Lordre: government

Showing posts with label government. Show all posts

Five reasons Americans can’t be disarmed and Brits can

While Britain and America differ a lot in terms of values, the different handling of the right to bear arms is down to more than this.

A recent shooting that claimed four lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma will likely see the debate over gun ownership reignited in the United States. For our part in Britain, we almost all believe the lax American attitude to guns is crazy and dangerous. It seems hard to argue that someone with mental illness living in a place with no apparent threats could need access to guns, and seems right that they be barred.

Nonetheless, there are ample reasons to think America is just a different enough place that owning firearms is more justified there than here.

#1 States’ rights

The US is in some ways more like a federation of smaller countries than an individual nation, and life in each state can be supposed to be quite different. As such, laws governing just about any aspect of life can be different from state to state, and this is necessary to the large and diverse nature of the United States’ territory and people. Many things cannot be helped. In some states, the population may be sparse and it may take too long for police to respond to incidents in certain places to truly rely on them to protect the public. In others, firearms may even be needed to defend against wildlife. All of this would be unheard of in the UK, where the level of protection expected of a member of the public is just about the same everywhere you go.

#2 Large territory

In a country with vast and sparsely populated regions, the ability to police the territory reliably and at all times is greatly hampered. Police in the UK will typically respond to any incident within mere minutes, or spot it before it can happen, because their patrols are so frequent. Surveillance is pretty reliable and covers almost everything, so any serious criminal can barely get started on any crime without realising they have already left enough evidence to be jailed. In the US, the large size of the territory likely makes this harder. Areas can be sparsely populated, and consequently not so monitored by law enforcement in great detail. Many altercations may take place for enough from the eye of the law that only carrying one’s own firearm can make a person feel somewhat more secure. The problem of the country’s large size would also drastically complicate any hypothetical policy of gun confiscation, compared to a much smaller and more densely populated island nation like Great Britain.

#3 Large land borders

Although different US administrations have tried to address problems at the border with Mexico, and sought to make it much harder for illegal immigrants and contraband to get across, the reality is that fully sealing the border with such a populous neighbour may be too costly compared to just dealing with whatever crime leaks into the US. Therefore, guns are likely to get through here and end up being sold, regardless of what is done about gun ownership laws at a federal level. This can of course be disputed by the fact that most of this smuggling is from the US side into Mexico, but it still shows how easily products can cross the border, and criminals are likely to be able to still traffic weapons despite restrictions on how individuals can make gun purchases. Compare this with the United Kingdom, where the seas seal us off from Europe, which in turn has its own measures against gun ownership. Everything passing into the territory of the UK goes through customs, often in the EU and then in the UK separately (following Brexit), whereas many things making it into the US likely don’t.

#4 Many people already bear arms

The facts on the ground are just too unfavourable to even begin to confiscate people’s guns in America. Where would anyone begin? Gun culture and gun ownership is so pervasive that any federal force hypothetically tasked with confiscating guns would likely suffer insurmountable casualties for the attempt, if it encountered even a fraction of the resistance threatened by many American gun owners to such a move. In the UK, very few citizens have access to guns or ammo. These people know that there are vanishingly few like them, and government surrender schemes for people to turn in their weapons without punishment do result in significant numbers complying.

#5 The Constitution

The right to bear arms is such an undeniable core part of the US Constitution that the country would not be the same without it. This is a key part of the American identity and something that defined the country ever since its people decided to shoot up their British former masters. In Britain, our society evolved directly from a feudal one, in which very small bodies of armed men formed the authorities and ruled over the rest, and their access to weapons marked them out as the state. The people were always expected to have no weapons.

Practical realities

To conclude, it is very much ethical and feasible for the British people to have no weapons among their property. For the most part, we aren’t at risk of armed criminals, animals, or vacuums of authority, however transitory, on our territory, so people carrying guns all of a sudden would make our lives less safe. In the US, however, social and even geographic factors make their different attitude to gun ownership better for them. Given enough time, values and ideologies tend to adjust to practical realities in a given locale, rather than vice versa. America works out best as a home for those of a more libertarian view. This is a great example of how different people and places in the world should be entitled to their own values and way of handling their affairs, rather than a single ideology being right for the world.

Donald Trump's opponents ridiculed the US Space Force, which was originally presented as a flagship policy of his presidency and somehow indicative of the flaws of his leadership.

We were expected to believe that the Space Force somehow distinguished Trump from what would have been Clinton’s policies. However, in reality, everything would be the same, regardless of who led it and took responsibility.

Joe Biden, far from scrapping the "Trumpian" branch of the US military, kept and is expected to expand the Space Force, creating a Space National Guard, this being one of his own supposedly unique decisions. This time, the initiative for more of exactly the same thing is coming from the other party, as if the two parties are one and the same.

President poser

The same tendency to have a leader claiming responsibility for whatever the state desired anyway, is true of other moves, such as the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Had Trump ordered that withdrawal, it would have be portrayed as a uniquely “Trumpian” move by the idiots who instead made apologies for it only because Biden did it.

What we see clearly shows that presidents are just opportunists and posers for photo ops, who have no real policy ideas and just claim ownership for whatever the permanently attached limpets and advisers from the military and intelligence junta are simply doing anyway.

The unelected state

The US state places no value in the American people, and everything it does is for the expansion of its own power at the nation's expense. The corrupt intelligence services who spied on their own people, and were exposed by Edward Snowden as crooks, were driven to protect themselves from the people. The most aggressive American policies, such as propaganda and torture, are devised not to help the American people but to protect the self-serving individuals in charge from embarrassment, overthrow or prosecution. We can see this from the pursuit of Julian Assange, whose only threat was to the careers of torturers and war criminals, and he will now be handed over to them for torture.

The real leaders, who govern by expertise rather than the approval of the public, really invent American policies and oversee them over decades.

