Comment by tim333
7 days ago
You can look at countries that have remained democratically stable for a long time. The UK and Switzerland come to mind. I live in the UK and we have an odd system that I used to consider a bit of a gimmick for the tourists to take photos of but appreciate more these days. Basically the fact that we have a king but with severely curtailed powers delegated to the elected folk makes it very hard for one of them to appoint themselves effectively king, especially as the military all swear allegiance to the actual king (or queen).
It's partly effective because they system wasn't really designed but evolved out of a lot of bloody power battles, going back to at least 1215 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta
I used to think it was silly but if you look at rival European powers they had Russia with Stalin, Hitler in Germany, Napoleon in France, Franco in Spain, Mussolini in Italy etc. The UK is one of the very few which avoided having a dictator.
[Edit - I was kind of talking about the wrong thing - avoiding dictators rather than Trump types]
The UK already had a populist takeover - Brexit.
With Brexit and now this I've been thinking that if someone out there is intentionally trying to dismantle the 5 Eyes they're doing a bang up job of it. Step 1 appeal to their nationalistic or even imperial senses to make sure they piss everyone else off, step 2 stoke some internal grievance politics, step 3 get them to unload an entire AR15 magazine into their leg (to paraphrase Dril).
It’s been known since the 2000s that it is in Russia’s best interests to weaken the UK-EU link. Russia was a major contributor to the Brexit cause, but it seems this topic quickly gets swept under the rug by British parties, red or blue.
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Brexit and Trump are both proxy wars of subversion, with traitorous support from a cadre of extreme reactionaries in both countries spending huge sums on social and trad media to manipulate public opinion in a self-harming direction.
It's very impressive in its way.
Although the winners won't get to enjoy their victory for long, because climate change is going to roll right over everything over the next few decades.
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I guess. I was thinking more of dictatorship rather than populists getting voted in. We may well get Farage voted in some time.
Oliver Cromwell doesn't count?
And all the kings? Henry VIII for a start.
The UK has a monarchy with severely curtailed official powers. But it's a front. The UK is effectively run by the Crown, and the aristocrats have huge land, property, and investment/financial empires, own all the main media outlets, and set policy through their clients in the political system.
The aristocrats are narcissistic, shockingly racist, and often rather stupid - good at tactics like manipulating elections and news cycles, but contemptuous of most of the population, and clueless about how to build an economy based on growth and invention instead of rent-seeking and extraction.