While countless crises are lurking around the corner—and can be extremely catastrophic on the financial, economic, social, ecological fronts—meanwhile in China, Russia, Turkey and India, undemocratic powers are implementing reforms to face these crises, but also rejecting human rights. And similar regimes are emerging everywhere, from Brazil to Hungary, the oldest democracies in the world are increasingly using their liberties for deleterious ends:
In the United States, the debate on the future of the country’s most important institution, the Supreme Court, has been reduced to a live broadcast on television lasting more than eight hours, which had been followed by tens of millions of people, about the sexual behaviours of students on university campuses.
In Britain, the debate over Brexit, which is a determinant of the country’s long-term future, has been hijacked by a summary lies, from which the entire political class no longer knows how to extricate themselves.
In Italy, an improbable coalition of extremists are betting on the fear of their European partners to find the money that they will need to fund electoral promises that are full of contradictions.
In Germany, the government is totally paralyzed because it is being blackmailed by its most extreme allies, and thus surviving day by day, perhaps for a little more time.
In France, an increasingly fragmented political class seems to want to debate only about low-stake matters or false problems, such as the so-called threat of invasion of the country by new migrants, while their real number is lower than ever.
In all these countries, media and politicians alike, thrive on such derisory scandals and implicate themselves in this political gamesmanship and short phrases, without considering that they are digging their own graves. Worse yet, many intellectuals believe that they, too, must begin to curse, insult and scream in order to have a place under the sun.
Reality will eventually exact its vengeance. When one or more of the innumerable lurking crises unfold; when the climate situation becomes untenable; when the concentration of wealth and power becomes unbearable and when one or more dictatorships tend to have greater economic growth and power than democracies, the people of the West will revolt against the food that is imposed on them, the jobs that are allocated to them and the schools assigned to them; they will reject democracy, as well as those who represent it, and will throw themselves in the arms of those who promise them order, stability, equality and security ; whether they say that they lean left or right, both are rogued.
However, the dictatorships will not do better than the worst democracies; it will serve the interests of new masters; and it will hide its own turpitudes as much as possible: it is sufficient to be convinced by this, just look. at how the oldest non-democratic government in the world, the Catholic Church, has managed to hide the horrors committed by its members for centuries. We cannot hope for better from future dictatorships.
Democracy remains, however, the best system, provided we do not reduce it to horseback hunting with hounds, and on the condition that serious topics are discussed seriously and that we organize ourselves to hear the voices of future generations. We are still very far away from that.
j@attali.com