The real leaders are the statist party of “professionals” who wander in and out of government, the press and think tanks, being respected wherever they go, regardless of the results of their ideas. Hapless elected officials act as empty suits for the junta’s agenda, showing no difference from each other except the manner of their words. This reduces democracy to a puppet show for the weak-minded, as the “professionals” purposely avoid standing for election and likely don't bother even voting, yet frequently mention the word "democracy" as deception.

One must always be cautious of simplistic claims and laymen’s theories about the source of destructive governance and the loss of collective prosperity. Such are the most common claims of agitators, but they often have no validity when assessed rationally.

The notion of an exclusive club of rich people, the billionaires, deciding our fate, is one such kind of mistaken simplistic theory. It proposes a link between people’s net worth and their attraction to Malthusian or dystopian visions of the world, which are then pursued to the detriment of the masses.

Great Reset as the work of the rich?

Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom (of fame for Megaupload and later the cloud service Mega) was recently tweeting about the ‘Great Reset’, positing that the ‘elite’ want to shield themselves from the shocks of a plan they have to preserve their own wealth at our expense.

The only problem with this idea is that Kim Dotcom’s own 10-million-dollar net worth is higher than Great Reset mastermind Klaus Schwab’s rumoured 1-million-dollar net worth. Such a discrepancy would appear to throw any kind of analysis suggesting a Malthusian billionaire elite, planning mass serfdom of the people through the Great Reset, into doubt.

In addition, other perceived heroes of the masses against a Great Reset-pushing elite include Donald Trump and Elon Musk, net worth 2 billion dollars and 290 billion dollars respectively.

Such numbers are arrived at simply by searching on the internet. They are not hidden.

Billionaire power

It is striking that the people positing the sinister plans of the billionaires often rally behind individual millionaires and billionaires as their heroes, while many of their adversaries pushing such things as the Great Reset possess poultry sums of money that are expected simply of random politicians and economists.

What is happening is that many people are convinced that power is just a direct extension of money. They succumb to the simplistic assumption that whoever has the gold makes the rules. However, it is better to say that whoever has the power makes the rules, and power derives often from knowledge rather than wealth. Furthermore, those who have power gain wealth, whereas those with pre-existing wealth often just lose it.

There is indeed an elite responsible for policy in Western countries, which looks upon the masses with scorn and condescension, but any assertion that they are a group of super-rich property owners or royals misses the real point.

Whatever the threat to the welfare of the public from the halls of power may be, it is not necessarily the work of the rich, and not even the malign doings of the royal family of Saudi Arabia or the United Kingdom. Many agitators simply point to those with more wealth or property than us as a way of getting an emotional response from their audience, based on envy.

In reality, a rich person or celebrity is just as likely to sense something wrong with the world as a poor person, and be just as powerless to act. On the other hand, a poor person may indeed have the knowledge from which to derive power, and so be able to act.

Then who are the 'elite'?

Meritocrats.

Our politics and our perceptions are shaped not by a moneyed elite, but rather by a self-appointed ‘power elite’ that consists of people who merely curried favour enough to pass through the revolving doors of think tanks, mainstream media and the government, allowing them to create ideas (think tanks), manufacture consent for them (media), and implement them (government). At no point in this process does this powered elite have any empathy with the public, merely viewing them as a hurdle to the implementation of their own vision. Such individuals will repeatedly hold offices to which they are appointed and that do not require a democratic election (National Security Adviser in the United States, for example). While no single such post is necessarily powerful, together these unelected posts allow a narrow group of people cut from the same statist ideological cloth to continuously guide the nation state on a course opposite to the wishes of the people, regardless of electoral outcomes. It is this meritocratic group spanning think tanks, government agencies, and media conglomerates, that all think alike in their will to subvert democracy, to compel the regime against the wishes of the people.

One thing to bear in mind is that what is being described here is not a flaw of any kind of system that can ever be corrected by the law, nor is the diminishing of democracy by the hands of meritocrats necessarily a bad thing. It may well be that this professional governing corps really does produce the best outcomes for a nation, whereas the people are foolish. The meritocrats are simply an element that can be either ripe or rotten within any organisation, and there is a good case that this element has become fully rotten in Western democracies, having become obsessed only with its own security, fearing the nation as a hostile mob to be monitored and suppressed.

The elite are not especially rich, but merely favoured. Many of them could be nice people, in the manner of a prince, but amenable only to those they know or meet, and that is an exceedingly narrow group. This persistence of the same narrow group of meritocrats for too long can become inimical to any authentic idea of democracy or republic, which are reduced to lies.

Liz Truss went too far in trying to take ownership of the war in Ukraine and proposing conditions that would never be acceptable to any administration in Moscow, threatening to further inflame and escalate the conflict, even according to The Guardian.

Truss had said that Britain should set a war aim of depriving Russia of Crimea, which Moscow considers core Russian territory and protects under its nuclear deterrent. This is such a delusional statement that it would be less absurd to have heard Russian generals talk of recapturing the Reichstag. Crimea is long gone, and Ukraine is about as likely to send troops there as it is to Vladivostok. Even pro-Western dissidents in Russia refuse to talk of Crimea as anything other than part of Russia.

In addition to her, we see Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces James Heappey eagerly justifying attacks by Ukraine into Russian territory using UK weapons. Apparently, he is unaware of the potential risk to British territory if we set ourselves a goal of destroying targets in Russian territory.

Total war, by proxy?

In the case of both politicians mentioned here, Britain possibly overestimates its power, having no grasp of how or where Russia could respond in kind or the kind of casualties British personnel could suffer if Russia were to begin maliciously handing out all modern armaments necessary to kill British troops worldwide. It seems some of our leaders just view the Slavic mind as dull, easy prey, incapable of the creativity to even copy what we do.

