It is hard for anyone to predict what the world will look like in ten or twenty years.
That is because everyone’s imagination is a product of their intellect, education, life experience, and beliefs. Those components tend to skew the imagination backward, a bit, toward the comfortable “known”.
If you had told a guy in the 1950’s, for example, that by the year 2000 there would be no more telephone booths or carbon paper, or that virtually everyone would be carrying around a high quality camera in their pocket, he would have laughed at you. Ditto if you’d have told him that he would be paying to watch TV in his own home.
Hee, hee, hee… that’s a good one, he’d laugh!
I certainly don’t know what’s coming down the road. Some things are somewhat predictable, like more people working remotely, more jobs being lost to “artificial intelligence”, most higher education being acquired on-line, and, at some point, transportation being weaned off of petroleum products. It appears that global temperatures are warming, too, so we can expect more unsettling weather, disasters, and rising sea levels. Low-lying cities, like New York and Miami, are in for a rude awakening.
Trends indicate that citizens of industrialized countries are becoming less religious and more people are living together absent marriage. Couples are having fewer children, too. Maybe that’s a good thing, as the planet can only support so many hungry mouths.
Our democratic system of government is broken and in need of a general overhaul. Because of zealous partisanship, a comprehensive “fix” of our Constitution is probably not going to happen any time soon. So, where does that leave us?
My Dad, a Barry Goldwater conservative back in the day, used to say that the best form of government would be a “benevolent dictatorship”. That is probably true, but this earth has yet to produce even one of those unicorns. Because “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, sooner or later the benevolence wanes and the self-serving accelerates.
That’s just the nature of things.
We “Baby Boomers” have experienced democracy at its finest, back when politicians of different stripes could work together to get things done. It wasn’t perfect, but it was “adjustable” considering that we voters could kick to the curb idiot elected officials who got too big for their britches or tried to foist stupid ideas upon their constituents.
Nowadays, those kinds of losers fill most of the seats in State and Federal legislatures, spending their time feeding from the government trough while shooting spitwads at each other. Many of those incumbents are Baby Boomers; go figure.
I can understand why a lot of Americans are sick and tired of the democracy that we’ve allowed to putrify: it isn’t working very well.
There seems to be a groundswell of sorts aimed at taking dramatic action, politically. The Republican Party, under the leadership of disgraced former President Donald Trump, seems to be in the mood for draconian solutions in many policy areas. If Mr. Trump is elected President in November, there will be a very different look to government in the United States.
Maybe that’s what is needed: an Ice Bucket challenge, so to speak.
My fear, should this occur, is that the authoritarian model that Trump promotes would feature an Administration populated not by the “best and brightest” but, rather, a mob of hard-line loyalists to Trump who would attempt to force unpopular ideologies on the majority of our citizens. Civil strife, much like occurred in apartheid South Africa, would be likely… in my opinion.
The problem with giving authoritarianism a shot in America is that, historically, dictators tend to get more frisky as time goes on, and the people’s “rights” tend to diminish, as well. Freedoms that we and our forefathers have enjoyed and taken for granted, like speech, assembly, petition, and even gun rights could be eliminated.
This is what happens in dictatorships: the last thing a dictator wants is someone loudly ridiculing him with a bullhorn in a public space, for example. Aggressive retribution is common, often by goon squads with truncheons and automatic weapons. People get “disappeared”. (Interestingly, such anonymous “enforcers” were deployed, illegally, by President Trump during the BLM protests. People who were committing no crimes were roughed up and some were kidnapped and hauled off in unmarked vans. One youth brought his AR-15 from another state, waded into the BLM protest, and shot a couple of demonstrators. He was treated like a hero and celebrity by Trump’s people.)
Authoritarian leaders tend to want to cling to power. They do this by rigging elections in their favor or… doing away with them altogether. This is how Vladimir Putin stays in power, and how the North Korean dictatorship has been perpetuated over many generations. Since 1948, North Korea has been ruled by Kim Il Sung, then his son Kim Jong Il, and then his son Kim Jong Un, who is currently prepping his daughter Kim Yo Jung to take over from him upon his demise.
Can anyone imagine the idiot Donald Trump Jr. being handed the reins when his father gets bored or dies? No way, you say, but daddy Trump already controls the Republican National Committee. If elections continue to be held in America, the how and who on the ballot would be determined by the authoritarian President and his posse.
No way, you say!
Consider the fact that today, in “Trump Country”, hard-line Republican legislators continue to devise ways to limit the voting power of Democrats, particularly those who are minorities like Blacks and Latinos.
I predict that, if Trump’s cult succeeds in November, we could be looking at a new age of “Jim Crow”-type repression of minorities in America, targeting African-Americans, Latino-Americans, Asian-Americans, and perhaps others. State-supported “foreigner” bashing could become a national pastime, much like Jews were targeted in Nazi Germany. Liberals Democrats, educators, LBGQT individuals, and journalists would be hounded by goons, both civilian and governmental.
Another thing that will happen with a regime change that substitutes authoritarianism for democracy is that power dynamics within the population will change. Currently, the voting power of our “mature” population (i.e. senior citizens) is strong and is a prime reason that the Nation has its Social Security and Medicare safety net. Those programs are expensive, but elected politicians are loathe to reduce those costs because seniors show up to vote in droves. An authoritarian leader need not concern himself with the anger of voters, particularly if he controls the electoral process. He could decide to limit who votes or if there are elections at all.
He could decide that Social Security and Medicare need to be eliminated because… America has too many old people! He could, essentially, “thin the herd”.
Who needs old people, anyway? (Except Trump, who will be 78-years-old when/if he takes office.)
This all seems far-fetched to us, as we have a 250-year history of elections in this country. There is no way that we could lose the right to kick a lousy leader to the curb, right?
The answer is “Yes”.
With our collective track record over the past 50 years, it is safe to say that the electorate has done a crappy job placing competent people in positions of authority. I’m ashamed. Aren’t you?
Something to consider: an authoritarian leader, able to do pretty much whatever he wants without fear of losing elections (since they don’t need to be held), doesn’t need a legislative branch to enact laws: he can do that himself. So, a Legislative branch of government isn’t necessary, nor is a Judicial branch needed to interpret the laws. I wonder if the two hundred plus Republican Congressmen and 48 Republican Senators and the Republican majority of the Supreme Court have given this any thought?
Maybe we have collectively earned our fate; i.e. losing the rights that we have misused. Perhaps a “strong man” like Trump is needed to tell us when to jump and how high?
I will probably go to my grave believing in the idea of democracy, even though its execution in America has been a train wreck in recent decades. Call me a dinosaur, if you want, but I will always feel that problems can be solved by people who listen to each other and make an honest effort to find compromise.
The good thing about a dictatorship is that the mention of problems is not allowed, so there are theoretically no problems to solve.
If the Boss says that everything is hunky-dory, then… it is, just like in the last Trump Administration.
Does anyone remember the President assuring everyone that Covid-19 was “just the flu”, “there are only five cases nationwide”, and that the whole thing was just “overblown” drama hyped up by the “Liberal media”?
One million deaths later…
280y1s