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May 13, 2021Liked by Noah Smith

Wizard Noah,

There is no need for alarm about the rising Darkness. The weakness of the old order shows it’s time is passed and a new order must rise. Surely you can see that we must join the winning side. There will be a high position for one as wise as yourself in the service of the Darkness. Reduced inequality, YIMBY development, bunnies (!), all you could achieve if only you put aside this foolish notion of democracy and join those with the will to lead.

Yours with utmost sincerity,

Saruman at Isengard

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You are absolutely right that the drift towards authoritarianism is driven by fear. This is true not just globally but domestically. We on the left have to ask ourselves, why is the right living in such fear? Just because it's unwarranted doesn't mean it isn't real. They fear a drift from "Christian values." They fear terrorism. They fear socialism (which also drifts towards authoritarianism in a plethora of historical examples). They fear a society without "law and order." These might sound like racist dog-whistles to us. But if you can set aside the judgement, you can see why a strongman like Trump appeals to them; they are willing to abandon "democracy" for safety. "Democracy" is not protecting what they view as the source of their safety because their political opponents seem antagonistic towards it. I do not think they are correct in this assessment. But I do think the burden falls on the left to also look in the mirror and see what we're doing to exacerbate fears, and what we might be able to do to ameliorate them (in spite of Fox News). Bipartisan compromise on police reform (not abolition), return to liberal values of tolerance for all (including non-authoritarian conservatives, Christians, annoying people, and combinations thereof), efforts at understanding the sources of our different worldviews and finding common ground. Make the relief of collaboration more appealing than the terror of our respective partisan echo chambers. It might sound idealistic but that's the only way to fight "the darkness" (imho).

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I think this is a good post.

I may add a few comments:

-I recently read F Fukuyama. Before you jump and say "no he was wrong, there is no end to history blablabla", hear this: Fukuyama already predicted that liberal democracy will be questioned in the future. Francis is still very relevant today. Check this for instance:

https://unherd.com/2020/09/why-fukuyama-was-right-all-along/

"Where Huntington and Kaplan predicted the threat to the Western liberal order coming from outside its cultural borders, Fukuyama discerned the weak points from within, predicting, with startling accuracy, our current moment."

-I wont be original in saying that the main problem in the US is polarization and the fact that common rules are not accepted enough. I am French, we have the same problems in France where last elections was questioned and I fear too much that our next elections is going to be ugly.

- I recently read Deaton "death of despair" and I think it is an important book that explains why the economic system in the US is not working. Too many people left behind and the damages are quite impressive. I think I understand better the nihilism under Trump after reading this book. Honestly you should read it. You already said it on twitter, the US will not be a democracy without a "reasonable" right wing party.

Deaton provides several solutions more original than just "less inequalities". I recommand it.

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Excellent post! You have a remarkable ability to so clearly distill ideas that I've sort of vaguely been thinking about for a while. I'm definitely in the camp of "sorry I don't have an opinion on that, Noah hasn't made a blog about that yet".

I've been thinking about what exactly will cause the GOP to rethink itself, and it might be them losing the 2022 midterms (which most people seem to think they will not do), so that's worrying. But we don't need to worry, we need to fix the problem. Like you said, that's what got us through all the other times.

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Noah, please, lead with the solution. Democracy as an ideal is a beautiful motif, and a motivational one. By describing the problem in so much detail, we contribute directly to the sense of fear and foreboding. And that fear becomes addictive— we crave the bad news. My as of you as a widely read columnist is to stop enabling the doom scroll. I want to hear your vision for a better world— I’ve seen enough of recent decadence

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May 13, 2021Liked by Noah Smith

suppression of speech and religion; suppression of speech by religion - don't forget

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A well-written post, identifying and describing an undoubtedly challenging situation - and yet I find myself disagreeing with certain aspects and assumptions.

E. H. Carr argues that the dividing line in international politics is not between good and evil, but between those countries supporting the status quo (currently, the US and its allies) and those opposed to it (currently, China and Russia). When the countries opposed to the status quo are stronger than those supporting it, as in the 1930s - when Germany, the Soviet Union, and Japan were facing off against France and Britain - we can expect trouble.

