Comment by Barrin92
5 days ago
seniority as in rank, and respect for elders as in filial piety in East Asia are two very different things. Autocracy relies on execution of arbitrary power, and the latter places a limit on it. It's why after the revolution in China, Confucianism is the first thing they tried to get rid of. I stayed in Beijing during the covid lockdowns and there was one group of people that could do what they wanted "dancing grannies", old people who meet up to dance in public parks because messing with them was seen as too offensive.
Autocracy is usually driven by the opposite, unrestricted mobilization of the youth. In particular true in the West today. Bukele is not exactly a pensioner, and if the US has displayed one thing in recent times it isn't respect for the age of their leaders to put it mildly.
Yes, but traditionalist power structures are still authoritarian. Insamuch as they oppose autocracies, it is by virtue of having got there first and not yielding power to the new tyrant[0]. The problem is not the age of the ruler, or the legitimacy of the power structure, but the resulting distribution of power.
Insamuch as Confucian filial piety can be a check on upstart autocrats, that's useful, but not sufficient. There's nothing stopping the Maoist autocracy from embracing Confucius[1]; Mao just didn't want to for ideological reasons. Autocrats are ultimately building a coalition of scam victims that are all locked in the same room with one another. They don't care who's in the room as long as they won't unify against the leader.
In the US, we have Trump, the oldest US President in history, with, to put it mildly, "autocratic ambitions". His coalition includes old people, who vote early and often, and want to impose the social order of the 1950s upon the country. Almost[2] nothing about them suggests that they're going to meaningfully check Trump's power anytime soon; if anything, they're the only[3] faction of the Trump coalition that's gotten anything out of the deal.
[0] If the autocrat wins, they will eventually just become the new traditionalist power structure. Every pirate wants to become an admiral.
[1] Mussolini recognized the Vatican as a sovereign state purely to get the Pope to shut up about him.
[2] Insert clip of some old guy vandalizing a Cybertruck here.
[3] No, I don't count pardoning Ross Ulbricht. The Libertarian Party sold their soul for a donut.