The vast majority of people alive today don’t live in liberal democracies where fundamental human rights are respected, elections are real, and the rule of law, at least theoretically, applies to everyone.
Freedom House, in its annual Freedom in the World survey, estimates that only 20% of the world’s population lives in freedom, and even among free nations, democracy is still a baby. Out of 195 UN-recognized countries in the world, only eight — including the United States — have existed as electoral democracies for a century or more. This means that worldwide, most people have suffered under authoritarian rule, or lacked basic political or human rights, for part if not all of their lives.
Biden doesn’t need to become Obama to defeat Trump
Many Americans have no concept of these realities and little understanding of our own remarkable history, in part because of the erosion of public education. As MAGA acolytes rush to crush democratic norms and blow up a system built to ensure liberty, they have no appreciation of the political precarity we’re in, or that once the rule of law is gone, illiberal brutality will fill its void.
And they’ll pay for it with their freedoms as much as any Democrat or liberal.
Ruthless governments are in the majority
Throughout most of the world, bloody conflict and brutal repression are the norm, not the exception. Military juntas, genocide and civil wars predominate in Myanmar, Mali, Sudan and many conflicted regions. Repressive and often barbaric religious fanatics reign in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, sub-Saharan Africa and in many other parts of the world. Some nations — Syria and Sudan, and Haiti and Venezuela closer to home — have entered the dark realm of failed states. Seventh-century brutality and medieval-era misery are baked into life in these countries, with their citizens harboring no real hope for escape.
7 billion people live under ruthless dictators no one is allowed to criticize. Kim Jong un uses prison camps, torture, forced labor and executions to terrorize citizens into submission. Vladimir Putin poisons his political rivals, blows up their planes or has them thrown out of windows. In China, ethnic and religious minorities are subject to torture, political indoctrination and state-forced sterilizations; many political activists live and die in labor camps.
All three of these dictatorships tightly control and prohibit free media and internet access. They forbid unscripted contact with the outside world to prevent citizens from seeing freedom, lest they compare.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (L) visit a construction site of the Angara rocket launch complex on Sept. 13, 2023 in Tsiolkovsky, Russia. (Photo by Contributor/Getty Images)
It’s clear that human evolution, and human progress, have advanced unevenly throughout the world. Plotted on a map, current stages of social evolution would look like a rash with high variability, with plot points ranging from caveman-era brute force to socially advanced, peaceful cultures, and everything in between.
American chaos agents have a freedom death wish
Anyone who has access to the internet or TV can find real-time evidence of what life is like under totalitarianism. Anyone who is not intellectually challenged can see that life in America, even among the poor, is vastly more privileged, comfortable and free than almost anywhere else in the world.
But instead of taking sober stock of how the world really is, and what happens when the rule of law falls and a reign of terror takes its place, a significant percentage of Americans are now embracing a Donald Trump-stamped brand of political vengeance and violence with no clue whatsoever of what they are unleashing.
The naivete is remarkable, and dangerous, and reflects a nearly complete ignorance of both American history and human nature.
It’s almost as if they’ve been listening to a malign charlatan who has hoodwinked them into believing their relatively well-fed, clothed and secure lives are so terrible, and their grievances so severe, that they have no alternative but to subvert the rule of law, dismantle an imperfect but functional government and assume that the charlatan will grant them a better seat at his non-existent table of plenty (despite all evidence to the contrary).
Trump really could stand on Fifth Avenue and shoot someone
Freedom House, in its annual Freedom in the World survey, estimates that only 20% of the world’s population lives in freedom, and even among free nations, democracy is still a baby. Out of 195 UN-recognized countries in the world, only eight — including the United States — have existed as electoral democracies for a century or more. This means that worldwide, most people have suffered under authoritarian rule, or lacked basic political or human rights, for part if not all of their lives.
Biden doesn’t need to become Obama to defeat Trump
Many Americans have no concept of these realities and little understanding of our own remarkable history, in part because of the erosion of public education. As MAGA acolytes rush to crush democratic norms and blow up a system built to ensure liberty, they have no appreciation of the political precarity we’re in, or that once the rule of law is gone, illiberal brutality will fill its void.
And they’ll pay for it with their freedoms as much as any Democrat or liberal.
Ruthless governments are in the majority
Throughout most of the world, bloody conflict and brutal repression are the norm, not the exception. Military juntas, genocide and civil wars predominate in Myanmar, Mali, Sudan and many conflicted regions. Repressive and often barbaric religious fanatics reign in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, sub-Saharan Africa and in many other parts of the world. Some nations — Syria and Sudan, and Haiti and Venezuela closer to home — have entered the dark realm of failed states. Seventh-century brutality and medieval-era misery are baked into life in these countries, with their citizens harboring no real hope for escape.
7 billion people live under ruthless dictators no one is allowed to criticize. Kim Jong un uses prison camps, torture, forced labor and executions to terrorize citizens into submission. Vladimir Putin poisons his political rivals, blows up their planes or has them thrown out of windows. In China, ethnic and religious minorities are subject to torture, political indoctrination and state-forced sterilizations; many political activists live and die in labor camps.
All three of these dictatorships tightly control and prohibit free media and internet access. They forbid unscripted contact with the outside world to prevent citizens from seeing freedom, lest they compare.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (L) visit a construction site of the Angara rocket launch complex on Sept. 13, 2023 in Tsiolkovsky, Russia. (Photo by Contributor/Getty Images)
It’s clear that human evolution, and human progress, have advanced unevenly throughout the world. Plotted on a map, current stages of social evolution would look like a rash with high variability, with plot points ranging from caveman-era brute force to socially advanced, peaceful cultures, and everything in between.
American chaos agents have a freedom death wish
Anyone who has access to the internet or TV can find real-time evidence of what life is like under totalitarianism. Anyone who is not intellectually challenged can see that life in America, even among the poor, is vastly more privileged, comfortable and free than almost anywhere else in the world.
But instead of taking sober stock of how the world really is, and what happens when the rule of law falls and a reign of terror takes its place, a significant percentage of Americans are now embracing a Donald Trump-stamped brand of political vengeance and violence with no clue whatsoever of what they are unleashing.
The naivete is remarkable, and dangerous, and reflects a nearly complete ignorance of both American history and human nature.
It’s almost as if they’ve been listening to a malign charlatan who has hoodwinked them into believing their relatively well-fed, clothed and secure lives are so terrible, and their grievances so severe, that they have no alternative but to subvert the rule of law, dismantle an imperfect but functional government and assume that the charlatan will grant them a better seat at his non-existent table of plenty (despite all evidence to the contrary).
Trump really could stand on Fifth Avenue and shoot someone