George F. Kennan observes that for geographic reasons, the security of the US, like that of the UK, depends on the balance of power in Europe and Asia. The enduring interest of the UK - going back to the days of Henry VIII - lies in maintaining a stable balance between powers on the continent, so that one of them doesn't dominate the rest and then threaten the UK. The same is true of the US. This is why it was in the interest of the US to oppose Germany under Wilhelm II and Hitler, and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

During the early Cold War, with the UK, Europe, and Japan in a desperate state, the US accounted for 50% of the world economy. Thus the US had to step up to oppose the Soviet Union. But during the course of the Cold War, as Europe and Japan recovered, the US share of the world economy declined, while it continued to carry a disproportionate share of military spending.

After the Cold War ended, Kennan argued (in "Around the Cragged Hill") that the US needed to turn its attention to serious internal challenges, and pare down its security interests abroad to a bare minimum - basically NATO and Japan. After the 2008 financial crisis and the Trump interregnum, this line of reasoning seems stronger than ever.

This suggests that the US ought to pursue multilateralism and burden-sharing abroad (Kennan calls it a "fellow worker in the vineyard" approach), while at home it's critical for Democrats to focus on winning elections until the Republican Party reforms itself. (David Shor and Matthew Yglesias argue that Democrats need to appeal to cross-pressured swing voters, who may agree with Democrats on health care but agree with Republicans on immigration.)

In this view, the key challenge facing the US isn't the rise of global illiberalism, but establishing a more sustainable balance between its goals and its capabilities, and encouraging its allies to take on more of the burden of maintaining the status quo.

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Great piece, I'm forwarding it widely.

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May 13, 2021Liked by Noah Smith

I enjoyed this piece and would enjoy more like them. I have no idea what the reason for increased interest in authoritarianism might be (I think yours is good reasoning) but one thing I did notice is that my friend has gone full MAGA and he's too young and ignorant to even realize what it is that he's endorsing. That's what scares me the most is the possibility that he has no idea what he's doing in relation to history.

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Not a single mention of political polarization driving authoritarianism in America? It's all the fault of trump and republicans?

Don't get me wrong, those people are awful. But did the republicans make Obama imprison a record number of journalists?

> https://freedom.press/news/obama-used-espionage-act-put-record-number-reporters-sources-jail-and-trump-could-be-even-worse/

I watched the democrats howl when bush signed the patriot act, and rightfully so. Then, Obama goes on to sign it, and the democrats say nothing. This descent into authoritarianism is a bipartisan dance. Both of these factions feed off each other.

Yes. fear, plays a role here. but i don't think that's sufficient to explain what's' going on. A better thesis is the one advanced by Martin Gurri:

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22301496/martin-gurri-the-revolt-of-the-public-global-democracy

The internet has made it increasingly impossible for governments to control the beliefs of their people. This is probably a necessary transition to _true_ democracy. What we've had has been something a system of rule by two warring factions of elites, who persuaded the masses to go along with them because the elites controlled all channels of information dissemination.

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May 13, 2021Liked by Noah Smith

Yes, you should start writing capital D Democracy.

Signed,

A Liberal Democrat

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This is hard to respond to without going long. I completely agree that we are back in a 1930s-like world, but I disagree in many ways on how we got here.

On the global situation, your views seem essentially anti-interventionist Democrat, close to Obama. The core theme of this view is that progressive democratic countries should use soft power by being models of success, respecting all other nations however they are ruled, using economic power to restrain regimes that attack US interests or abuse their own people, and avoiding inevitably counterproductive interventions in other countries, except perhaps in rare cases on anti-genocide grounds. From this view the second Iraq war was entirely wrong, even an evil perpetrated by Americans on Iraqis. But that's not how most Iraqis see it. Generally they hate the US heavy-handed invasion but appreciate the removal of Saddam Hussein and the establishment of democracy.

The second Iraq war was very much an attempt to replay the first. The first was in the context of the disintegration of the Russian ("Warsaw pact") empire, which at the time was so weak the US was actually trying to help keep what was left of it (the USSR) together out of fear of an authoritarian coup in Moscow. Aside from overturning Iraq's attempt to annex Kuwait, the first Iraq war a demonstration of US military power, driving home the point on everyone's nightly newscasts that the US was now the sole superpower. The coup came in Russia anyway, but an overwhelming majority of communist and newly ex-communist elites stood it down. Francis Fukuyama wrote the End of History.