We also assume that our playing by a set of rules forbidding direct attacks on the other side confines the Russians to also abiding by these rules, when that is not the case if the rules only benefit us and not them. Would we ourselves keep playing by the rules if Russia was the only beneficiary under them, and the costs for us playing were severe? A country will only allow so much damage to them indirectly, before they hastily look for ways to retaliate, even if they are caught doing so.

Any plan that includes averting a nuclear war but still destroying Russia's cities and strategic objects, using Ukrainian troops to do so as encouraged by Heappey, would be folly. Britain's targeting of strategic objects and vital defences in Russia, even using a third country or fiddling with the command structure to hide responsibility for the attacks, would trigger Russian strikes on strategic targets in Britain. It would be no different than if we began attacking Russia directly, so Russia could see nuclear attacks as a proportionate response.

A brag too far

Liz Truss seems at some level to be aware that her foolish and rash warmongering cannot be walked back. She has tried to take full ownership of the Ukrainian war effort, declaring that a defeat in this war is unthinkable and would mean a profound loss of security for us.

In reality, there is an alternative course that keeps the country safe: just get rid of Liz Truss, James Heappey, and the others who displayed misplaced military swagger and tried to take ownership of the Ukrainian war effort. This would restore a level of calm, helping prevent escalation while benefiting still from whatever they had done, if any of it had any benefit.

It is okay for common soldiers to belittle their adversaries and brag. However, a serving government minister, who believes a continent-spanning nuclear hyperpower is some easy prey they will soon hang on their wall as a personal trophy, is an imbecile. That person should not be permitted to speak another word in any official capacity.

Elon Musk reached a deal to buy Twitter, even as the businessman listened to grievances about the social network's cavalier suppression of information. Within 48 hours of that news, the Democrat administration was creating a new body dedicated to handling the “disinformation” it finds troubling online.

And what the Biden administration finds most troubling is not necessarily the things that may do harm to Americans, but conversations that may undermine the administration's legitimacy and future electoral prospects (say, questioning the 2020 election result). In other words, the first reaction of Biden's tinpot regime to any resurgence of First Amendment rights was to worry about itself.

Censorship by any other name

One can suppose the new censorship board is meant to replace the apparently imperilled corporate censorship that was carried out by Twitter under regime pressure. The very suggestion of any reduction of such censorship got the mainstream media hot and bothered.

The seeming willingness of Democrats to turn to state censorship, if that is what we are seeing, is significant. Twitter being a private company rather than a state agency has been a defence of the company’s heavy-handed actions in suppression of information for years (I never bought this argument, although certain anti-statists did). Right libertarians will never accept a government censorship body, nor will the anti-statist left.

Cold Civil War to grow more visible?

Individual US states may resist the authority of this federal body. As such, the stupid move of the people who seemingly resent the First Amendment more than anything else will contribute to the Cold Civil War. It may result in content being hidden in some US states (namely the Democrat-controlled states, which will be ever more fearful of the free circulation of information), while in other states all content will be available.

The events just further expose the fantastical lack of ability to maintain any principles at the Democrat-controlled White House. This failing is equally true of regime apologists, who believe everything it does is somehow automatically conducive to liberty and other American values even when it clearly is not.

US President Joe Biden claimed on camera that “America” can be defined with a single word, before mumbling unintelligibly.

There is, of course, the fact that nothing can actually be defined with a single word, because successfully giving another word merely amounts to providing a synonym rather than a definition. Despite that, Biden was in some ways revealing a truth when he mumbled unintelligibly as a way of describing what America represents.

Biden may have meant to say freedom or constitutionality, or some special word combining both to present some firm principle the nation stands for, but America stands for no principles, so such content might as well have been garbled.

Why stand for principles, when there is power?

America is currently standing for something unintelligible and apparently garbled, as it represents no firm principles on any issue whatsoever. Principles are simply the enemies of power, and America loves power.

The willingness to stand for nothing would not normally be a problem for a national government, which is simply the governing authority over a piece of terrain. However, it is a problem for the United States, which keeps trying to declare that it stands for some principle or another, before promptly stepping on that principle like a rake and being accused of hypocrisy, because it loves power.

Hypocrisy in American rule is most obvious in international affairs, where the US does whatever augments its power (from coups to invasions) and confusingly describes it as somehow an advancement of “freedom” while decrying similar excesses by anyone else.

The best example of the US failing to represent anything may be in the fallout over the events of January 6, 2021. In those events, one side represented freedom and the other side represented the lawful authority, and yet both ended up encapsulating the contradiction inherent to any ruling regime that declares freedom its central value.

A demented ideology

The United States doesn’t just have a demented leader. The idea of these two cohabiting values of liberty and regime loyalty is a demented one in the first place, and the source of every political argument in the United States from the moment it was created in resistance to British rule, to the Civil War, to the January 6 events, to the current noxious political movements in America.

The US is only capable of presenting a demented, paradoxical vision that sows the seeds of crisis and civil war at home and abroad, making its international influence fundamentally destabilising. Rather than being a clever plot, the destruction wrought by US involvement overseas is actually just the result of the country's own incompetence and confusion, born of the contradiction of trying to have a liberal-authoritarian ideology.

The American empire is the creator of its own problems. It is inherently unstable and continuously sabotaged by itself, despite innumerable chances at world domination, because its current regime is based on a bizarre paradox of liberal rhetoric and authoritarian power, meaning it can produce no stable order or even be properly understood by its own supporters.

Far from being exceptional, America is just another country that will come and go, an accident born of accidents, with no sensible inscribed principles that ever made it superior to anyone.

Somehow, we seem to tolerate lower standards of behaviour from those at the top of an organisation than those of lower rank. It's as if, the higher you go, the more dishonest or incompetent you are permitted to be.

The expression of grumbling people goes, "one rule for them, one rule for us".

Rule of the incompetent?

From Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server for government purposes, to Boris Johnson's lockdown parties and Rishi Sunak's wife Akshata Murty's tax avoidance, there seems to be no shortage of recent scandals with politicians proving apparently less competent or diligent than a fresh civil servant.

