WARNING: DEMOCRACY THREATENED BY ELECTIONS!
Yes, a senior editor for Bloomberg Opinion thinks that people voting is a threat to democracy because there's only a 10% chance things will go well [read: The way he thinks they should go].
I'm having some major déjà vu!
From Tobin over at Bloomberg:
41% of the world's population is having major elections this year. Yay democracy! Right? Not really, what with extremist populist parties — mostly right-wing — on the rise everywhere from the European Union to the Pacific rim.
What's wrong with right-wing parties, Tobin?
Ah, you believe that progressivism is the inevitable and morally right destiny of government and humanity. That's called a political and religious belief.
See, what we do is we take what we believe and we vote for people who best represent those beliefs to turn our beliefs into political action (AKA law).
As a Christian, I can say that I believe "progressivism" is an anti-human, anti-God philosophy that leaves chaos in its wake wherever it goes. But I'm not so stupid as to say MUH DEMOCRACY is at stake because people are freely allowed to believe in progressivism and vote for the candidates of their choice!
It takes a real kind of dumb person to be a senior editor at Bloomberg, I guess.
Karishma Vaswani is especially worried about the latter: "Asia-Pacific is seeing a significant increase in populism and authoritarianism, harking back to an era when strongmen presidents ruled with an iron fist. Hundreds of millions of votes won't necessarily mean more democracy."
Ah, so you're saying pure democracy, or the rule of the majority - also called "mob rule" - might actually be a threat to the principles that undergird wider democratic principles themselves??
Be careful, Tobin: If you continue this thought experiment, you might posit that government needs checks and balances to protect against mob rule - say, like an upper legislative chamber to cool the passion of the lower, or a federalist system that checks national power with local and state power, or an executive who must answer to the legislature and the courts, or an Electoral Congress that tempers the passions of the majority and balances it with the sovereignty of the states.
If you don't watch out, you'll be alt-right James Madison writing Federalist Paper #51, or Alexis de Tocqueville lauding American exceptionalism!
So what are the chances everything turns out alright — somebody other than Trump wins the US presidency; the UK regains its senses; China is dissuaded from invading its "rogue province"; the Middle East finds peace; and dictatorships fall left and right? EEK! "If you allow yourself to dream a little, and an optimistic case emerges. Call it the 10% world," note John and Adrian.
So Trump, the only US president to achieve multinational peace in the Middle East with no new wars, would be the "wrong" choice over Biden, where the Taliban has reconquered Afghanistan, Iran is making big moves, Israel is in the biggest fight of its life, and Houthi rebels are stopping cargo flow through the Suez Canal. Got it.
And Britain was crazy to leave the EU, which is struggling financially and buckling under mass migration as it turns off its nuclear reactors in favor of failed wind projects.
And China is going to be dissuaded from invading Taiwan by an ancient president who has spent over half of his total time in office on vacation - who didn't even know his own defense secretary was bedridden in the hospital for days on end?
But see, if I point these things out, I'm an undesirable and squashing my voice is the only way to save democracy!
More from a separate article (Yes, this op-ed references another op-ed talking about how we're doomed if we don't squash dissent and give leftists total power):
Writing in Foreign Policy, John Kampfner predicts that right-wing populism "is set to sweep the West in 2024," with likely advances in the European Parliament, Austria, Portugal and Germany, where the hard-right Alternative for Germany party is expected to do well.
Back in 2016, the world was a remarkably peaceful place, with the war against terrorism winding down and China largely seen as a trading partner. Since then the cold war between Washington and Beijing has escalated, even as the West must now contend with two red-hot wars.
"Peaceful," how?? Obama and friends couldn't find a country where they didn't want to drone-bomb someone. He completely destabilized countries like Libya, which is a wasteland with open-air slave markets these days. China was seen as a trading partner instead of a foe because the "progressives" in the media, academia, and Congress had spent 2 decades pocketing commie money to enrich themselves while selling a lie about Beijing's neutrality to the world.
The world was not peaceful before Trump (notice that he is their dividing line), nor did Trump break it. It's just that a lot of the violence which was once swept under the rug is out in the open for all to see, and the elites can't hide it anymore.
Yet once in power, the Trump administration was characterized not just by extremism (including an assault by Trump supporters on the Capitol) but also by a level of incompetence that created a Keystone Cops atmosphere in the White House.
Yeah, I think we're dealing with some BlueAnon conspiracy types here. But no biggie, it's not like they run the show at Bloomberg or anything!
The Israeli assault on Gaza has split the democratic world
Remind me who the extremists are again?
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