Autocracy vs. Democracy
When you set out to use the art of graphic design to smear your political opponents as villains, be careful not to make them look too cool. It may have unintended consequences.
Bear with me. This is old news, but it’s related to new news (war over the Ukraine, election time happened in China and is happening in Turkey). At the end of 2021 I read this piece by Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic, which was making the rounds on Twitter, and found time to reread it today. I won’t link to it, but you can go find it pretty easily if you so choose.
This piece is a great demonstration of how sycophants of one form of governance lie about why they do what they do, and malign another form of governance, in order to maintain their grip on power which they feel waning day-by-day. As Curtis Yarvin has didactically repeated, Aristotle categorizes governance in three ways: monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy. That is rule by one, rule by some, and rule by many. Nobody today openly advocates for oligarchy. Some history buffs like me advocate for monarchy. And nearly everybody is possessed by the zeitgeist of democracy.
The whole 4th Branch (titularly inspired by either Thomas Carlyle’s or Edmund Burke’s the 4th Estate) song by Immortal Technique is super quotable, and rings true today as it did twenty years ago when it was released, but this will do for our purposes, “Democracy is just a word when the people are starvin’.” Setting the 3rd World aside for a second, the US has serious issues of crime, obesity, health insurance, housing, food etc. And the US is the pinnacle and sine qua non of democracy in the world?
As the Federal Reserve Bank is neither federal (for it is private), nor a reserve (it does not posses gold, silver, salt or other subjectively-valuable objects you can trade for the numbers they make-up as they crunch away at their computers), nor a bank (normal citizens don’t have checking and savings accounts with them), the US is not a democracy. It is in fact an oligarchy. Partially by design, partially by progress over time. The Electoral College is an example of the design. The administrative state, some of which is the deep state, or the group of unelected bureaucrats that ‘serve’ every administration and functionally create and enforce laws (i.e. CIA, EPA, DHS, FBI, DOE, NSA). During Dark Brandon’s term, it seems they have full control of the show, except the firing of Susan Rice after her demotion. During 45’s term, these de facto rulers lied to their de jure commander-in-chief about the number of US troops in Syria. Remember, foreign policy is one of the only things directly under the purview of a president.
Now, let’s look at our villains.
Maduro of Venezuela, I honestly don’t know enough about, but from what I know is not significantly different than his former employer Chavez, whose last words were a shoutout in his favor. Lukashenko of Belarus, I mostly know from a famous interview he did with the BBC, in which, the journo accused him of shutting down 270 NGOs, and Lukashenko accuses the journo of loosely being a part of a conglomerate that funds NGOs in order to subvert order in Belarus in favor of sowing seeds of discord and chaos. Lukashenko differentiates people who do good for Belarus from people who are sleeper agents, and triples-down on jailing them and liquidating their assets in the future. He has looked toward the West and the East, but as time goes on, it looks like the West is pushing him to the East. Putin of Russia, is a judoka and an Orthodox Christian. I may be biased in assessing him. Whatever you think of the war over the Ukraine, I encourage you to read Konstantin Kisin’s translation of Putin’s own words. Konstantin is a self-described “vocal critic of his war”, and I think war is horrible but the reality of the multipolar world is reasserting itself in a region that has been manipulated by the US administrative state for decades (i.e. 2014 election rigging there, Hunter Biden’s exorbitant Ukrainian salary). Xi of China, recently won an election, is brokering peace-deals abroad, and still praises a predecessor responsible for the deaths of tens of millions and who systematically attacked Xi’s family, so that Xi can hold onto rule by one. Erdogan of Turkey, has an election coming up that has the chattering class eager for a color revolution, has been hosting summits with other regional nations, and provided drones to the government of Ethiopia during the civil war of 2020-2022.
Speaking of death tolls, none of these ‘autocrats’ has accumulated a victim death toll count anywhere near the USFG’s three-branched ‘democracy’ of executive (president), legislative (congress), and judiciary (supreme court). I will never forget Madeleine Albright’s cold justification of half a million lives lost in Iraq. I will never forget Hilary Clinton cackling, “we came, we saw, he died,” in response to the chaos they unleashed upon Libya when Gaddafi was sodomized with a knife, his corpse publicly dragged through the streets, and literal chattel slavery of Black Africans returned to the continent. I will never forget the wars of George Bush Jr. and Barack Obama in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan and God knows where else.