In the case of Boris Johnson's parties, it was aide and spokesperson Allegra Stratton who ended up tearfully resigning, rather than the Prime Minister many believed should make his own exit. Just like that, all too often, it is the people of a lower rank and significantly less responsibility who end up making exactly such a tearful exit from their role, while those with the ability to wreak havoc remain secure at the top of an organisation, despite their bumbling.

If one is sufficiently powerful, one may even be promoted to ever higher and higher roles, despite sackable levels of incompetence being continuously on display. Many within the UK Civil Service complain that this occurs within their organisations, at all sorts of places far less significant than Downing Street.

Privilege and informal aristocracy

The answer may be, simply, privilege. Ever since the days of feudal authority, from which the presently established authority in the UK evolved without any interruption (an interruption like, say, the Revolution in France), the rulers (or in military terms, officers) were entitled to things others were not. They were allowed to fail, too, with fewer consequences.

Being of a higher class or caste has no meaning, unless it means all sorts of consequences are lighter for you than others. That being said, the UK has been able to function well throughout our history. Therefore, the existence of the unaccountable, informal (or even formal) aristocrats can't really be impairing the ability of organisations to work effectively, even in the public interest.

It is easy, when reading such things as the above, to feel a kind of rage against those people in the unaccountable class or caste, but our rage may then blind us to this socially unjust system's possible utility. Countries that became too enamoured with equality and overthrew their privileged unaccountable class, such as France or Russia, did in fact experience a kind of administrative and military inefficiency for a period of time until privilege of some kind arose again, whether under Napoleon or under Stalin.

A division of labour?

In any effective organisation, there will be a division of labour. If one is expected to manage, one cannot also be accountable to every little chimney sweep being managed. One is playing a very big game in which people are mere pawns, cogs in the machine. As grotesque as it might seem to those of us who are reduced to cogs, it might be necessary for the ruler to do their job, that their errors are treated as a lighter affair than ours, even if they hurt us.

There must be people with privilege, to whom the bungling of countless people's lives and the insults towards many more must be a forgivable sin. If such privilege were to be abolished, the remaining people tasked with administration could be paralysed by indecision or transfer blame to others rather than admitting it and asking forgiveness.

The rarity of leaders?

Another reason may be that people with leadership qualities are simply rare and, therefore, forgiving them has to be more common than forgiving someone who is more easily replaced.

People with leadership qualities are rare enough, without being discouraged and suppressed, so letting them be privileged and make mistakes is a sort of sacrifice made so that we can have these leaders. A class that is allowed to make mistakes, and has protection from the consequences, can learn and grow to be more experienced and effective in an art that, we must admit, most people just aren't cut out for.

In the grand scheme of things, neither Boris Johnson's alleged peripheral involvement in lockdown parties, nor Rishi Sunak's wife's actions, seem like sufficient reasons for either of them to leave their posts. However annoying to you, their personal conduct did not result in them mismanaging the nation in any way, and should therefore be forgiven. If we have people in charge who can manage the country well enough that these were the only big complaints against them, we should complain less.

It should be added, however, that, even despite still having aristocrats, in Britain we do seem to hold leaders to a higher standard of behaviour than the Americans do. Our leaders at least have to humble themselves and apologise, and can't handwave things away or sit smugly.

Keeping in mind the events in Libya and Syria, is there ever a time when it is okay to back an uprising by armed rebels, including by giving them weapons?

The best answer is simply, no. If one were to disagree and take the view that, as a matter of principle, rebels should be supported against repressive regimes, it will require untenable and foolish strategies all over the world. Moreover, it will often fail, like it did in Syria even after so many years.

Legitimacy

Where it may be wise to support non-government armed groups is where the case can be sufficiently made that they are the legitimate authority, as in, the state or some other legal authority, and where some formal ties can be established. In such a case, one is not really supporting rebels at all but supporting governments, and simply disagreeing about those governments. The international community and the UN are often obstinately wrong in this respect, often continuing to recognise dead regimes just because they did not like how it happened.

A decent principle to follow is that of popular sovereignty, whereby the will of the people decides whether there stands one state or another state. Referendums are excellent means to establish the validity of such sovereignty.

Different regions of the world have somewhat differing models of authority and, as such, the groups one supports in the course of supporting legitimate authorities may look "rebel"-like to outside observers. However, a group that advertises itself as a rebellion but has no clear idea about governing and can give no guarantees is usually not worth establishing relations with.

Honourable rebellion

The best rule would be that one's country may support non-state elements in a country where these elements conduct themselves in an honourable and state-like way, and where a referendum or other democratic exercise has actually established popular sovereignty. This is in stark contrast to simply producing "error"-ridden media reports asserting that the people want some kind of uprising, as is so typical of the Western press when reporting on countries like Cuba, Venezuela and Syria, only to later be corrected or redacted after the damage is done.

Another good rule is to be a sincere contributor to local and regional security in a conflict zone based on clear treaties from day one, rather than suddenly barging in on moral pretexts, as was the case with many interventions. It should always be a local power that takes the lead on how to intervene in a conflict, not a foreign superpower. Any foreign power that interferes against the wishes of the region is insincere, and little better than an invader.

Although intervention and support of rebels has often been done in a reckless and self-serving way, the practice should not be ruled out in its entirety. Where it is aligned with popular sovereignty and the will of nations to independence, it is justifiable. Support for the changing of national borders should not be ruled out, either, but only at the initiative of the local people and as a means of remedying past colonial errors.

Despite a recent U-turn, Germany's Green Party long opposed nuclear energy, holding this view even though nuclear power plants do not contribute to climate change. In the UK, the Scottish National Party (SNP) continues to reject nuclear energy.

There is a climate emergency, we are told. That means that we must radically change course immediately, or it will be too late.

