> it seems that we need obvious impending doom for everyone before people stop voting for right wing politicians. From my observation over the last few decades

> it seems that we need obvious impending doom for everyone before people stop voting for right wing politicians. From my observation over the last few decades, when people are frightened they vote for self-proclaimed strongmen. Back in the '00s when I was taking an interest there was a kind of general belief that the first really incontrovertible "we must do something" events[1] would happen in the '30s and, by and large, governments would act in an uncooperative, zero-sum way internationally, and focus on helping their cronies domestically. I haven't seen reasons to change that view yet. [1] For example, extreme heatwaves that each kill more than a million people directly, or simultaneous harvest failure in two or more of the five major grain-growing regions of the world, two or more years in a row, and consequently tens to hundreds of millions of refugees on the move.