They’ve ruined the country. At least a dictatorship can get things done.
These words were spoken not in the USA, nor by a QAnon Shaman wearing animal horns. Such words are increasingly heard in England. Spoken not by under educated red necks, but by otherwise respectable members of the middle classes.
Immigrants are the new Jews. How short are our memories, how tragic that we never learn the lessons of history. How deeply disappointing that otherwise normal people are beginning to state that dictatorship has its merits.
Dictators have so often risen to power by demonising a minority. Just under 100 years ago, it was the Jews who were the source of all our problems. They were greedy, sly vermin. And eventually efforts were made to exterminate them.
Today, the far right are fuelling the flames with a hatred of immigrants. All our problems would be solved by shutting our borders and deporting those who are already here.
At my club in London, set in 40 beautiful acres by the river Thames, an American member was extolling Trump. It was time to respect the country’s “original borders” he said. I told him that there were no original borders and that in any event the white protestant immigrants of the 17th Century didn’t seem to care about borders, did they?
Another chap who I have known for many years pronounced recently on much the same matters in a similar vein.
People even closer to me have voiced similar shameful opinions and seem closed to arguments to the contrary.
I’m not going to continue at length and I will not deny that the country and much of the world is a mess. But the world has always been a mess thanks to the venal nature of our species and we are all responsible for that mess.
Not just the Jews. Not just the immigrants.
When people you have known your whole life talk of the advantages of dictatorship, when they start blaming a minority class for the country’s ills, you know the world has reached yet another disastrous tipping point.
Let us hope it is not too late to step back from the brink.
Weltanschauung 
Spot
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It seems to be happening everywhere. I think it’s a backlash against globalization. I hope it’s a temporary reaction that will eventually play itself out, hopefully without too many wars. Unfortunately “eventually” might take it past our generation.
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Dear Anthony and Mike,
Yes, the “disease” is spreading far and wide. Rather than the “Bloody Immigrants” as scapegoats, it is actually the bloody plutocrats and their ill-informed supporters, and the matter is much more than a backlash against globalization. There is also the ongoing Christian institutions’ war on knowledge and alignment with power. Some factions of Christianity have even evolved into clerical fascism (also called clero-fascism or clerico-fascism), which is an ideology that combines the political and economic doctrines of fascism with clericalism. For instance, the Silver Legion of America (also known as the Silver Shirts) in the United States led by William Dudley Pelley has combined American Christianity (specifically Protestantism) with American white nationalism.
Indeed, there are numerous compelling and irrefutable reasons as to why there is no justification in supporting such corrupted Christian organizations and their doctrines, whose leaders and followers have aligned themselves with the likes of Trump, and by extension, other corrupt entities, including Putin and numerous wretched rulers, politicians, plutocrats, autocrats, officials and corporations. Sadly, many of those who are supposedly more morally or spiritually attuned to the wise and virtuous seem to have fared even worse, given that a large percentage of Trump’s supporters have been disproportionately Christians. So much for Christianity being the guiding conscience and ultimate salvation!
On the whole, how shocking and deplorable it has been that despite these staggering amount of reasons and overwhelming evidences against Trump, he is still becoming the President for the second time as a convicted felon!
The salient issues of democracy versus autocracy (and plutocracy) aside, there are many sobering implications of authoritarianism, which is a very topical area for exploring the many outstanding tensions between (the sociopsychological states of) sanity/stability and insanity/instability, affecting even the very existence and survival of humanity. In recent years, many citizens have willingly aligned themselves with misinformation, disinformation, post-truth politics, demagoguery, plutocracy, oligarchy, ochlocracy, kleptocracy, kakistocracy, narcissistic leadership, neoliberalism, globalization, clerical fascism and Trumpism. We can also agree that the ongoing chaos inflicted by the Trump presidency finally culminated in the infamous riot at the Capitol. You and I can be justified for being cynical, snide, snarky and facetious in characterizing Trump as the symbolic messiah who is going to lead his misguided supporters, sycophants and funders to glory on Earth and the promised land! It is often futile to reason with such misguided folks. Perhaps only when the country truly becomes autocratic or fascist, or when it plunges into a civil war, will such folks wake up, but then it will be too late. Consequently, any reasonable person can conclude that the USA has been plagued by ignorance, dogma, falsity, blind faith, spiritual stagnation and epistemological impasse . . . . .