Competing with other nations is hard to balance with saving the climate

The creation of an absolutely eco-friendly future, living fully in adherence to the philosophy of the environmentalists, is not something we actually have time for if we are in an emergency due to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming specifically. The idea of a grand new war of waste and economic competition by Western regimes and their ideological structures, against Russia and China, is not compatible with addressing a climate emergency.

In 2018, the United Nations was saying we have only until 2030 to avert an actual climate disaster (an event that will put serious strain on our countries, such as unprecedented refugees and threatening food shortages). The idea that the West can focus on eliminating energy dependence on Russia and economic reliance on China (that means accommodating an explosion of dirty industry and energy to accomplish such goals and waging conflicts throughout the world), and at the same time avert a climate disaster, is folly. Food shortages alone will be completely unmanageable, when added to the potential loss of a third of the world's wheat supply due to conflict in Ukraine.

If the West is going green, it is not going to defeat Russia or China in time to make the switch. At this point, hegemony really is incompatible with survival. Once a climate disaster really starts to have serious consequences, it is clear where all the world's refugees will be heading (the European Union and the United States). It would be game over for the Western side in this "Cold War" at that moment, as the West will be swamped by these refugees and unable to even feed them, perhaps being forced to beg for food aid from those we labelled as enemies.

Is it a lie?

Many reading the above would probably like to interject by saying that the barrage of contradicting statements (there is this climate emergency, yet we must wage this war of waste, and yet also we can scrap nuclear power stations even though they are not adding to that emergency and in fact mitigate it), means a major lie is being told somewhere. Many conspiracy theorists will probably reject the idea that there is a climate emergency at all, because of so many contradictions.

The consensus of the world's governments and the international panels of experts compels us to accept the reality of a climate emergency, whereas only a few would have us adopt declarations that conflict with this reality. Clearly, political partisans are interfering with a united response to the emergency, dependent as they are on having something to debate about.

The position of the German Greens up until their U-turn was absurd. They agreed with the idea of a climate emergency, yet they wanted to sabotage the response to it by trying to hobble our efforts to stop it, by condemning nuclear energy. They likely agree that hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is a dirty and polluting process, yet they want to buy the resulting American LNG so that they can avoid gas supplies from Russia. So, what looks like a commitment to save the Earth quickly crumbles in the halls of power, replaced with familiar and ugly realpolitik.

Is the SNP's continued rejection of nuclear energy in the UK more acceptable than some, because the SNP desires independence for Scotland and Scotland likely has enough energy sources to support its small population without any nuclear plants? Yes, but someone who is truly concerned about a global warming emergency, believing we only have eight years left to solve it, would likely still want to generate nuclear energy and sell it to their neighbours, to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.

The word "democracy" has particular appeal to people. After all, it means the rule by the people. But it also has a dull meaning: the mere ritual of elections, in what could still be an unrepresentative and despicable regime with no legitimacy.

Leaders of Western "democracies" often have embarrassingly low approval ratings and perpetual dissatisfaction exists in society, and they rely on looking tough on alleged threats, to gain a meagre rise in popularity, rather than actually doing anything for their people. Those leaders, such as Justin Trudeau, are condescending to many of the people, which is hardly what you would expect in a system of rule by the people, the very intended meaning of democracy.

Something being "democratic" doesn't necessarily mean the introduction of the system we call "democracy" - the practice of elections, together with the money-drenched marketing campaigns and deceptions that influence the plutocratic result.

Popular rule by other means

Countries may deem themselves democratic based on other aspects of how their state works, such that they manage to embody the will of a sovereign people. This is why countries like the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) refer to themselves as democratic although they do not hold televised debates or nationwide elections. The Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development pledged Russian and Chinese support for local, authentic expressions of democracy around the world rather than the foreign-imposed and inauthentic systems that are called "democracies" by the dull.

There is something to be said for examining the democraticness, or lack thereof, in a regime's behaviour, rather than agreeing with the simplistic classification of different constitutions as a democracy or dictatorship. In the case of many Western governments and leading institutions, we indeed come up short when it comes to democraticness, despite the continuous use of the word "democracy", often by those who aren't elected.

The thwarting of the people

Across the US, the UK and the EU, for example, populism evokes horror among leaders, despite it really meaning that one is deferring to popular concerns, which is an essential aspect of being actually democratic. Populism is presented as a threat to "democracy", which only raises the question of what "democracy" they refer to, if it is incompatible with being popular.

Leaders of self-proclaimed liberal democracies such as the United States cringe at the idea of their populations actually getting anything they want, and are delighted at the idea of thwarting the wishes of the majority. The entire practice of elections, for them, is a game according to which they trick the people and manage to force upon them whatever they didn't want.

Disdain for the people

Not a word is ever uttered by the leaders of these countries about the wisdom or merits of the people, although leaders continuously use the word "democracy" with forked tongues. In fact, they deplore vast numbers of the people and make it their job to lecture and convert the people to their cause rather than represent them.

Does a sincere advocate of democracy - the system of rule by the people - have nothing nice to say about the wisdom of people, conceal facts from them, view them all as fools easily duped by intelligence services, and only offer to rule and protect them rather than obey them?

A country that actually valued the will of the people might actively labour to make all the people wiser, and then defer to the wishes of those people, treating them like an oracle. What happens instead is that the people are pressured to agree with the authorities, rather than vice versa. So, on top of the mountain of garbage that is a so-called "democracy", rests some small crumb representing how much that regime actually cares about what the people think and how much it actually shares their pain.

"Democracy" is meant to refer to a political system that derives legitimacy from the people, but the word usually gets used when talking of foreign conflicts. Those who talk of it will say the Western countries have a unique ethnicity, which makes them better than others.

Despite Ukraine's government banning all opposition, we are being told that Ukraine is a bastion in the fight for "democracy". As usual, Western countries teaming up to fight someone is usually the main reason to talk of "democracy", even if this is not applicable to the situation all. Someone looking for images of "democracy" won't find it hard to stumble upon scenes of explosions and dead bodies.

