Rand0

Karma: 155

Rand0 13 Jun 2023 19:06 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Ege Erdil’s comment on: The Dictatorship Problem
Typo, fixed. I believe I got his age right.

Rand0 11 Jun 2023 22:11 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Kenny’s comment on: Lies Told To Children
Yes, Conservative Judaism is a distinct movement from Reform and Orthodox Judaism, generally regarded as existing in between the two in terms of theology and practice.
I don’t quite understand the second question: Most Orthodox Jews never see through the lies, so they don’t have that formative experience. But for those who do leave their faith, it tends to be an important part of their identity.
(Note that I don’t really know what percentage of Conservative and Reform Jews believe in God. I do think that the two movements have converged in beliefs and practices to a considerable degree over the last 50 years. Also, this is a very late response: I don’t comment here often.)

Rand0 11 Jun 2023 18:28 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: alyssavance’s comment on: The Dictatorship Problem
I wondered if there was a selection effect in your hybrid → dictatorship statement (we don’t talk much about people who lost power). But if I look at the hybrid regimes in 2012 here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index), I do see a fair percentage that are listed as authoritarian in 2022. By contrast, only three countries (Singapore, Sri Lanka and Albania) have moved to Flawed Democracy. (2012 is, of course, a major outlier for Egypt, Libya and some other Arab Spring countries, but that doesn’t affect the general trend much.)

Rand0 11 Jun 2023 18:28 UTC
5 points
2
in reply to: alyssavance’s comment on: The Dictatorship Problem
It’s worth looking at what happened in Ekrem İmamoğlu’s case, which you’ve linked to. As of today, Ekrem İmamoğlu is the sitting mayor of Istanbul, awaiting pending multiple courts upholding the verdict in his trial. İmamoğlu endorsed the head of his party, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, as a presidential candidate, with İmamoğlu to serve as vice-president (though ultimately there were 7 (!) people set to serve as VP, so I don’t know how meaningful this is). Kılıçdaroğlu won 48% of the vote in the presidential election. I haven’t seen a detailed postmortem on how Erdoğan beat the polls, but there was no “virtually guaranteeing victory” in this election.
Also importantly: Erdoğan took power in 2003! He was 49. It took him 20 years to bring Turkey to the state it’s in, and I don’t think he has another 20 in him. If you want to turn your country into a dictatorship, you have to be young: Putin was 47, Chavez 45. This isn’t a quick process, and if your candidate for doing it is 75, they’re not likely to succeed. This is part of why I don’t see your “over the next decade” holding up.

Rand0 11 Jun 2023 5:29 UTC
142 points
63
on: The Dictatorship Problem
I don’t see support for the key claim of the article.
This post aims to show that, over the next decade, it is quite likely that most democratic Western countries will become fascist dictatorships—this is not a tail risk, but the most likely overall outcome.
How do we get to “most democratic Western countries”? Which ones should I expect to fall? What’s a rough timeline for them falling?
I don’t even see what parties are supposed to be those fascist dictatorships. The three main examples given of fascism are “Modi in India, Erdogan in Turkey, and Orban in Hungary”.
But:
1. Erdogan just narrowly won an election, one in which he was fully expected to step down if defeated. He has repeatedly lost important elections at the local level.
2. Modi is a popular leader who is widely expected to win reelection, and yet opposition parties control a great many states. Indian democracy still functions, despite the many failures of the main opposition.
3. Hungary also still has elections and viable political opposition.
Other examples include:
1. Trump, who has been president without significantly weakening American democracy and whose 3 appointed judges have proven willing to rule against him, particularly as democratic norms go (and he will get no more judges).
2. A variety of European countries, including Italy, France and Sweden, in which far-right origin parties have grown and even (in Italy’s case) gained power. But they gained power, to a large extent, by repudiating those parties’ past beliefs. Le Pen even has to boot her own father from the party.
Context is important. It’s not given in the article, but you could well point to Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada as another far-right populist party that emerged in recent years. But so were the Reform and Canadian Alliance parties that existed 30 years earlier, which emerged in reaction to the Progressive Conservative’s move towards the center. Those parties moved towards the center, gained power, lost it, and elected even more centrist candidates. Hence, the appearance of the PPC, a far-right party that will need to capture far more disaffected conservatives if it’s ever to win seats.
Yes, Le Pen is doing well, but the Republican have been so crushed in recent election that Macron (a former Socialist) has become the de facto center-right leader. Le Pen has been working to make herself more acceptable for decades, even as France has had significant blowback against the refugee influx. There are a lot of things working in her favor, but still little evidence that France would transition to a dictatorship under her rule (say, having won 35% in a hypothetical round one and 55% in round two, and controlling very little in terms of states or parliament). What’s the process here?
I think a lot more needs to be done in order to support the article’s thesis, including:
1. Elucidating what counts as a fascist dictatorship, with modern examples.
2. Giving examples of countries that could reasonably become fascist dictatorships within the next decade, with some discussion of how. (This is a time-consuming process, but even just discussing how they could begin the transition over the next ten years would support a weaker, but more defensible, claim.)

Rand0 16 Apr 2022 22:36 UTC
5 points
on: Lies Told To Children
I feel like Conservative Judaism does this pretty well.
In Reform Judaism, everyone is in on the joke. Which means there’s no obstacle to overcome, nothing to learn. Reform Jews win no points on Lies-Told-To-Children storytelling night.
Orthodox Jews play the game too seriously. Like, you get a bunch of people who win the game, and they tend to be interesting people who honed an important skill, but far too many don’t get it during their lifetimes. Which means that they have these awful ideas like “we are God’s chosen people” and “the world exists so we can read ancient legal texts”. And that’s a crying shame.
Conservative Jews (at least some of them) are told lies, but they’re expected to eventually see through the lies, and when they do, nobody disowns them, and they come out better people. That’s an important formative experience, and if Conservative Judaism is teaching anything toxic, it’s not too hard to remove. They get some points on Lies-Told-To-Children storytelling night.
Oh, and Happy Passover.