Take a look at world headline news coming out of Tuesday's (3-5-18) Los Angeles Times, which I've posted below. Far right-wing populists are surging in Italy, while Germany's Angela Merkel has a new coalition, which means her 14-year reign at the top of Germany's (and Europe's) political world will continue. This is paired with concerns over China's announcement that president Xi Jinping can probably stay in power as long as he wants, if he chooses, while the dictator's bacchanalia in Russia continues.
Is this evidence that the western world is moving away from two centuries of its democratic experience? Put another way, is the western world on the verge of embracing illiberal populist-authoritarian trends, as a way of dealing with the challenges of a crumbling global infrastructure that was built after World War II?
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Then we have Donald Trump, who was elected president of the United States with an electoral college victory tainted by Trump's opponent getting almost 3 million more votes than he did, and evidence of electoral meddling by the Russians.
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Questions about Trump's legitimacy - and how he's compromised by Russia - are amplified when we consider that rather than investigating Russian incursions into our political process, the Trump administration has fought every effort to look into Russian interference in America's 2016 presidential election. Part of turning a blind eye to evidence of Russian meddling, include the State Department's failure to spend $0 of the $120 million allocated to fight future Russian interference, and how Trump and friends in Congress (especially Rep. Devin Nunes) have tried to delegitimize both the FBI and Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's election tampering.
Throw in the fact that Donald Trump has embraced policies that promote outcomes which, strangely enough, coincide with Russia's larger goals, and we have a real problem on our hands.
All of these developments are enough for anyone to legitimately ask if America, and the western democratic experience, are in trouble.
Throw in the fact that Donald Trump has embraced policies that promote outcomes which, strangely enough, coincide with Russia's larger goals, and we have a real problem on our hands.
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All of these developments are enough for anyone to legitimately ask if America, and the western democratic experience, are in trouble.
Stay tuned.
- Mark
For those of you interested in more links explaining Trump's Russian ties, know that I explained how Trump would push Russian interests before the elections in August of 2016 (here), made it clear that Russia's real "long game" depended on American decline last year (here), and discussed whether the Russian state was actually a criminal enterprise last year (here).
For those of you interested in more links explaining Trump's Russian ties, know that I explained how Trump would push Russian interests before the elections in August of 2016 (here), made it clear that Russia's real "long game" depended on American decline last year (here), and discussed whether the Russian state was actually a criminal enterprise last year (here).
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