In the end, those who meet adoring crowds or talk of any need to serve the people are more likely to be labelled as dictators than democrats. The anonymous members of the American military and intelligence junta are presented as the men of democracy, regardless of whether they are elected or have anything to do with any democratic process at all.

Zones of freedom

The word "freedom" was used in artful equivocation by politicians such as George W. Bush during his invasion of Iraq in 2003. The conquered "zone of freedom" in fact meant an area free to be plundered and preyed on by American corporations, in keeping with the vaunted "free market" so loved by Americans. To the average listener, though, it may have suggested that the country would be freed from torture and oppression, when in fact the United States brought both to the Iraqi people. The term "zone of freedom" was also used for NATO expansion, which precipitated the current conflict in Ukraine.

The "democratic peace" theory died in Iraq in 2003, too, although its well-wishers continued to refuse to write its obituary and are now busy with Ukraine. When democracies were the ones attacking the others, and they were doing so for the very reason of their arrogant belief in their political system, it was clear that associating the democratic system with the establishment of peace was a mistake.

Democracy as a call to violence

"Democracy" is invoked almost always for the express purpose of rallying people to war, not peace. It is used to conjure up images of soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy, which, however heroic, is no image of peace. Those who plead for bringing what they call "democracy" to other lands are the most depraved warmongers of our time, even if they can successfully point to the atrocities of others.

The next time you hear a speech about "democracy", try to locate anything in the speech that offers any substantive commentary on the merits of a system of government by the people. Try to listen out for praise of the people and their wisdom, since they are meant to be the masters in the democratic system. You can almost certainly guarantee that such content will be absent, yet the word "democracy" shall keep appearing, because "democracy" is here being used only in the manner of a stupid idol with no useful properties. It is a mere word, brought forth to persuade and bring comfort to people who like to hear it.

Our countries in the West use "democracy" as false rhetoric. In practice, our governments subvert truly democratic causes and demands in favour of monopolistic power and deception. The "democratic peace" we seek is consequently false, and will never be realised. The West attacks the regimes it dislikes. Its so-called theory confuses a cloud of locusts with a rainbow of peace.

Reducing carbon emissions to net zero is partly to be accomplished by swapping diesel and petrol-consuming cars for electric cars by 2030 in the UK. However, this may still cater more to the interests of companies and consumers than the planet.

The moral and political dubiousness of seeking cheap lithium supplies and other essential minerals for producing electric cars is clear in the way it encourages exploitation and meddling in nations such as Bolivia. Moralising about clean energy has potential implications for future conflicts in that it can provide casus belli for such conflicts to be initiated against less fortunate and more polluting countries.

Such excuse-seeking for conflicts would fit with how richer countries maintain their riches at the expense of others, finding all kinds of grievances against their economic underlings that are merely contrived propaganda based on the sensibilities of their privileged population.

Other interests at work

What happens all too often is little more than "greenwashing". Corporations try to tag along with the nobler of government agendas, in hope of getting favour and continuing to accumulate capital. They may buy influence with politicians, who in turn try to square a circle by fitting greedy corporate interests with ecological responsibility.

The goal of continuing to have a transport system dependent on mass personal ownership of cars or something like cars at all may be something deserving of criticism. Cars are inevitably a lucrative industry, so neither governments nor businesses want to lose that industry. The car industry wants more cars out there than people. Given this motive, it cannot be ruled out that the environment will still be damaged by waste and the devastation of mineral-rich nations, and this is because the Western consumer's privileged expectations and preference to have a car at all is still being taken into account.

What is the alternative?

Governments rarely take the initiative to devise great changes to transport as they did in the past (railways only became universal and spread across the territory of a country at the command of the state). They could take the responsibility for actually devising changes to transport again, although only a panel of experts could suggest anything specific.

While it is hard to think of an alternative to a car or something like a car that would satisfy consumers, the government could always enact policies that will decrease the number of cars on the road drastically and perhaps end car ownership, so that cars are only ever at the needed number. This way, the number of electric cars eventually operated would be minuscule, which would have less of an impact. If cars were AI-driven in the future, they would not need to be owned (Great Reset alert!) and could simply be available based on some kind of subscription, being called to pick people up.

Whatever else happens, car manufacturers will always favour there being more cars, not fewer, and that is where there will remain something of a clash between greenwashed greed and eco-friendly policy.

Many decry the informal alliance that exists between governments and technology companies, but is it really necessarily bad? Over time, could high-tech spies actually create a utopia? A kind of good, even if it is born of evil?

If widespread enough, surveillance and transparency could actually create a panopticon of accountability, rearing individuals who respond as if they were under the eye of God. While a world of surveillance can be initially created by a sinister Machiavellian elite, those who grow up in that world of surveillance may become beings of impeccable character, committed to obeying the law.

Being treated harshly as one matures, like being watched, could help to bring about significantly restrained and considerate behaviour. Awareness that we can be caught committing crimes, by small devices we may not be able to see, could encourage a steadfast adherence to the law at all times. It could become so ingrained in us that, even when not being watched, we act as though we are being watched.

Good children of the system

Inevitably, any technology-based totalitarianism would at first experience abuse. Those who establish systems of surveillance aren't always inclined to benevolence, but in fact are more likely to be paranoid and unscrupulous. In such a case, we should expect that they themselves are of dubious moral character, perhaps even of a criminal mindset. They likely did many things in their lives that were dependent upon not being monitored, which perhaps makes their decision to create a monitored society somewhat ironic.

A child who grows up in the monitored world of techno-totalitarianism is the future master of that world, because all men die, including the tyrant. Raised in circumstances that deter or detect all crime and immorality, and establish some punishment for it, the new generation should encounter a filter that ensures only the best of them will qualify to represent authority in that society. Intense background checks, barring those with any criminal history from office, may ensure that only the most morally clean individuals may ascend to power.

