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As this dystopian election campaign has unfolded, my mind keeps being tugged by a passage in Platos Republic. It has unsettled even surprised me from the moment I first read it in graduate school. The passage is from the part of the dialogue where Socrates and his friends are talking about the nature of different political systems, how they change over time, and how one can slowly evolve into another. And Socrates seemed pretty clear on one sobering point: that tyranny is probably established out of no other regime than democracy. What did Plato mean by that? Democracy, for him, I discovered, was a political system of maximal freedom and equality, where every lifestyle is allowed and public offices are filled by a lottery. And the longer a democracy lasted, Plato argued, the more democratic it would become. Its freedoms would multiply; its equality spread. Deference to any sort of authority would wither; tolerance of any kind of inequality would come under intense threat; and multiculturalism and sexual freedom would create a city or a country like a many-colored cloak decorated in all hues.
This rainbow-flag polity, Plato argues, is, for many people, the fairest of regimes. The freedom in that democracy has to be experienced to be believed with shame and privilege in particular emerging over time as anathema. But it is inherently unstable. As the authority of elites fades, as Establishment values cede to popular ones, views and identities can become so magnificently diverse as to be mutually uncomprehending. And when all the barriers to equality, formal and informal, have been removed; when everyone is equal; when elites are despised and full license is established to do whatever one wants, you arrive at what might be called late-stage democracy. There is no kowtowing to authority here, let alone to political experience or expertise.
America Has Never Been So Ripe for Tyranny -- NYMag - nymag.com
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)Plato will never go out of style, no matter how many modern pundits we mistakenly adore.
pbmus
(12,422 posts)demon in basement
(72 posts)People who don't know SHIT, acting like they do!
Jean-Jacques Roussea
(475 posts)So I'd distance myself from Plato
http://jezebel.com/putting-the-neo-back-in-neo-nazi-1789743928
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Jean-Jacques Roussea
(475 posts)MFM008
(19,803 posts)Tyrants big and small exploit democracy for their own ends.
Kablooie
(18,619 posts)It's very scary.
The demagogue is backed up by a majority of mindless toadies in Congress who are too drunk with the possibility of power to see the danger they are in.
Trump will also soon install one of those toadies in the Supreme court and it's likely he will replace enough judges to collapse the protection that SCOTUS gives us too.
All Trump has to do is wait for a major terrorist attack and declare martial law. Once that happens Trump the true dictator will emerge and America's democracy fall as it did for Hitler's Germany after the Reichstag fire.
The one advantage we have is that most Americans know that Trump will not act for the good of the country. He will only act for the glorification of Trump.
When Hitler took power most Germans and other world leaders were not aware of Hitler's dangerous proclivities. Hitler had made a reasoned declaration of peace to the world and most people believed him.
Let's hope that even his toadies realize that allowing this man to grab unconstrained power will not help themselves but instead will signing America's death warrant.
Jean-Jacques Roussea
(475 posts)He's being quiet, too quiet...
Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)In fact, I bet if you polled Americans they would say they actually believe there has been an actual case of zombies at some time in history.
(Besides the guy who's got a birthday this month.)
(Only he really doesn't.)
Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)It sells T shirts though. Seriously though I think there is some truth behind Caribbean zombies, but they're not undead just drugged out and comatose. This film is really good, based on "true" events.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)You have to fill its mouth with salt and sew the lips together.
(Per an episode of "The Night Stalker" which researched that stuff.)
Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)They showed a few reruns back in the early 90s. I'd not seen them before, Kolckak is a really good character.
I don't remember one about zombies though, maybe there's some I haven't seen.