Authority Conundrum · 8:57pm Nov 28th, 2020
So... Events of the past year have had me do a lot of political philosophy thinking with tangents into sociology, political science, history, and probably many more.
Anyways, I'm posting this because I know a few of you are going to disagree with some of what I've got to say (but certainly not all). I'm not trying to change your mind. I'm hoping for an outside view. I'm honestly thinking I might be coming at some of these issues wrong but not sure which or how.
Let me start off with a few points that are non-negotiable.
Racism is bad. Black lives matter. Authority requires accountability. Everybody should have access to adequate food, shelter, and medical care without burden. People should be free to behave as they desire so long as it does not impose on others ability to do the same.
The issue comes in when I start thinking about enforcement. It is fantastically difficult to get people to behave. I said to a friend once that the best form of government was a benevolent dictatorship. The problem, of course, is what actually constitutes benevolence and how do you keep from letting that authority creep into oppression. It is frightfully easy to go from 'that is bad for society' right into 'that is bad for my preferred group'.
Does that make me a fascist? The concept of a government with broad authority to enforce its ideals is a very fascist thing. It's just that my ideals are directly opposed to traditional fascist views. I know a few anarcho-communists. I align very closely with their goals of peace and freedom, but find myself diametrically opposed to the implementation. But fascism isn't what's being enforced, it's the enforcement itself.
That brings us to accountability. The far right movement would have an authoritarian government enforcing strict white-supremacist ideals. The far left would abolish authority in pursuit of freedom and equality. I'm honestly concerned that if the movement had been an authoritarian government enforcing freedom and equality, I wouldn't have looked too hard at the potential downsides before jumping on that particular wagon. The idea is amazingly attractive. Would I have been nearly so concerned about accountability if it were Nazis getting dragged off by armed men in unmarked vans? Would you? How does that make us any better if the answer is 'no'?
This is the unending problem of balance. Almost any system works well when it balances internal opposing philosophies. "Checks and Balances" is not just a random phrase that sounded good to the US founding fathers, they saw what the British government went through during wild swings of power and the inevitable purges that followed, and put a great deal of effort into designing a form of government that was resistant to that sort of thing. It's a shame that, in the long run, they failed.
The main problem is that almost all people don't want ballance. They want to "win" regardless of eventual consequences, so the tendency to strive for Authoritarianism (in their favor, of course) is strong. So, after nearly 250 years of trying to subvert any sort of balance or fairness, the American political system is now a purely partisan battlefield, dominated by two entrenched oligarchal tribes.
In normal times I would prefer a balance between Authoritarian control and absolute freedom, but nowadays it seems like any tool for control put into the hands of the government (for our own good, of course) is nearly instantly turned into a tool of oppression. As we have seen starkly illustrated this year, our system of laws does not apply to the oligarchs and those they favor. Neither does it provide much in the way of protection to any of the de facto underclass. When oppressed minorities regularly have to rely on cellphone cameras and public outrage for any sort of justice, something is very definitely wrong.
Historically speaking, in prosperous, peaceful times, authority tends to weigh heavily only on those who act against the common good, but in times of scarcity and struggle, that same power is used only to secure the wealth and power of the ruling class by any means. The most obvious solution to the horrible situation we find ourselves in is to strive for a society that is fair, just, and protective of all its citizens. But too many people see fairness and justice for all as loss for themselves, because they don't want equality, they want to be superior (in law, if not in fact). That is a huge hurdle to overcome.
It is entirely possible that a high degree of Authoritarianism is needed to support and defend our incredibly fragile technological civilization. But such control would need to be used wisely and appropriately, and there's no historical evidence to support the assumption that such a course of action is likely.
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Libertarian socialist gang gang https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=bQjCAgAAQBAJ&gl=us&hl=en-US&source=productsearch&utm_source=HA_Desktop_US&utm_medium=SEM&utm_campaign=PLA&pcampaignid=MKT-FDR-na-us-1000189-Med-pla-bk-Evergreen-Jul1520-PLA-eBooks_Political_Science&gclid=Cj0KCQiAh4j-BRCsARIsAGeV12BhJXfqx5l4a2dE2j3nXbXuhWoGumuauhX6mAd9abfVlDhd8uV_tp8aAmmtEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
Having the right leader in a position of great power can have results far better than any constrained democracy held back by party politics and restrictive laws and procedures. Not having to deal with getting approval from corrupt and fickle politicians is a great boon.
