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The idea for this article emerged from a twitter conversation with Jonathan Simon. He tweeted that humanity seemed on a path for certain doom and the U.S. was swamped in a kakistocracy, a rule by the worst.
I’m not in any way disposed to dispute the fact that the U.S. is rapidly backsliding (almost eagerly in fact) into fascism.
But humanity and democracy are doing just fine in social democracies like Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Canada. Places with nationalized health care and constitutions that weren’t written in the late 18th century.
Now the U.S. isn’t alone in backsliding, Hungary has backslid all the way into an authoritarian regime with the mere vestigial trappings of democracy. This is clear if for no other reason than the hagiography Fox news lauds upon it constantly.
The question is, why is the U.S. more like Hungary than Sweden and Norway? Why don’t we have nationalized healthcare or a functioning democracy?
Jonathan Simon points to that we have a computerized voting process that is handled by a commercial third party with opaque software and notes the red shift since 2002. Read his book, it’s great.
But I would say that the problem runs deeper. Maybe it was the House UnAmerican activities committee in the 50's? Maybe it was the Powell memo, maybe it was the…
