Comment by martin-t
13 hours ago
There is no collective "the west", there are people in power and the rest of the population. This distinction is universal.
In China it just so happens that the people in power already have so much of it they don't have to pretend. They can just control the population through overt censorship.
The same people exist in the west! For various historical reasons (more focus on individuality, more privately owned guns guns, idk really), they don't have as much direct power at the moment and have to frame their struggle for more as protecting the children, fighting against terrorists, preventing money laundering, etc.
But this can change very quickly. Look how Hitler rose to power. Look how Trump is doing very similar things in the US. Look what historians are saying about it: https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-...
But the root cause is the same everywhere - a percentage of the population has anti-social personality traits (ASPD and NPD, mainly). They want power over others, they want worship, they think they're above the rules, some (but only some) of them even get pleasure from hurting others.
To play devil's advocate, a leader that dismantles broken systems in order fix an otherwise failing society will look identical to one that siezes power by dismantling those same systems. Indeed, in the latter case, they often believe they're the former.
I'm not American, so I have no horse in the Trump race, but it seems clear to me that a significant chunk of the country elected the guy on the premise that he would do what he's currently doing. Whether or not you think he's Hitler or the savior of America almost certainly depends on your view of how well the system was working beforehand, and whether or not it needed to be torn down and rebuilt.
Which is to say, I don't know that historians will have much of relevance to say until the ink is dry and it's become history.
When I was younger, I thought about a scenario in which I'd be the dictator of a small country trying to make it an actually good place to live. Citizenship would be opt-in and would require an intelligence test. You can tell I was quite arrogant. But even then I decided I needed to set some rules for myself to not get carried away with power and the core rules were basically I wouldn't kill anyone and the position would not be hereditary.
Basically the most difficult and most essential task became _how to structure the system so I can hand off power back to the people and it continues working_.
What I see Trump, Putin and Xi doing is not that - otherwise their core focus would be educating people in history, politics, logical reasoning, and psychology so they can rule themselves without another dictator taking over (by force or manipulation). They would also be making sure laws are based on consistent moral principles and are applied equally to everyone.
> I'm not American
Me neither, yet here we both are. We're in the sphere of influence of one of the major powers.
> elected the guy on the premise that he would do what he's currently doing
Yes, people (in the US) are angry so they elected a privileged rich guy who cosplays as angry. They don't realize somebody like him will never have their best interest in mind - the real solution (IMO?) is to give more political power to the people (potentially weighed by intelligence and knowledge of a given area) and make it more direct (people voting on laws directly if they choose to). Not to elect a dictator with NPD and lots of promises.
> Which is to say, I don't know that historians will have much of relevance to say until the ink is dry and it's become history.
The historian I linked to used 2 definitions of fascism and only Trump's own words to prove that he satisfies both definitions. That is very relevant and a very strong standard of proof from a highly intelligent person with lost of knowledge on the topic. We need more of this and we need to teach the general population to listen to people like this.
I don't know how though.
What I find extremely worrying is that all 3 individuals in the highest positions of power (I refuse to call them leaders) in the 3 major powers are very strongly authoritarian and have clear anti-social personality traits. IMO they all should be disqualified from any position of power for being mentally ill. But how many people have sufficient knowledge to recognize that or even know what it means?
The intelligence and education levels of the general population are perhaps not high enough to get better outcomes than what we have now.
---
Anyway, I looked through your comment history and you seem to have opinions similar to mine, I am happy to see someone reasonable and able to articulate these thought perhaps better than I can.