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It's not a pendulum. To imagine such a thing is a very indulgent way of thinking. The liberties experienced in the United States are quite exceptional as human

by aksss 5y ago

It's not a pendulum. To imagine such a thing is a very indulgent way of thinking. The liberties experienced in the United States are quite exceptional as human societies go. In the history of human civilization, the tendency is towards the feudalistic, the imperial, the totalitarian. So the natural course is for liberties to erode. It took bloodshed and great will to carve out freedoms enjoyed by the United States. It's less the dynamic of a pendulum and more the dynamic of oxidation. We luxuriate in thinking that these "Western-style democracies" are a norm, when in fact on the planet today the best of them are very few and I think the case could be made that all of them are showing signs of withering principles in the face of threats and greed. So you find people arguing whether this or that style of loss is rational today because of some set of de jure reasons, but in the long scope of history it's simply a question of maintaining liberty or lessening of liberty - is the fruit rotting? Are we falling back towards the illiberal norm and how fast? The reasons of the day are irrelevant. The bargain is known - de-risk at the cost of liberty. The dynamic is known - the powerful seek to consolidate more power. The rest is filler.

TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
I think you're right. I think every country is gravitating towards plutocracy, as a modern form of feudalism. Even China. Whatever words we might use to distinguish one form of government from another are largely irrelevant at this point.
- aksss 5y ago
  One thing Hitchens said that really stood out to me was, "the crucial distinction between systems...was no longer ideological. The main political difference was between those who did, and those who did not, believe that the citizen could—or should—be the property of the state." I recently listened to Rogan's interview with Yeonmi Park and you get a real sense of this in action - how you go from being secured by the state to being the property of the state. Rather sobering.

by aksss 5y ago

TheRealDunkirk 5y ago

I think you're right. I think every country is gravitating towards plutocracy, as a modern form of feudalism. Even China. Whatever words we might use to distinguish one form of government from another are largely irrelevant at this point.

aksss 5y ago
One thing Hitchens said that really stood out to me was, "the crucial distinction between systems...was no longer ideological. The main political difference was between those who did, and those who did not, believe that the citizen could—or should—be the property of the state." I recently listened to Rogan's interview with Yeonmi Park and you get a real sense of this in action - how you go from being secured by the state to being the property of the state. Rather sobering.