Lordre: political

Showing posts with label political_theory. Show all posts

Six signs someone is a neocon

Neoconservatives turn America into all the things it always tried to condemn in other nations - warmongers, tyrants, torturers and enemies of freedom. Guilty of launching the Iraq War, torture programs, and mass surveillance against their own people, there is seemingly no limit to what they might try to do.

Some of these traits may be shared simply by extremists on either side of the political spectrum, but any prominent person or intellectual adopting the below views is a neoconservative. They are a neoconservative because they have the views exclusive to the neoconservative ideology, complete with its absolutistic, utopistic bloodlust.

#1 Condemning “appeasement” regularly

They like to say “appeasement” frequently when describing supposedly weak responses to international conflicts, using it with regard to virtually every war, especially wars their country was already unethically involved in.

#2 Blaming the world's problems on a single “dictator”

They keep pointing to a single person as the public enemy at all times (usually a perceived authoritarian figure e.g., Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Bill Clinton, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin). They portray all these people almost like some reincarnating bogeyman, and the extent of their political theory is that killing or impeaching this bogeyman over and over again will save the world. They claim that political events surrounding this dictator have moral clarity and are like a movie, complete with a beginning, a middle and an end at which this “villain” is killed or defeated, by them or some hero figure, usually an American.

#3 Saying “can”, “should”, and “must” too often

Usually this is preceded by the word “America” or “we” as shorthand for the nation, or Western military alliances like NATO and US or Coalition military forces, usually accompanied by the idea that these forces are invincible in war and are only held back by weak liberals. They might personally have the physical prowess of a potato resting on a couch, but believe that their suggestions about sending soldiers into combat makes them akin to a cape-wearing hero. They also might make statements that America would have won or even did win in Vietnam and Afghanistan, but was betrayed by liberals (very similar to the “stabbed in the back” Nazi myth about World War One).

#4 Hating Kissinger and Carter

They think Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, is a coward for not sharing their simplistic good-vs-evil view of international affairs and conflicts. They might also really hate Jimmy Carter, seeing his administration as the weakest in American history. They might think America was later redeemed by the hero Ronald Reagan, seen by them as a superhero who single-handedly destroyed the Soviet Union. They hold the false belief that the Cold War was not a complicated affair ended by agreements, and instead insist it was simple battle between good and evil, believing that the good side (the West) won this “war”, and Russia surrendered and gave up its security (a key cause of the current Ukraine war).

#5 Advocating atrocities

They are willing to go on television and just advocate killing a civilian, even if this isn't their job, and think this is socially acceptable. They might think other members of their own society or fellow citizens should be censored, detained, tortured or killed for disagreeing with them on issues such as the above, presenting their own view as an unambiguously moral or factually correct default position rather than realising they are bloodthirsty fanatics for an ideology. They have no moral problems with torturing your body and killing your entire family if they judged you to be an impediment to their ideology (yet another trait they share with Nazis).

#6 Having protagonist syndrome

Another thing all neocons have in common is that their ideas are rooted in entertainment rather than reality. Neocons have Hollywood brains that love simplicity, villains, heroes, and a lot of violence against whoever they decided is bad (even if it later becomes clear that they are not bad). To quote someone taking the neocon path, “I had no knowledge beyond what I'd learned from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rambo”.

There is the 'dead internet theory' according to which most of the supposed humans on the internet are fakes, although this hypothesis probably doesn’t withstand scrutiny.

However, things that are far more important may be mostly fake. The advanced democracies in what we call the West are home to exceedingly unpopular regimes that seem to rely more on backing by pre-existing rulers, manipulative lobbies and media conglomerates than authentic popular support. As such, the democratic mandate of these regimes could be said to be false.

When a democracy gets too old

If the majority of people are against the regime, then such a regime cannot be said to be a living democracy. Perhaps a democracy being "advanced" translates to it being "aged", dying, or perhaps dead. These democracies are advanced and unflinching in their confidence not due to some sort of robustness and maturity, but because of their inflexibility and lack of any true loyalty to the people.

One can speculate that advanced democracies are long dead, having sagged outside the bounds of their original constitutions to become evil. Stepping outside of metaphor, it would mean they have existed for so long that any way of gaming the system to thwart the wishes of the people has long ago been discovered and refined to perfection by the few who have power. Every loophole is mapped by those who need to know about it, such that there are infinite ways of thwarting the people and defying their will, while maintaining the window-dressing of democracy.