I am a lover of language, like Dr. Richard Benton. This is why I am not easily fooled by language games. Fascist is a word thrown around very loosely nowadays. What is fascism? Who is a fascist? Fascism, as I a realist political scientist understand it, was a historical form of rule by one in Italy that started off left-wing, dominated the economy, and had wide-ranging expansionist ventures. Whatever racism you could accuse Fascist Italy of, and I am the descendant of Ethiopian monarchists who fought them, they were not Nazi Germany, and in fact saved many Jews. Nazism deserves its own category, but I accept them too as fascist. No one else. Franco’s Spain was neither racist nor expansionist. Nor was Salazar’s Portugal.
Fascist is incorrectly used today as a slur of anyone to the right of Bill Weld. This usage falls apart when you read about warrior-poet Ernst Jünger who opposed the Nazi regime of his beloved Germany from the right! Mind blown. Reminds me of when Judge Andrew Napolitano used to praise my former boss Democratic Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich on Fox News for defending the constitution from the left! And Kucinich was known to wave his pocket constitution, from the Cato Institute, whenever he got a chance to be on TV.
Autocrat is like fascist, but slightly less pejorative. Despot seems worse, but we call Jesus our despot in the ge’ez rite Good Friday celebration. Add dictator to the list. These are all words that have gained popularity in the past few centuries in order to malign monarchy and the monarch (not the butterfly nor the cartoon villain from Venture Bros). There has never been a democracy in Ethiopia, and perhaps the democratic force of the parliament under His Imperial Majesty Emperor hayle silasé had more honesty than the Derg, TPLF, or Prosperity Gospel Party.
Let’s breakdown what Applebaum says, and call it a day.
a part of the American left has abandoned the idea that “democracy” belongs at the heart of U.S. foreign policy—not out of greed and cynicism but out of a loss of faith in democracy at home. Convinced that the history of America is the history of genocide, slavery, exploitation, and not much else, they don’t see the value of making common cause with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Nursiman Abdureshid, or any of the other ordinary people around the world forced into politics by their experience of profound injustice. Focused on America’s own bitter problems, they no longer believe America has anything to offer the rest of the world…
Incorrectly identifying the promotion of democracy around the world with “forever wars,” they fail to understand the brutality of the zero-sum competition now unfolding in front of us. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does geopolitics. If America removes the promotion of democracy from its foreign policy, if America ceases to interest itself in the fate of other democracies and democratic movements, then autocracies will quickly take our place as sources of influence, funding, and ideas. If Americans, together with our allies, fail to fight the habits and practices of autocracy abroad, we will encounter them at home; indeed, they are already here.
Being antiwar or noninterventionist is not a facet only of a part of the left. There are plenty of historical and current examples on the right. Jeanette Rankin was a Republican of Montana, and the first woman elected to Congress. I wrote about her as an undergrad, because she courageously opposed US involvement in both world wars. Warren Buffet’s dad Howard Buffet was antiwar. So was Robert A. Taft. So is Ron Paul. So is the recently fired Tucker Carlson, the only such voice in the prestige press.
People abroad are ‘forced into politics’ not by monarchs who encourage them not to have political power, but by oligarchs dressed as democrats who tell them all people are born equal and deserve political power. As one metric, do you think the subway or metro is safer in NYC? Or in Moscow and Shanghai?
The “promotion of democracy around the world” has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents, and lowered the quality of life of countless more. Forever wars is not a slur. It is a fact of US foreign policy, and no empire in history has sustained this forever. The writing is on the wall, as it is written (Daniel 5:25-end).
It is true that nature abhors a vacuum. So, let nature have it. Here her mask slips, and she let’s you, dear reader, know that if the USFG was not actively suppressing nature, monarchies would be springing forth worldwide. You want to contain China? I got the best advice for you. Pull all US troops out of Japan, and tell Japan those troops ain’t coming back. Do as you will. Repeat worldwide with all 900 overseas bases. See what happens.
Here’s the best part. She is saying if you let nature heal by replacing faux democracies (see Afghanistan’s recent organic and indigenous regime change) with monarchies, the US might turn into a monarchy. Would that be so bad? Got any extra Hanovers laying around? Or a Stuart? Or maybe something new and exciting? A Musk? A Thiel? Just not ChatGPT.
For democracy to work, you need many wise people. For oligarchy to work, you need a few wise people. For monarchy to work, you only need one wise person.