The graphic above illustrates, the caption says, a 21st-century craze for redesigning everything. That would be lovely if it was true. Unfortunately, it is the design of things that most needs change. Nothing is more indicative than the shape of most global democracies these days. Oh, I know you are saying this is going to be a monster smackdown of Trump, Erdogan and what's-his-name in the Philippines, the one who condones slaughter in the execution of their war on drugs. I got it. Duterte.
Right and wrong
The crisis of democracy is not merely because we have authoritarian-nitwits monopolizing the headlines.
It is the entire quilt of democracies that covers the globe. There are a lot of them and the desire to create more of them exists. The illness is in defining what democracy should be in the 21St Century. The fact that Mr. Trudeau and Ms. May and Monsieur Macron are not heard is scandalous. Democracy is being besmirched by the silence of these leaders as by its most phony leaders, the three mentioned in the first paragraph.
Nonviolence
Democracy should reject what has hobbled it forever and is entirely counterproductive for the future. I am speaking of violence. Confront the elephant in the room or die by it. Trump, Erdogan, and Duterte are poster children for the corruption and ruination of democracy.
They are not alone. Harvard has discovered that half of all affluent millennials in the US would be OK with a police state. Tremble.
Political platform
Nonviolence should head a Political Platform for all democracies followed by basic income and a true redesign of the world so we are not dependent on solutions that befoul the environment and lead to global mayhem because of oil wars and economies that believe they can grow forever.
We are in the midst of an imagination draught. Our education does not even remember the term liberal arts.
Do you want to talk courage?
Trump, like all bullies, is a coward: true courage is courageous thinking. It is pushing for new meanings, for inferences based on changes in reality. We move, whether we know it or not. We advance come what may, because that is how reality works.
If you want courage, go to those who try to articulate things like nonviolence and justice and caring and helpfulness while surrounded by the dull stares of what Nietzsche called the blinking people.
Death march
Violence is the elephant for sure. A democracy that does not work to make it taboo is working for death, not life.