Rulers have effectively insulated themselves from the people, so that the system is effectively a lifeless and sterile corporate husk. The only “democracy” to be witnessed is futile cosmetics and the repetition of the word itself, more like an article of faith than a factual reality.

Young democracies are full of life and purpose, having recently emancipated their people. However, all old democracies, even in the ancient world, eventually perished, having lost support among anyone other than a small elite who were cheating and exploiting the system.

'Lesser evil'

Voter apathy is far worse than mere low turnout in elections, since it includes those who only grudgingly cast votes for the lesser evil, as if any living democracy would be like that. This gives rise to a reality in which nobody other than a tiny minority, heavily engaged in the political system and shaping the available candidates, believes in its legitimacy. Meanwhile, the vast majority are quietly resigned to being governed by whoever is in power or picking from a menu that features nothing they want, feeling certain that any effort they made to participate would be thwarted successfully by the pack of wolves who fought their way to the top long ago.

The result is that advanced democracies may be hostage to a hyper-vocal and aggressively involved minority, perhaps twenty percent of the people, often driven more by their deep contempt for all the other people than any respect for their will.

If the above speculation is right, then the ones who most like to pretend democracy is alive may be those who believe it serves their narrow interests. Such a group is hardly the people, who are in fact lifeless corpses kicked and beaten by that narrow group who rule. The say of those lambs is absent, they are dead, and what persists is only the hijacking of the state by predators eating them.

All of this is, of course, only an exercise in speculation, like the dead internet theory. But it helps to sometimes posit the most diabolic interpretation of the state of things, so to stimulate thought.

Russia and China’s dismissals of the US and the West’s authority in the international system (the rules-based order) by pointing to Western wars such as the Iraq War of 2003 or the 2011 bombing of Libya are in turn rejected in Western circles as ‘whataboutism’. But is this succinct reply a sufficient defence of the West?

Someone saying 'what about', and bringing up the other fellow's own failings or sins, like any ad hominem attack, is not necessarily a false argument. If someone’s whole point in an argument is that you are a thief, and you are in fact a thief, then their argument is in fact valid.

In logic, ‘Whataboutism’ is only a false argument when its structure contains a conclusion that does not really follow, for example, 'you are a thief too, therefore I am not a thief'.

No-one really says anything so absurd, so to accuse someone of this logical fallacy is ridiculous. The Russians and Chinese have never made the claim that they are innocent of crimes because they can show the West also commits crimes.

Western hypocrisy is the point

When Russia and China defenders point to the West’s hypocrisy, they are never asserting a false conclusion or falsely claiming to refute a Western allegation. They are just refusing the discussion entirely, because they have another topic they would prefer to talk about.

To claim this refusal of the subject, in favour of attacking the West’s hypocrisy, is an ad hominem fallacy, is no more correct than to claim that Russian diplomats refusing to talk about hot dogs is an ad hominem attack on the intellects of American barbecue-goers, and that Russian answers must be about hot dogs or else they are doing ‘whataboutism’. If you think someone is talking nonsense, you don’t have to address the minutiae of it. If you want, you can wisely change the subject to their credibility, which should have been established first anyway.

As soon as ‘what about Iraq?’ is asked, the United States’ moral authority and its right to confront other nations on moral issues in the first place becomes the subject of the discussion. Under those conditions, whataboutism is a valid argument. We are rewinding the discussion to where it should really start. We are judging the moral character that the US and the West are tacitly claiming (which they need to establish first, before appointing themselves to accuse other nations), so facts that hurt their character are valid to bring up.

'What about whataboutism?'

In fact, invoking the term ‘whataboutism’ when facing Russian and Chinese claims about the West may itself be a form of ‘whataboutism’ (in this case it takes the form ‘what about whataboutism?’), and an example of this as a real logical fallacy. Western apologists in this case really are falsely inferring that they have refuted Russian and Chinese accusations of Western hypocrisy by dismissing them as logical fallacies, when the accusations may not be logical fallacies but distinct and accurate claims that hurt the West's standing.

