Last edited Fri Apr 8, 2022, 03:00 PM - Edit history (14)
the capacity to have faith in the human construct of monarchy and then faith in the human construct of the nation state and really believe in that and go abroad and live a life full of risk to administer (abuse and rob) colonies. It takes a leap of faith. Go somewhere and make your fortune. And then they (USA and France) jumped into the human construct called democracy. That took Americans more faith than the Chinese have for democracy. They just can't jump.
It is the concrete fear of retaliation and punishment that floats the boat called China instead. The downside of faith is cults, populists, and demagogues. You don't need faith in an autocracy. You just need trust that you will be sorry if you don't do what you are told. If you have faith people too use that, give them cults and religion, and control those, and you have a role for them in the autocracy. Different farm animals have different pens right Trump?. Or decide, like china, to destroy the least favourite religions or the most threatening to autocracy if people have too much faith.
Communism we know only ran as totalitarian states after the first bit of equity. There was a time in our distant past when we shared everything, so it was easier to believe in when you looked around and the poor were not being taken care of at the turn of the 20th Century. Many people no longer believed in the construct of monarchy. It was a failure. Tear it down. Tear up wealth. But communist countries almost instantly became death traps. There was no innovation because, like you said, that requires competition. They saw the construct of communism as a failure too, and went capitalist in two or three generations (in my grandmother's lifetime). But neither China or Russia ended up democratic.
Just a lens you can look at history with. You can see the GOP, like de santis, pounding away at people who believe in democracy every day. It is a scary religion to them. It needs to be destroyed. Why Thiel called Warren Buffet a sociopathic Grandpa. The faith in democracy people have and support is a danger to them. They'll go after our (small "d" ) democratic totems one by one and smash them, taking apart the infrastructure of the liberal order, all the while trying to make the voter feel vulnerable so they vote Republican.
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