To make matter worse, even those who are supposed to know better, who are in the most privileged position or at the highest echelon, have displayed objectionable conducts, caused much disunity, and/or generated unwisdom. We have been witnessing so clearly the insidious nature of Trumpism, Machiavellian conservatism and inimical illiberalism perverting democracy for nefarious purposes and for justifying, obfuscating or muddying the waters of systemic sexism, racism, historical negationism, discrimination, marginalization and curtailment of civil rights. In a similar vein, one of my latest posts highlights not just the various traps awaiting us from the fallouts of the main event regarding the SCOTUS’ decisions on abortion and its striking down Roe v. Wade, but also how the capacity of laws and legislation to be legally valid, binding and enforceable in different contexts is both contingent (acceptable only if certain circumstances are the case) and circumscribed (restricted to certain roles or situations), given that the content, relevance and quality of laws and legislation are fundamentally filtered and moulded by class structures, social stratifications, cultural reproductions and communication frameworks as well as by the interaction between legal cultures, and the social construction of legal issues, as discussed in my post entitled “🏛️⚖️ The Facile and Labile Nature of Law: Beyond the Supreme Court and Its Ruling on Controversial Matters 🗽🗳️🔫🤰🧑🤝🧑💉“, published at
We share many similar concerns for composing posts involving thorough examinations of some of the most salient issues that have led the USA to this moment in time. Needless to say, due to misinformation and disinformation as well as the pandemic and other global issues, 2020 to 2024 have been very difficult and trying, not to mention having to deal with the pandemic. It was all quite surreal, perhaps in some ways more bizarre than ghosts and the paranormal (not that I believe in such things). One could indeed say that we live in interesting times, but often for the wrong reasons. It is all quite a big mess in danger of getting bigger still. Even a global pandemic and an insurrection at the citadel of democracy still cannot unite folks in the USA and wake them up. Perhaps it will take an even bigger crisis to do so, such as a series of shocking events or climate change disasters.
Truth, decency and morality have become martyred in the post-truth era and the age of misinformation. In any case, the best and most dedicated amongst the likes of us are also inveterate teachers of everlasting, transcendental wisdom to save humans from themselves, their self-interests and their destructive ways. I often even have to coin new words to do so. The latest examples are my three neologisms “Misquotation Pandemic“, “Disinformation Polemic” and “Viral Falsity“, as discussed in my very extensive and analytical post entitled “💬 Misquotation Pandemic and Disinformation Polemic: 🧠 Mind Pollution by Viral Falsity 🦠“, which you can easily locate from the Home page of my website.
As discussed in the post, without proper education, the overall situation and trajectory of democracy and humanity seem to be rather bleak, and even science and politics can provide little comfort in reducing the severity and frequency of some of those outstanding issues, for there are two major Achilles’ heels: Viral Falsity and Paleolithic Emotions. In addition, my own multidisciplinary perspective proposes in the post with detailed analyses that four of the most insidious and corrosive conditions have exacerbated these issues dramatically:
(1) The prevailing anti-intellectualism
(2) The cult of anti-expertise sentiment
(3) The politicization of science
(4) The prevalent manifestation of populism
Gathering all the diverse and important strands together in the grand finale of the said post, I have attempted to sum up and reflect deeply the state of affairs with hard truths, especially in the twelfth and last section named “Denouement: Democracy, Education, Legislation & Sustainability”, which even gives a very dire warning of what humanity is heading towards if there is still no concerted, meaningful and large-scale change for the better.
Saving and rehabilitating the USA aside, we also need the political economy of saving the planet. Yet the entrenched and insidious issues of plutocracy have loomed even larger, thus continuing to thwart many efforts mounted to save the nation and the planet.
In any case, education and legislation are the two major keys for ensuring effective democracy and good governance. However, it is often too late to educate those who have been poisoned for too long and too deeply by the “me” culture driven by self-interest and political expediency to amass power, influence and wealth by plotting control, intrigue, exploitation, corruption and social polarization.
To be more specific, social and economic polarizations can further exacerbate the issues of wealth and power distribution. The underlying opposition is not so much between the Democrats and the Republicans as between the rich plutocrats and the rest of the population. The Democrats need to (re)form their party to unite the 90 percent of the people living at an entrenched economic and political disadvantage in order to deal with the plutocrats.
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle🦅
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Again, I applaud what you say both here and on your own website. It would be futile for me to comment further on all the hard work and research you have undertaken. I fear that our sad and deeply flawed species always has and always will be selfish and brutal. Largely I have given up worrying about it. Occasionally I am so saddened by what I see around me that I am forced to comment. In any event, thank you for all your thoughtful both here and on your website. If only there were more voices like yours!
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Amen.
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I ran the maths (based on ONS statistics) of births by ethnicity and the UK has a caucasian birth rate of just 0.9 – way below the 2.1 threshold for a sustainable population. So if the UK had no immigration and the far right whites were the only ones “entitled” to repopulate the species, the UK would have a population of zero in 220 years.
I walk my dog a daft o clock every morning and I’m reminded daily why immigration is a good thing, as I pass many a Philippine worker clocking off from a difficult night shift at the local care home, they are always smiling, always laughing, always saying hello and always petting the pooch.
They graft, they pay taxes, and I’d like to think they all have a happy home and social life here.
The net value of immigration far outweighs any counter arguments from Farage and his cronies.
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Besides which, any with even a passing knowledge of human (let alone geological) history will know that any concept of nationalism and boundaries is an absolute absurdity! By the way, you have packed up your blog? I keep toying with abandoning this.
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In the immortal of words of Captain Oates “I am just going outside and maybe some time”.
I didn’t expect to be so long away from the blog, but as per usual – life got in the way big style, but have decided to pick up my digital fountain pen again now that things are settling down a little.
Very glad to see you are still active. I reread some of your older blogs recently, those fantasy/folklore ones are superb.
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