The Ticking Rage Bomb - Persuasion - 0 views
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The revolt has many faces but one sentiment: a desire to upend power structures deemed irrelevant, corrupt or unrepresentative.
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Our political systems don’t have the tools to grapple with the existential threat of climate change, or to control international mega-corporations, or to cope with capital flight in search of lower taxes and labor costs. Social-media giants have become political forces, competing with the weakening liberal order. Facebook’s policy regarding posts on Covid-19 vaccines is much more important to the success or failure of mass inoculation than any government campaign.
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Amplified by online lies, discontent with the liberal order is mutating into an assault on rational discourse itself. With Covid, it means anti-vaxxers and denialists fighting against science. But it’s much wider than that. The energy of the revolt is harnessed by both old and new opponents of enlightenment values. It’s an uneasy coalition of politicians, charlatans, anarchists, fundamentalists, online communities, totalitarian ideologues, neo-Luddites and conspiracy theorists.
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Rejection of the liberal order is not an anomaly in the history of progress. It is not a bump in the road. It is not a populist wave. This is the new status quo.
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Americans might want to consider the past four years within this global mosaic. It has a specific importance for the United States as a global power. The revolt is about breaking things that are products of the liberal order. Most of these features—neo-liberal economics, contemporary pluralism, Hollywood-styled culture—are considered American.
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n anomaly in the history of progress. It is not a bump in the road. It is not a populist wave. This is the new status quo.
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Without recognizing that the revolt is happening, and that it is aimed at American-made values, social constructs and wrongs, the liberal order cannot be re-imagined.
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The response to Trumpism requires more than a superficial erasure of his legacy or a rehashing of his awfulness. A deep dive into what has really happened to our democracies is crucial—not only for America but for those of us who want to keep democracy alive far from U.S. borders.