technologies, and retain their sanity in the face of the chaos and mendacity of the autocracies? As I said in 2016:
The real key for a democracy is honesty. That’s where it all begins. As we saw in the last election, between Trump lying every time he opened his mouth, and deceit flooding the Internet, and naive Internet denizens actually believing sometimes unbelievable crap, we are stuck with a government led by a highly inexperienced politician who is busy populating his proposed leadership team with similarly inexperienced zealots.
The question is whether we can survive and compress Turchin’s disintegrative period, or will we find ourselves in a Civil War which reduces the population to the point where we can tolerate the delusional? Unfortunately, advancing technology makes it harder to withstand the delusional, as improved information, communications, and military technology make it more difficult to ignore them.