Someone being guilty of a crime himself arguably destroys his moral authority to judge others committing the same crime and removes his right to take the podium to talk about another fellow's crime. His own actions in committing the crime make his moral authority and statements on anyone else’s crimes dubious, and call his motivations into question. It may show that he is actually just looking for a monopoly on force or the right to commit crimes, rather than sincerely addressing crimes.

When used to challenge someone’s moral authority or ideology, ‘whataboutism’ is a valid and healthy starting point before addressing someone’s claims in the first place. It is not only logically valid but devastating to an opponent, if they cannot withstand it.

WHOAREYOUism

Whataboutism is not a rude interruption to the West's accusations against any regime. It is a legitimate attempt to rewind the conversation to where it ought to begin. The correct phrasing actually goes: 'who are you'?

If the West’s claim is that it represents some kind of moral purity or higher authority, which is indeed its claim when it uses the term ‘rules-based order’ to describe a vision of itself safeguarding international rules and norms, then for Russia and China to point out that it is untrustworthy because of its hypocrisy is fatal to the West.

‘Whataboutism’ is the winner. A ‘rules-based order’ proposed by cockroaches is no way to start cleaning the world, because their very nature disqualifies them from talking about it.

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.

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.

In a past article, it seems I violated one of my own rules by referring to what I called globalists. Why use a term that is seen as a dog whistle to the far right, or to the followers of fringe conservative radio shows (probably in America)?

Well, that's not what it is, really. Words come into use, and we may use them somewhat differently. But, if we should succeed in explaining ourselves properly and eloquently when making our case, it matters not.

Globalism-localism

The answer is that there are many terms referring to them same thing, and this one seems to be in increasing use, which makes it likely that someone will search for it online. One can speak of elites, or of internationalists, or of international capitalists, or of corporate interests. Such terms, when used in an accusatory way, are really referring to a class of people, an economic or social core, similar to but not the same as the beneficiaries in a global core-periphery relationship.

The "global" people are a core, the beneficiaries of global relationships in a global social network, whereas the "local" are the periphery in some way, the ones whom the perceived transnational elite are concerned with managing or benefiting from. All talk of whether you are good enough, or useful enough, or ought to behave in this or that way, is typical of a certain class of people to whom we are here referring. They assume that the world's population is somehow theirs to manage, and that this should be done according to their values, which is in stark contrast to those who believe their local cultures or national interests come first.

If you have a leader who, in trying to convince the people of their vision, becomes condescending about the attitudes and sensibilities of their people, and appeals to some sort of global reality or global change rather than the national or local realities, they may be a globalist. As such, it makes sense to speak of globalism and localism as the counterparts to core and periphery or to the bourgeoisie and proletariat, and this binary may be more helpful to any discussion of politics than the old binary of "left" and "right". Such a new distinction helps to explain the diversity of conflict and protest worldwide in a way that left and right do not.

Beyond left and right

Left and right have ceased to be very useful things that one can actually use in an analysis of a political conflict. Left simply refers to the publications, organisations and celebrities that label themselves as the left, and it is otherwise unidentifiable. Whatever they say is left-wing. In practice, the professed left may be aligned with corporate interests or capitalism, or it may be against them, as there is no real clear commitment to anything by those who use this label. The same applies to the right.

A 2020 study showed that political partisanship causes "cognitive inflexibility". I am sure it was found that when people are not allowed to see labels, names, logos, and faces, or to know who is talking (is it Biden or Trump?), they accidentally place their political allegiances all over the place and keep changing sides. In contrast, one can actually sort statements and rhetoric (not necessarily individuals or organisations) into the globalist and localist categories quite effortlessly, which makes these terms more meaningful when it comes to actually thinking about ideas and policies. Simply, is the candidate defending the people as they are and the idea that we should let them be, or is the candidate demanding they conform to some global, universal ideology or agenda?

On globalist conspiracies

A term is as useful as people can make it. This one, "globalism", is often applied in an annoying way. It tends to just be used by conspiracy theorists without any accompanying explanation ever being given, other than yet more conspiracy theories usually particular to whoever is rambling and not even common to the next user of the word.

The downside to using the term is simply the sheer volume of nonsensical or conspiracist discourse on the internet using the term "globalist", which could be an argument against using the term. Is it wise to get people into using a word that, when searched online, sends people into a pit of dissonance and gibberish and makes them less likely to understand reality? Perhaps not, but one can write in a clear way that continuously injects real meaning into the terms we use, which helps break the monopoly of those who want to talk rubbish.