The second Iraq war was meant to do the same. Besides an even more overwhelming invasion and an even more thorough destruction of Iraq's military abilities, the goal was set beyond just regime change to destroying the Baathist state and building a new one. Bush and his team assumed Iraqis would embrace the project and their neighbors would be too intimidated to interfere, and a US-allied democracy would develop, as in Japan and Germany after WWII. Iraqis did embrace democracy but most of them wanted to ally with Iran, while Iran and Syria interfered very actively, with covert support from Russia, where authoritarian imperialists had returned to power. And meanwhile the invasion of Afghanistan turned out similarly. The US was bogged down in two occupations that were at the same time unsustainable and disastrous to abandon. Instead of projecting an image of US indomitability as intended, the second Iraq war and occupation projected an image of aloof incompetence and American decline.

The next big step into darkness was the subprime collapse, when America's economic might was brought down by its own tawdry corruption. Vladimir Putin seized the moment to invade Georgia, a US ally that was trying to join Nato. The US response confirmed its weak position: send a European to negotiate a truce in which Russia's grab of an expanded area of Georgian territory was unchallenged and ethnic cleansing of Georgians from that area was hardly mentioned.

For a brief moment America seemed hopeful when it elected Obama by a wide margin and there seemed to be a clear majority ready to confront and reject the racism that divides and undermines us. And then that seeming consensus gradually unraveled. The racist minority became hostile to the state and more prone to conspiracy theory. Rupert Murdoch, who had built a global media empire on exploiting the least educated and most reactionary, seized the moment to amp up the vitriol and rally the resentful to Fox News. Less educated Americans, especially those living outside major cities and their suburbs, had seen their relative status in the world plummet since the 1950s. It was easy to turn them against the centrist establishment consensus that had long favored and defended globalization and free trade. The Republican party lurched rightward.

In truth globalization is driven by the dictatorship of the consumer and no political force seriously wants to stop or reverse it. But there was a big problem with the old consensus pro-globalization ideology: it embraced a myopic notion that liberal trade inevitably fostered liberal politics. Instead China grew economically and militarily powerful and at the same time more strictly authoritarian, using its advancing technology to more aggressively control and monitor its people. Xi Ping has consolidated his personal power, ramped up investment in weapons, and adopted a much more aggressive foreign policy. We now have Russia and China successively grabbing territories, testing the West's response, finding it quite mild, and preparing for the next. So far two parts of Ukraine, Hong Kong, various islands and reefs around the South China Sea. Putin has limited power and must choose small battles cautiously, but Xi has capacity to massively ramp up his aggression and he's deadly serious about taking Taiwan. Japan, Korea and all of Asia are vulnerable.

Fear and hatred of immigrants and different-looking people is a big factor here in the US and in western Europe turning former conservatives into fascists. But there's increasing parochialism on both ends of an increasingly polarized political spectrum. And a growing sense that the human species isn't up to meeting the challenge of anthropogenic climate change anyway, so why bother confronting aggressive imperialists on the other side of the world?

Very 1930s and very dark indeed.

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I don’t understand the part about America becoming more illiberal. Who hasn’t gotten more liberty in the past 30 years? Women, blacks, gays, ect... they all have more liberty now. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect, but we are clearly moving in the right direction.

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May 13, 2021Liked by Noah Smith

Well done

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I'm surprised you didn't mention technology as a cause of rising authoritarianism. The way we consume "news" has changed radically over the past decade in terms of quantity (↑↑), accuracy (↓↓) and bias (God help us!). FB and Twitter algorithms steer us to content that stimulates like/share reactions so we are flooded with stories that trigger limbic system responses - fear, anger, etc. A few years under those conditions and we're a bunch of tribal zombies with the higher reasoning of chimpanzees. My hypothesis: tweak the algorithms to signal boost love and understanding and the authoritarian trend will reverse. Probably not good for ad revenues though.

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This is very worrying. I wonder if it is worth capitulating to Republican demands (for example, only allow in-person voting with exceptions for military, expats living abroad, and disabled; only allow voters with IDs, all votes need to be counted by hand so no hacking is possible). Doing this May make elections seem fair to Repubs. The evidence that these laws would disenfranchise democratic voters is extremely weak. But even if the evidence was strong, it might be worth disenfranchising a few hundred votes to save democracy.

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