But therein lies the problem. Every system which has such power available to its leader inevitably faces the issues of finding a new leader eventually, with no way to ensure that leader will have good things in mind. And there are far more bad and mediocre leaders out there than grand reformers who can transform a country for the better. Democracy ultimately does more to prevent evil, instead of actively guaranteeing good. This is important because it's far easier to fuck something up than to fix it.
Governments that enable extreme power inevitably run into issues of stability and succession. Multiple times we've seen that a great leader can usher in a golden age of power, peace, and success for their country, but soon enough they die and everything good they did is left to wither away since there's no real way to choose even halfway decent leaders under a system with that enables great executive power. We've seen it happen in the monarchies of France, Russia, and others. In more contemporary terms, we see it happen in dictatorships in places like Yugoslavia. Tito protected his country from both the USSR and USA, and kept things safe, stable, and productive far better than he had any right to. (He had his problems though, do not get me wrong) But as soon as he died, things immediately went downhill and eventually ended with the entire country violently splitting apart in a brutal civil war that seemed unthinkable just a decade earlier.
I know how you feel. If you gave me ultimate power as President, I would enact a huge array of sweeping changes in this country that would be impossible to do without the full support of both chambers of Congress. But afterward, I would undo things to make sure no one could achieve ultimate power again. That's because I know that if you give the President such power, you're going to end up with someone utterly horrible using that very same power to enact oppression and bring the country down.
Sustainability is very important for a governmental system. Authoritarianism is so dangerous because bad or misguided people will end up in the reigns of power whether sooner or later, and when they do, there needs to be a way to get rid of them and constrain them. To limit the damage they can do. Having the ability to enact broad change can be useful in the right hands, don't get me wrong, but it has so many dangers and ethical problems. One of which is accountability as well.
Generally, we should just let people live and act as they wish without the government heavy-handedly getting in the way. But ensuring freedom and equality is a problem that has as much to do with structure as it does with the method of enforcement. Things like police abuses are not a result of people being bad, it is a result of the system itself being systematically flawed. People's behavior in a democracy is shaped and changed by the institutions around them. In a system like ours, many of the problems we have stem from the fact that our political system causes apathy and disengagement in people thanks to the very way it is structured!
Having good institutions and a sensible political system is a far safer and ethical way of pursuing freedom and trying to force through changes by expanding governmental power. The issues in our country have to be solved from the ground up, not from the top down.
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I am sometimes reminded of the Ancien regime when I look at America nowadays. Our political system is old and decrepit, on the verge of failing under its own weight. Measures that may have been democratic for the early 19th century are laughably outdated in modern times and now they actively hold us back without a good way to change them. The compromises made in a hurry back in the 1780's are having dire consequences now. It may have served well at one point, but it's worked for so long in large part thanks to unspoken rules, compromises and precedents that aren't actually codified in law.
And now, the GOP are bucking all those good-faith behaviors to secure more and more power. Because after all, we weren't wise enough to foresee that these unspoken rules would be disregarded and tested to their limit by a party looking to consolidate its own power, forever.
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http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23428
The book is in the public domain. You shouldn't have to pay for it. And the idea of paying for a public domain book about anarchist communism seems darkly ironic.
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Oh yeah. What's the old saying? "The best form of government is an absolute dictatorship, and the worst form of government is an absolute dictatorship." Some crazy old Italian dudes tried to work around that by electing dictators. Didn't work out so well.
Yeah... a "gentleman's agreement" is valid only as long as both parties act like gentlemen... and it's politics we're talking about here. This is why compromise can seem so attractive, but end up being so pernicious. Particularly if one side sees the compromise as a middle ground, but the other takes it as the new normal. That means the next compromise can only go one way. True, good faith compromise is vanishingly rare.
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Neat! Thanks!
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https://m.imgur.com/gallery/u3CxaTR
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Lol cops have been treating them with kid gloves
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Yes, this is the struggle right now.
Let's be real, the Proud Boys have been taking advantage of police support and apathy, so it feels even better. Even now the cops are being awfully light on them.