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This is sadly so obvious to see, that you don’t need a report to know that.
Romania and Slovakia — are becoming the center of democratic growth in Europe
The report is even already way off regarding Slovakia, who just elected an authoritarian with sympathies towards Russia.
Romania is a bit shaky too, they have very little trust in the democratic government, and could probably easily be swayed by a populist who says what they want to hear.It doesn’t mention USA, Brazil, Argentina that are all becoming more shaky too, instead of stabilizing.
It also doesn’t mention China, that also became more authoritarian, with Xi grabbing even more power much like Putin.Being young in the 70’s, I never in my worst nightmares imagined things would ever become this bad.
When the Berlin Wall was broken, I never imagined it could become this bad. It’s kind of worse than before the wall was broken, because USA alone is such a huge influence, and Republican have gone completely nuts for Authoritarianism for some reason???Republican have gone completely nuts for Authoritarianism for some reason???
two reasons:
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in 2010 they got to gerrymander the fuck out of districts and thus got a whole bunch of safe seats where even total wackos can win primaries and then go on to safely win the general
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the republican’s whole ideology and support base is crumbling away and it’s basically unstoppable at this point. old racists who fondly remember jim crow are all retired and young people are leaving christianaity at a consistent rate of around 1%/year. their economic policies are totally out of whack with what the bottom 90% need or want and no one believes tax cuts on the rich will benefit anyone but the rich. their only hope is overthrowing the government and installing a dictator and everyone knows it
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Well, of course it is. You all blatantly threw out human rights because you were afraid after 9/11 and because of covid. 🤦
9/11, yes, but what human rights did we lose from covid? Having to wear a mask for a while? Or being heavily encouraged to get a vaccine? …
Democracy is the worst form of governance, apart from all others
It’s only the morning where I am, but I think I’ve read the dumbest thing I’m going to read all day.
I seriously doubt it
Doesn’t make him right.
Expand your mind.
take a break
Churchill was a racist idiot and that’s still a dumb quote.
Democracy is a plane with 20 people on it. Nine vote not to crash it and eleven vote to fly it into a mountain, and that means everyone dies because democracy
No, nine vote to crash it, seven vote to go left and four vote to go right.
Crashing it is! Thanks, first past the post voting system.
It’s more like,
- 2 hijackers vote to crash
- 1 votes with the hijackers because they share a hometown
- 2 vote no
- another 2 vote strong no
- the other 12 don’t participate because they don’t want to get too political (we have 40% voter turnout where I live)
and I’ve been through enough elections to see how we are all heading for a crash, every time.
Churchill’s point is that stupid things can still happen in democracies, but no one has come up with a better alternative. What would you suggest as the better alternative? If you don’t have one, then you just helped prove Churchill’s point!
Every human knows and has used a superior system from the time they first started playing with other people: Consensus.
…which is basically what democracy is, but systemitized such that it can be applied at scale.
If we had a consensus based government I wouldn’t have a fascist as a representative
So instead you choose authoritarianism: 20 people on a plan and one of them shoots the pilot, takes over, and crashes it. Everyone dies.
Love how you think that not only are there only two options, but that democracy isn’t also authoritarian. It’s just mob rule instead of an individual.
Yeah, the problems with democracy are rarely solved by less democracy. It just turns into “Instead of many idiots voting to do something stupid, one idiot votes to do something stupid.”
Think bigger. Fly the plane in circles, and demand the people give you whatever you want to occasionally land it and bring some supplies onboard.
Just don’t die of old age.
Next time try not sleeping through your history class champ? That’s a famous historic Churchill quote.
What’s your definition of democracy baby?
What do you consider kleptocracy ?
Don’t you know I vote until it hurts me baby
Don’t you think it’s time you had Marx with me?
What song is that from?
I Want Your Sex- George Michael
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Marx would be the opposite of democracy.
I strongly encourage ACTUALLY reading Marx and not just the facebook post equivalents that various influencers love to spout.
But, at a very high level: Marxism is largely built around communism (well, the other way around, but just roll with it). Which does have implications for governing and decision making, but is largely a socioeconomic system. So the better “opposite” would be Capitalism. Although, even that is a pretty reductive approach and is arguably wrong.
That said: Communism requires some form of centralized planning. And while there is nothing that says that can’t come from a true Democracy, it tends to favor republics which may or may not use democracy to select. The US, as the chuds so often like to exclaim, is a Democratic Republic (sort of) in that we use Democracy-ish to select our representatives.
The problem with communism is bcz it requires strong central planning it tends to devolve into authoritarianism quickly.
I think there are a LOT more problems than just that, but yeah.
You can more or less “break” libertarianism and many anarchies by asking about “what happens to the orphans?”. For Communism and its derivatives, the question is usually “Who gets to be a scientist, a doctor, a movie star, and the person who cleans out the sewers? And do they all get the same benefits?”
Personally? I think the bigger issue is women’s rights. If you consider sex work to be work, how do you figure out who is most suited to be a sex worker? And, regardless, how do you decide who is best suited to be a mother and how that impacts the centralized planning?
It is one of the many reasons that what we truly need are hybrid socioeconomic models.
Computers and databases with logistics didn’t exist in 1918. Walmart and Amazon have strong central planning. Chile began to do it in 1971 with Project CyberSyn, but the CIA and capitalism couldn’t have that in their backyard.
Well, you convinced me. Guess I’ll read Marx to find out why.
Really… hadn’t noticed.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“In Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Slovakia, Israel, and the United States, just to name the most familiar examples, the erosion of democratic norms has been engineered by leaders claiming to speak in the name of, and with the authority of, the people,” the new report warned.
IDEA’s report bases its analysis on 173 countries and takes into account 17 metrics ranging from civil liberties to judicial independence to credible elections to the rule of law, using the most recent figures from 2022.
EU countries Hungary and Poland are still the “most notable examples illustrating the bloc’s limited ability to exert more direct influence over the (non-)democratic trajectory of its member states,” the report said.
Poland — which is set for a change of political direction after election results earlier this month that saw the ruling right-wing Law and Justice party defeated — might now be on a more positive trajectory.
In contrast to Hungary and Poland’s recent performance, other Central and Eastern European countries — such as Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Romania and Slovakia — are becoming the center of democratic growth in Europe due to notable five-year improvements, the report said.
According to the report: “Ex-Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has been implicated in schemes to shut down critical media and purchase positive coverage by using public funds through the Ministry of Finance.”
The original article contains 692 words, the summary contains 222 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Yup, it matches my observations as well.
That’s not about just O, T and E etc really.
It’s about the average Westerner just loving to blabber about realpolitik and subjective interests on the subject of enabling richer and stronger cannibals against poorer and weaker humans.
And also about democratic countries having no immunity against foreign states buying their politicians and officials and the general population not really caring.
Jailing for life a few people who’ve been paid by Qatar, Azerbaijan, Russia, Israel etc would do wonders as an example to the rest.
Bombing their infrastructures when they start wars would also be nice. Most don’t have WMD. Not for the realpolitikers, of course, that would have negative strategic and economical effect, but if your goal is preserving democracy and civilization, then there are plenty of places to be bombed right now without dancing all the quadrilles.
