How To

M. Gessen, an opinion writer at the New York Times, has written an article appearing today with a formula to deal with growing autocracy. Both Americans and Canadians should pay attention. She uses the recent defeat of Orban to point to ways for others to follow: Read the full article here.

 ·       Volunteer and organize other to do so.

·       Make the case in person going door to door, if you are a politician or major supporter. Don’t just march in protests or spend all your time making a case on social media. (Last year, a Canadian party leader lost his seat to an opponent, who took the time to knock on doors in his riding several times in the preceding two years.)

·       Use clear forward-looking language – don’t go back to “Again”. Say “Start Over”. Name the abuses of the person you want to defeat. Be specific.

·       Take over an existing party instead of trying to create a new one and build its internal organization.

·       Lead it as an outsider – but do so as a person of integrity. Don’t expect an outsider with no integrity to be on your side under any circumstances.

·       Turn supporters into volunteers; grassroot supporters can become allies in areas of agreement

·       Show moral outrage at the Big Lies; don’t just report them without comment. All of us need to recover a sense of lofty ideals, the rule of law and human rights.

·       Be clear that victory means representation of everyone - everyone – not just those who elected the new leader.

·       Apologize to the victims of the previous govenment and hold them accountable

·       Make politics both aspirational and inspirational.

·       Embrace minorities. Never exclude them.

·       Reclaim national symbols from those who would misuse them.

Taste and autocracy

I am reading more of The Economist and less of the New York Times these days but I do check out the headlines and opinion sections of the latter - and full confession, Wordle, Strands, Letterbox, the Mini, the Maxi and sometimes Spelling Bee in te search to be a genius. I liked Frank Bruni and Bret Stephens in the opinion section this morning. A couple of good quotes today.

Bruni: “Tastelessness and classlessness are the least of my concerns when it comes to President Trump’s collaborators.” . . . ”This is about idolatry, a cult of personality and the replacement of real achivements with vacuous adornments.”. . . It’s a ballroom built on bribery. Makes Everything OK”

Stehens: In talking about the ballroom and the endless pictures on buildings and bank notes: “, Bad taste and autocratic interests tend to go together for a reason because the purpose of autocratic design is to overawe rather than intrigue or delight; to erase beauty, which elicits a sense of humanity and reverce, with largeness, which elisits fear.

On with activities for the day leading to beauty - process rather than result - piano practice and drawing.

In charge?

This is a recent part of what the person running the US said:

Americans stranded in Middle Eastern countries are desperate to get out, and the government has not been able to help them. When asked today why not, Trump answered:

“Well, because it happened all very quickly, we thought, and I thought maybe more so than most, I could ask Marco, but I thought we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked. They were getting ready to attack Israel. They were getting ready to attack others. You’re seeing that right now. And a lot of those missiles that are hitting in those are stationary. Those were aimed there for a long period of time at these other countries. So I think I was right about that. We attacked first, and if we didn’t, it could have been, you know, look, we’re really decimating them. They’re being decimated. And if we didn’t. If we didn’t, and by the way, we have massive amounts of ammunition. We have the high end. A lot of it was given away stupidly by Biden, very stupidly, for free. And I’m all for Ukraine, but they gave away a lot. As you know, when I give away ammunition, everybody pays for it. The European Union is paying for it, then they can do what they want with it, but they are giving it, let’s say, to Ukraine, and it’s okay, but we gave away a lot of high end but we have plenty. But we have unlimited middle and upper ammunition, which is really what we’re using in this war. And we have an, really an unlimited supply. We also have a lot of the very high end stored in different countries throughout the world. With this, we’re literally storing it there, which is actually something that I insisted on in my first term. I rebuilt the military. In my first term, the military is great. A lot of, not unbelievable, amount of of ammunition, or munitions, as they say, were given away to you know, the Wall Street Journal incorrectly covered the story when they said that it was given away to the Middle East, not to the Middle East was given away to Ukraine. Very little was given to the Middle East. Middle East would buy a lot. And some of the nations, because they’re rich, they have a lot, but it was given away to Ukraine and it just should have been done. Look, it’s a war that should have never happened. If I were president, that war would have never happened. But we have a tremendous amount of munitions, ammunition at the upper upper level, middle and upper level, all of which is really powerful stuff.”

Distraction

It is rather horrendus to start a war to distract from other things that are bothering you, or just because you want to. or even because you have to.

• Your poll numbers are going down,

• The Epstein files are making things worse.

• You like to pretend that you are a big tough guy - even though you never did military service.

• People who did favours for you are calling in their cards.

So you start a war - unfortunately you are not the first president to do that - against the rules of your own country and that of the United Nations. You spend lives and tax payers money to do that. You learn nothing from the experience of previous wars started for questionable or illegal reasions. You don’t learn. The question is whether anyone else will.

We don’t know.

Infinite Scrolling

That is apparently what happens when teens go online. It never stops nd increased the addictive power of social media. I can fall into this addictive habit myself with ease - Apple News can go on forever. But that is easy to fix. How about a limit on the number of items that can be scrolled on a visit - or even better, on a day? What if government made it mandatory to stop at say - 30 items. If you try this on FaceBook, you will ptobably see an even number of ads and posts from friends - but suppose that’s all you could see in a day. It really points up how banal the experience actually is.

The companies are trying to put the onus on parents. That will never be good enough. Let’s start looking at the process.