By the time the original tyrants who established a system of totalitarian surveillance are gone, and replaced with the children they had raised, those in that new generation may be benevolent to a degree unknown even to current democratic forms of government. They will be those who dissatisfied no-one, were never detected committing any offence, and were at all times loyal.

The unaccountable class

There are many potential pitfalls to a techno-totalitarian system. For one thing, one must at first accept repressive totalitarian rule in the first place, which means enduring a lot of injustice and arbitrary power. Another problem is that such a system is likely to create a kind of static adherence to whatever the last ideology was, which was in a position of influence when the techno-totalitarian system was set up. Any ideology that usurps all power and moral authority will deem the others to be criminal by nature. As such, many of the detained or suppressed in that society may not be criminal at all but simply creative thinkers. Finally, there is also the pitfall of class, wherein the rulers are exempt from all modes of surveillance and accountability for their own crimes while monitoring those of a lower class, and those of the lower class are compelled to goodness because of their lower status, official or unofficial, while those who rule have no such obligation.

Because creating a technological totalitarianism requires somewhat unscrupulous behaviour in the first place, it seems likely that a prospective utopia (the merits of which are actually dubious even if accomplished) will be interrupted by one of the pitfalls above. It is unlikely that bad people take any steps to prevent, in particular, the formation of a class of unaccountable people to govern those who are accountable, when ideally all should be accountable.

The US has seized on what it regards as Russia's breach of international peace and stability to reassert its mantle of responsibility over a just world. Why did America lose this mantle, and is there reason to support this country having another try at some form of global order?

The question isn't really one for European governments or other American client states, but for humanity as a whole. What good would it do, if a country with butterfingers is given another chance to remake the world in its image?

Their own worst enemy

The US has had such free rein for so long that it is the source of most of the security threats in the world today, like some capricious deity responsible for unleashing evil into our world. Remember that the US played a major role in creating the Afghan insurgency that gave rise to al-Qaeda, it armed Saddam Hussein, it sponsored coups, and it inflamed civil wars. It caused chaos in a number of countries such as Syria, giving rise to ISIS.

Just about everywhere the US is able to act freely to make the world a better place, it makes it a worse place. Then, promptly, all media coverage of whatever troubled region we were talking about ends, leaving suffering people behind as the US eyes the next region it intends to operate on - like some mad surgeon with a hundred percent death rate behind him.

Rules-based disorder

At present, we are faced with the apparent collapse of an international "rules-based order", the favoured term of America and its allies when they arbitrarily moralise about international affairs and declare through various media platforms "what must be done" about some problem they happen to find offensive to them. American leaders presume to define good and evil (the current Ukraine narrative), and assign the former label to themselves or US clients in all cases, although in practice good and evil are not typically good assessments of the behaviour of states. The result of this mindset is hardly order but disorder, enmity and the inflammation of crisis everywhere across the world.

There are two big reasons that would compel one to decline America's pleas to be given a second chance as the world's moral arbiter and sole superpower. The first is that of its failures being rooted in its own core identity, such that it is doomed to continue failing and repeating itself indefinitely, because it creates all the alleged problems it hopes to address. The second is that of the character of those who currently guide American foreign policy.

Agents of chaos

America keeps failing to establish "order" because its identity is chaos. Americans are always most glad when they are destroying governments and handing out guns to bandits around the world, in keeping with their own ideas about guns belonging in the hands of random citizens. As a country born from sedition and criminal secession from Britain, the Americans can't help thinking like criminals at the international level and coveting scenes of disorder rather than order.

It is a fundamental part of American liberalism, whether handled from a progressive or conservative angle, that America sides with gun-toting rebels and contras rather than those who maintain the peace. They fail to govern the world because their ideological reverence is not for a body of laws but for chaos and banditry. The romantic urge to recreate the Wild West overpowers their reason, compelling them away from the path of responsibility even if they try to plan otherwise, like some dog unable to resist scratching its flea-ridden hide, no matter the wishes of its owner.

Serial failures

The current American foreign policy establishment is especially underserving of a second chance at creating the "American Century", as they used to call their dream. Every single foreign policy idea they have presented, from the insurgency in Afghanistan in the 1980s to the occupation of Afghanistan of 2001-2021, or the invasion of Iraq in 2003, backfired spectacularly and endangered their own country.

The Americans are all too eager to give themselves a second chance at governing the world and creating a stable order. Others should not be so keen to see that.

Russia's military campaign in Ukraine, launched last month, could be the beginning of a long and bloody war. Being already seen as such, it has likely alienated many individuals in the West who formerly sided with Russia against a morally dubious Western foreign policy establishment.

One of the places where those opponents of the West's moral skeleton liked to gather, following the 2003 Iraq War which largely discredited the West as a positive moral agent in the world, was the now heavily censored and cyber-attacked RT (formerly Russia Today). There, such individuals appeared as viewers, journalists, and guests for many years to express their anti-war views.

The doves fly

For anyone watching RT during the opening of Russia's offensive into Ukraine in February 2022, it would be impossible not to notice the great unease of the English-speaking anchors during this Russian government-funded news network's live broadcasts. It is likely that such individuals were recruited in the first place because of their unease with Western foreign policy, which made them more likely to sympathise with and be willing to present Russia's position to English-speakers for many years. Russia's sudden decision to employ force will have changed everything, leaving many of them shaken and confused. Why did Russia apparently choose to rain its own bombs on a country, rather than foiling America's dubious schemes and rejecting its excuses, as had been the case in Syria? That will be burdening their consciences.

Many disbelieved that Russia was planning a major military escalation in Ukraine, holding the Kremlin's promises to the world as true. Those who had supported the Russian media against Western military actions, out of a principled rejection of military intervention everywhere, will find it difficult to maintain that support (see Max Keiser, formerly of the Keiser Report, as an example).

Did Russia make the right choice?