When used as I have presented it here, "globalism" has a very simple, distilled meaning. It refers to no conspiracy, and yet it does not necessarily contradict those who have the conspiracy theorist mindset either.

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.

Although it should be used extremely sparingly, death should exist as a penalty for some crimes in some circumstances.

Death is already a punishment the state can use on you, in the sense that it has the power and, if it gives itself it, the right to employ lethal force against you. When we speak of the death penalty, the only thing we are really talking about is one of many circumstances in which an authority exercises its right to kill you.

If you are a threat the state deems unacceptable to it or you present an imminent threat of killing others (hot pursuit), the authority in the land gives himself the option to kill you. So, why is this power not extended to other situations where the ruling authority might require your death for the safety of innumerable others and the protection of society? The answer is that liberal absolutes dictate the law, in the case of the UK, and these absolutes cannot adjust to changes in society and the behaviour of the citizen.

Capital punishment as a moderating influence

The killing of a defenceless captive by an authority, an execution, may be justifiable if the alternative is known to involve a greater degree of unrest, suffering and death. Some crimes are so severe, for example, that not executing the perpetrators encourages acts of vigilantism that cannot be contained.

Take, for example, those who are found guilty of sexual assaults on children. The perceived inadequacy of the punishment for that offence has given rise to vigilantes who actively hunt such offenders, as well as legions who, with modern social media, may be prepared to falsely accuse and shame individuals who are merely suspected. Happening because of the perceived inadequacy of the legal authorities, this can push the falsely accused into undue distress or even suicide in larger numbers than the potential executions that would be required to calm the situation. As such, failure to kill the perpetrator presents a continuous risk to the lives of others even if the perpetrator is detained. In contrast, a state in which those guilty of this crime are executed would not experience as much vigilantism and distress, and things could be handled always in a more orderly way.

On the inevitable innocent victims

One could argue that an innocent suspect's death may also placate society and avert deeper tragedy under some circumstances, and that my argument above is therefore absurd because it would encourage random executions when the state feels they will placate the crowd. The killing of innocents is yet another thing destabilising to the social order, and therefore bad for the same reason as leaving alive those who have been confirmed to have monstrous guilt.

Even when applied sparingly, the death penalty will sometimes take innocent lives, but it can be used in such a way that it results in fewer innocent lost lives than the chaos of never applying it. It is likely that the number of executions that are truly necessary for the reasons outlined above is extremely low, but capital punishment should still be available to a ruling power in the same way that lethal force is to be employed in situations of immediate peril.

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.

While Britain and America tend to form a united front in our foreign policy, our constitutions and values are extremely different, and claiming they are the same is inappropriate.

The Special Relationship is presented by dubious minds at the forefront of British foreign policy, like Liz Truss, as if it represents some form of ideological hegemony based on values of freedom and democracy emanating from Washington. In reality, there is no such thing. We speak the same language, but the British state is actually more different from the United States than even the Russian state is.

The last time anyone checked, the United Tsardom of Russia did not still seem to have a tsar and a council of unelected barons who could impede their parliament's will. That, however, is what the United Kingdom still has.

The bureaucracy and the plutocracy

The idea that Britain has anything like the model of democracy in America is absurd. Countless things are considered acceptable in the US that are considered unacceptable in the UK, and vice versa. Take, for example, campaign funding and lobbying. The US has virtually no rules on that whatsoever, considering money to be speech and therefore any restriction on it to be a violation of freedom of speech, whereas the UK has rules. This makes the character of the two regimes completely different, to such a point that they could justifiably deny that each other are true democracies at all. If we were in a mood to quarrel, America would accuse the UK of stifling political opposition with bureaucratic red tape, while the UK would accuse America of being a plutocracy.

Another example is the freedom of speech itself. In the US, that is actually enshrined in the US Constitution as a protection for all speech, no matter how offensive - something Prince Harry referred to as "bonkers", to the consternation of Americans. In the UK, you have the freedom of conscience, but how you disrupt the lives of others with that freedom is very much restrained by the law. The government can't suppress someone's beliefs, but a citizen also can't just go out and offend people, as there are laws against it in Britain.

Then there is the right to bear arms. From a British perspective, this is an absolutely unacceptable, bizarre, and menacing idea. In most cases, even British police don't carry arms, while American police have tanks.

