The Shortcomings of Democracy
by John Lawrence
What other countries are concerned about is the specter of Trump coming back in 2024 and reversing everything Biden will have accomplished specially with regard to climate change. An American government no matter how well intentioned and competent cannot maintain itself in power for a long time. It can be replaced by a malevolent and incompetent one in relatively short order. It almost makes you look on other forms of government with envy. Angela Merkel was in power in Germany for 16 years. She was a steady hand on the tiller. Trump tried to rip the tiller out of the ship and he may come back to try and do it again. It's not only China which has long term stability, but China has been pretty consistent in delivering for the Chinese people over a fairly long term. Their government is stable no matter what else you want to say about it. They also promote the best and the brightest to high positions in the government. Trump put in place agency heads that were dedicated to destroying the agencies they were in charge of and many were incompetent political cronies to boot.
Coherence, cohesion - these are values that do not apply to the American people. The American people are freedom fanatics, freedomaholics. In most other advanced societies the value of freedom is balanced by the value of social responsibility. When freedom is way out of proportion with other values, you have a society that can come apart at the seams which is what is happening to American society. The American system engenders a two party system by its very nature, and almost inevitably it develops into two parties which are diametrically opposed to each other. A parliamentary system of government gives rise to many parties, and that is less likely to devolve into a major societal divisions.
The other thing that contributes to the divisiveness of American society is the American predilection for guns. The supposed right of every American to own and use a gun creates a situation where angry people with a penchant for freedom are more likely to use their gun if they don't get their own way. If they sense that some people are on the other side of a divided society, they feel justified and entitled to use their guns to demand that society conform to their values much in the some way that a divided society resorted eventually to a civil war in America's past. Right now militias and paramilitary units roam the streets similar to the situation in Germany that predated World War II. If a society can't control or prohibit the private accumulation of guns, if it even encourages it, nothing good can come from this situation. All the preliminary conditions are in play for eventual uprisings which, if organized and controlled from above, can have disastrous consequences for civil society.
