Still Here

 

Still Here

Six decades after the Cuban Missile Crisis, we had 2022.  It was a scary, pivotal year of comparable danger.  At stake was the fate of the world, determined by US elections.  If democracy had lost the vote, fascism would have risen, with the geopolitical balance teetering into darkness.

But the American people did not support the hate-cult worship of a tyrant.  Because of this, all of us, everywhere, have been given a gift this season, a certain hope:  that we are not necessarily doomed, that our better angels can prevail.

One prolific historian, speaking on a newscast (Jon Meacham, I believe), said that this is the most hopeful he has felt in six years.  The New York Times posted an article yesterday on the survival and surge of democracy:

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/24/us/politics/democracy-voters-elections-2022.html

 

From the article:

 

Whatever their reasons for voting against candidates who parroted Mr. Trump’s election claims, Republicans who did so often spoke of a more general estrangement from a party that had broadly turned those claims into a loyalty test — and of their distaste for both the party’s indulgence of Mr. Trump and of a no-holds-barred brand of politics that they said favors winning at all costs.

 

I never thought fascism could rise in my country, much less on the shoulders of a flagrantly despicable man.  No wolf in sheep’s clothing, just an obvious egotist of avarice and prejudice.  Despite his sadistic lack of morality, or perhaps because of it, he seemed a political juggernaut, someone who possessed the ability to obsess others, someone with the dark charisma of a Hitler.  One third of the American populace bowed down.

What I’ve learned of fascism, during this ugly six-year trial, is that it is an old strategy:  warlords with truthless loyalty tests.  It is what Plato sought to refute when he challenged Thrasymachus.  He argued that reason should govern, not an egomaniac who had turned a portion of the people into fawning worshippers, and cowed the rest with readily used swords.

Can reason govern, without being subverted by a demagogic monster?  That is the big question facing humanity in the 21^st century.  It is tantamount to, “Will we survive?” 

The right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’ based on the innate dignity of every person, is beautiful intellectual bedrock.  If such wisdom steers us, moving forward with honesty and integrity, a wonderful future awaits. 

Imagine robots that have been engineered with limitations, so that they have no capability to inflict hurt or harm.  Robots that promote happiness.  Contrast that with a different future, one where robots surveil and police us, robots that kill easily and swiftly, at the merciless whim of a paranoid warlord.

2022.  It was a huge test for democracy.  To quote Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “We are still here.”  He made this announcement in February, right after the Russian army, under the iron-grip of a tyrant, invaded Ukraine to annex and assimilate it.  

Just a few days ago, Zelenskyy gave an historic speech to the US Congress.  Democracy still struggles onward in Ukraine.  And for now, it struggles onward here, in the United States, as well.

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