It may be that the Kremlin made a strategic mistake by trying to dominate Ukraine militarily (I concurred with the British government about this in January). We live in an era of failed foreign interventions by even the most technologically sophisticated countries, which is why many will anticipate a slow Russian defeat and withdrawal from Ukraine. Ukrainians are not incompetent or cowardly, having made up a significant portion of the most competent and brave soldiers of the former USSR, so it would be wrong for Russia to think they are easily cast aside.

On the other hand, the Kremlin may have not made a mistake in Ukraine at all. The twin objectives of "demilitarisation" and "denazification" may be impossible to achieve if pursued to total completion all across Ukraine (a scenario vulnerable to "mission creep"), but they can easily be accomplished to a point that Moscow no longer needs to worry. A battered Ukrainian military, pushed back to the west of Ukraine, left with no threatening hardware, can be guaranteed by Russia's brutal and overwhelming firepower. A number of Ukrainian radicals can be assassinated or captured to showcase "denazification". Following such steps, Russia could withdraw. They could also almost certainly defend a number of seized Ukrainian cities indefinitely and annex them formally or informally, managing over time to convince their largely Russian-friendly populations to welcome the change.

Whatever the case, Russia's leadership must have known they would lose much support in the West. The only conclusion can be that, faced with NATO expansion into Ukraine, Russian leaders felt that the problem was so severe and so strategically dangerous that it was worth huge sacrifices to overcome it. It was worth losing any remaining soft power Russia had in the West, in favour of applying hard power in Russia's near abroad. NATO was being intransigent, refusing to rule out nuclear missiles being placed in Ukraine to target Moscow, declaring Russia as its enemy and Ukraine as its frontline partner against Russia.

Anti-war? You are outgunned

Considering the obstruction faced by anyone sympathetic to Russian worries or just simply critical of Western policy in Western societies, it is not surprising that Russia would decide to throw them under the bus. They were never likely to accomplish any significant influence or power anyway. Russia's might still ultimately lies in its unrivalled missile power and vast force of armoured vehicles on its territory, so they decided to exert this power rather than something more subtle.

Those who based their interpretation of world events solely on morality, and were led to side with Russia or China for that reason and reject the interventionist US and NATO, were doomed to be disappointed. International relations is not a moral affair, unfortunately. There are no values, only interests. Sooner or later, any national government will assert its interests in the most brutal way, reminding us all of what a state really is.

Russia is neither good nor bad, and that's what is so shocking to those who used morality to guide their interpretation of international events. Likewise, the United States is neither good nor bad, although the case can certainly be made that it is incompetent and confused, and that has always been the chief complaint that seems to have the most merit.

People who are anti-war ultimately get pushed aside by those favouring force, if we are in a situation where force can work. This is because being anti-war is solely a personal philosophy, not an expression of anything necessarily aligned with the national interest. As long as there are national interests and diplomatic quarrels, force will be part of the spectrum, the continuation of politics by the steel gauntlet of those who have might, if mere talk failed.

Should we believe extraordinary claims from government sources, such as the "Tic Tac" UFO encounter footage from the US government?

While extra-terrestrials may be a favoured explanation for some, for UFO sightings, a secret military technology is more plausible, because we are at least aware that military secrets are real. However, even that is far-fetched. A technology that is truly beyond anything known to science, for example, having the ability to fully neutralise g-forces, is also countered by a more likely possibility.

Extraordinary claims

The most reasonable explanation for any compelling video evidence of extra-terrestrial or truly unexplained UFO encounters, if they originate from a government source, will be that they are nevertheless fake. An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence, so video and official endorsement of video is not enough. People also saying they saw it doesn't help, as testimony is unreliable.

In 2003, the American people believed their government's mere word about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. After waging the war, they learned it was not true. Many lost faith in the mainstream media, and now obstinately disbelieve even the more mundane claims of governments.

In 2022, prior to it happening, we had headlines and pictures in tabloids about a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Many believed it, because it came from government sources, namely the US government. Others disbelieved it for that very same reason. Unfortunately, the American warnings turned out to be true in the case of a Russian incursion into Ukraine, and the Russians seemed to begin the very operation they were insisting would not happen.

For many Americans, Russia's deceptions will vindicate the US government and they will be more likely to trust the US government's authority again, even when it is lying.

Distrust them

Despite the above change, governments still lie. The most effective lies are those that are mixed with confirmed reality by those telling the story. Many believe that if they can confirm some part of a story, the rest must be true.

In the case of formal, government-stamped evidence of the seemingly impossible, what we are looking at could be an experiment in the authority of the state. It could be a test of how credulous a citizen can be, if their government verifies something as true, or a sort of experiment in how far the militarisation of false information can go when pushed from government to journalists. How far do loyal citizens actually go in believing the state? Might they even believe in alien invaders if they are reported on the news?

Government authority lends credibility to a report, but it by no means confirms it to be accurate.

Donald Trump's echo chamber app, Truth Social, which can be expected to be banned at some point in app stores, bans criticism of itself and probably of Donald Trump as well.

Not a good plan

My own view, expressed in an earlier post, was that this app might benefit Trump if it was introduced sometime around the next US presidential election as a means of creating publicity and controversy. However, it has instead started up just about now.

The companies that provide app stores don't allow people to download the other conservative alt-social media apps, such as Gab (which is a complete and utter nightmare of an app because of the lunatics using it, as I also explained in my earlier post). Sooner or later, Truth Social will just be banned too, making it no better.

More censorship

What is worse is the platform's apparent hypocrisy. Banning criticism of itself is about the most extreme a social media platform can go. It seems as if all this is just intended as personal revenge over Trump's Twitter account being removed.

Censorship should not be in the hands of companies and people who control them, such as Zuckerberg or Trump. Censorship is essentially a form of law enforcement action and should only be practiced based on the decisions of courts or orders handed down by government authorities, local or national.

Pages