Acting on values would make the UK bash America

The point is, in an actual value-driven world, there are more than enough areas of violent disagreement on ideology and constitution for the UK and US to be sworn enemies, certainly not allies. The facts are enough to ridicule the notion that our coalition is somehow standing up for democratic values. Our own regimes and attitudes to governance are fundamentally different and incompatible with each other, to such an extent that we could completely deny each other's legitimacy as states and yet still be fully compliant with our values.

If the UK were to be a foreign policy adversary of the US, the latter would level a host of meaningful criticisms aimed chiefly at the monarchy and the House of Lords, decrying them as undemocratic features. Stock criticisms of the other regime are standard practice when the US has an opponent. Indeed, the UK maintains highly undemocratic vestiges, doing so for the sake of stability and tradition.

The 51st State

There have been reforms in the UK that appear to be aimed at making Britain more like America, such as the creation of a Supreme Court and calls for the abolition of the House of Lords. Whether the creation of the Supreme Court was for the best is not entirely clear, and there are fairly good arguments from both sides. However, British use of American nomenclature is arguably just superficial, aiming more to help maintain the illusion of a shared democratic culture than make it a reality.

On the other hand, considering how stable and reliable the UK's system had been for centuries, reforming is always a bad call. Healthy forms of conservatism rest on the assumption that there are certainly unknowns in revising anything, and that a stable and decent past provides sufficient grounds not to change things very much, even if we have no evidence that reform will go awry. A system that averts a brutish and short life is a good one, even if it is less democratic.

Most would agree that the UK can learn some good features from the US, and that the US can learn some good features from the UK, but it seems indisputable that the UK has a better system. The UK is not plagued by ideology, sectarianism and sedition, and does not have an overpowered executive branch.

UK system is just better

Countries that followed the Westminster system effectively maintained order even in some of the most historically conflict-prone regions of the world, while those that instead emulated the United States were prone to disorder. What the Special Relationship is not, is anything to do with actual constitutions or political values. The UK is quite different from the US as a regime, aside from the shared language.

The Special Relationship has only ever been a mutual attempt by the US and UK to manipulate the other and use the other as an instrument of one's own interests. The US sees the UK as an aircraft carrier off the shores of Europe, while the UK still sees the US as a youthful successor to the British Empire.

Contrary to his speech denigrating protesters, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau needs to listen to their demands and avoid alienating a huge portion of the population of his country.

The entire point of Covid-related policies is to prevent a crisis, and to prevent what is essentially a form of congestion in the state's ability to help the people. The whole idea of vaccination is to prevent the waste of the state's resources on treatments, the taking up of hospital beds, the use of supplies, et cetera. If the policies are instead causing exactly such problems or similar problems due to opposition, they need to be re-evaluated

Against interlopers

It should be unacceptable for those without knowledge of health matters to intrude into them and tell people what is best for them, and it is akin to malpractice or even murder. However, there is the problem of the reverse, when medical advice takes precedence over economic advice and even overrides any tact in how to handle human affairs or govern a country.

What has most likely happened is that governments, including the Canadian government, have surrounded themselves with health-focused advisers and bodies in an effort to focus on the pandemic, resulting in negligent handling of other affairs of the state. Alienation of the population and an inability to reach or convince many millions of people has resulted, because those advising the government are not skilled in that area.

The risks

The pandemic is one thing, but it is a whole other world of risk to try to confront huge protests and try to lecture the population on their personal choices, or force them to comply. This risk is potentially worse than the pandemic. Countries whose regimes find themselves at odds with their population but refuse to budge can descend into massive violence quickly, with potentially limitless casualties, far worse than the pandemic itself.

States need to consider that in order to help people, they have to be able to placate the population. Nobody appointed governments as arbiters of scientific accuracy, logic and the persuasion of the public to reason. In fact, states are themselves irrational structures based around memory, emotion, and stories sown into banner, edifice and icon. For them to pretend that they now represent the wills of rationalists and scientific bodies, and deny and chastise the masses and their beliefs, is absurd because that is hardly what any government was ever conceived to do.

Health policy must be balanced with respecting sensibilities of those who are ruled, which absolutely cannot be ignored. Vaccine mandates ought to be pursued where agreeable and plausible, and scrapped where not.

Pages