Oh absolutely. I'm following this just the same, I was just sort of hoping that people were already aware of these rallies and their suppression. Frankly they're better-publicized in the west than they are in Russia - not surprisingly, given the amount of state control over media there. There has been some scary stuff happening out there, both at rallies and otehrwise. A lot of arrests over the last few days.

At least our media covers them fairly well, even moment by moment. The way they described the latest rallies in St. Petersburg, it went something like this:

Opposition: "Hi, we'd like to demonstrate peacefully."
Police: "Well we won't give you a permission."
Opposition: "OK, uh, we're going to demonstrate anyway because it's, like, our right and stuff."
Police: "Sure, go ahead. We love illegal demonstrations."

Some people here have said along the lines: "Millions of people and a few thousand people demonstrate, so what?", but a long time reporter with lots of experience from Russia commented that if there is going to be a change, it's going to be either in Moscow or in Saint Petersburg. If I recall correctly, he even compared it to the 1917 indirectly and said that "a few thousand" people are enough if the time is right. He didn't believe in the chance for a democratic change. I don't know, sounded little romantic to me, except maybe for the first part. What do you think, CCIP?

Complete offtopic: sometimes the local way of reporting news from Russia makes me laugh. Around last Christmas I remember a reporter in radio giving the listeners vital information about the demonstrations back then: "There are lots of people here. From the atmosphere it would seem they are displeased with prime minister Putin."

Even more offtopic: every time I think I speak Russian, I'm humbled when I try to listen to the news. Do they have a competition of who speaks the fastest (that link wasn't even nearly the worst I've heard), or what's with the machinegun tempo that doesn't seem to come up anywhere else?

This is why George Washington was such a great man. He had the same personal power that Putin does but unlike Vlad he voluntarily gave it up and thereby set our country on the path to government by the people.

Is it still? I find myself skeptical.

Well things do change over time of course but FWIW unlike Putin, George Bush wasn't allowed to elect himself to a third term and I firmly believe that even if Obama wins in November he'll still be out of office by Feb of 2017 at the latest, (the two term standard being another gift from George Washington). That's pretty much proof enough for me that while our system may not be perfect it is at least functional enough to have prevented a dictator from coming to power these last 200 some odd years.

America has her problems, and they've been getting worse lately. Ultimately of course the Russian situation is far, far worse - at the end of the day, even the most staunch anti-American will have to grudgingly admit that if nothing else, there is still more than just lip service being paid to the Constitution, and the system of checks and balances hasn't completely broken down. Sometimes it works in fits and starts, sometimes it's bizzare and unfair, but all in all there is still a sort of democracy in America, and that's no small achievement in the end. Gotta stay positive somehow!

This is tricky. It is definitely true that a few thousand in the right place can change things - and did change things even in recent history. Sadly I think it will take a different time and different political climate for people to finally make sense of what happened in Moscow in October 1993 for example, where the whole current situation in Russia really takes its root. It's definitely not like 1917 - if anything, it's more like 1905. The socioeconomics in Russia still mean that a vast majority of people live quite desperately and want to believe in the "good Tzar", hoping that some protests and petitions might make things better (and instead getting fired on and suppressed - just as they were in 1905). It's still a long road to any kind of historical breaking point.

The biggest problem is that the opposition, for all their good intentions and promises, is fragmented, lacks a strong unified agenda, and most importantly lacks any convincing, credible leadership. Russian liberal democracy died in the early-mid 90s - those parties and leaders may be active in the opposition, but their credibility has been destroyed very effectively and systematically (though a few were destroyed physically, too). Then there are nationalist organizations, many of them genuinely scary, but are also dealt with by the current regime very effectively. The fact is that with its money, political clout and control over media, the regime can very effectively keep the opposition fragmented and lacking credibility, removing dangerous leaders when they get too dangerous.

One of the problems is that everyone looks at Putin as some kind of source of power, but an open secret is that Putin doesn't really matter. Putin as a person has all the ambition and vision of a small-time bureaucrat. Putin, however, is a brand that is managed effectively by a board of directors that is United Russia - the main stockholders of political capital in Russia. They are far from actually united, and represent several different, even conflicting streams of power in Russia, but are united by one thing in common: they all benefit from the status quo. So, as long as nothing else threatens the status quo, they get along and market their Putin brand to the people with great effectiveness. When one of them gets out of line, they are publically humiliated and then quietly purged from the corridors of power, then nothing changes. It's going to be that way until something big happens in the socioeconomic situation of the average Russian, until the status quo becomes too unbearable for them.

In some sense, the opposition really did not have any chances in these recent rounds of elections. But the popular outcry is way, way more meaningful than anything they could achieve at the ballots. I don't think it's something that United Russia is really prepared to deal with in the long run. But the outcry doesn't have a legitimate, credible political outlet either, so the best hope right now is that the current regime will see the danger and deal with it by compromise rather than repression. Not totally optimistic over that. Otherwise, it's a long and hard road for the opposition ahead - when the protests are over, they'll still have a lot of soul-searching to do. The fact is that liberal democracy is still dead in Russia, and it will take more than a popular outcry against Putin to bring it back from the dead. If that doesn't happen, then you have the Orange Revolution to learn from - it was a genuine popular movement in the Ukraine that was channeled into incompetent, corrupt political outlets and ultimately failed. The same thing could happen in Russia, and Russians know that all too well.

A system that once was well-meant, nevertheless can be corrupted or perverted until it is not run by a tyrant but mutates into a tyrant itself. Ideological dogmas can help in that, or are the result of that, or both. Like a river deepens its bed by following it on and on, this system more and more makes sure that it cannot leave that bed anymore, or that any other water will escape it's main route. In a similiar fashion, systems in the West have installed perosnell networks and lobbies betwene plltical groups and business groups that are mutually supportive, that way more and more it become sunlikely that a person from outsiode such networks can climnb in the hierarchy and come to influence and power. The system then has began to breed its own next generation that will make sure that it does not and cannot chnage.

Thinking patterns that are hard toi chnage also play a role here.

Many nations in the West were meant to be free, and democratic. But I still claim that liberty is falling, and that there is no democratic state in the West any more - only the carricature of that . There is a widening gap between how our states were meant to be in the past, and how they have turned out top be in the present. People defending them as being free and democratic in the meaning of the old "dogma", imo got stuck with their heads in the past, which makes them unable to look at the present and realise how far it has separated from the old ways and ideals.

For German readers, here
http://www.cicero.de/weltbuehne/europas-zersetzungsprozess-weichen-sind-auf-postdemokratie-gestellt/48233
is a little essay that could have been written by me, about the post-democratic era we already are in. I could also point out that we are challenged by circumstances today that probably even cannot be solved by democratic processes anymore, even more if these are still following the thinking of the old era. The old assunmptions aboput how demiocracies should be set up and should function inmnmodern time, simpyl are already ridiculed by globalised business, and financiaol markets whose activity rotate around the world 24 a day, following the sun and ignoring national borders indicating sovereignity and validity-zones of national laws.

There are many local and global implications and consequences from this.

Also, I do no longer believe that democracy can endlessly competently be realised in communities beyond a relatively little size - just a few hundred or thousand, not more. Global societies are beyond that scale by many factors. As I see it, modern democracies have paradoxically resulted in establishing neo-feudal structures and aristocracies again. We just do not call them that any more.


August,

I did not mean to imply you literally meant "killing". I just wrote it that way because your post ,metioned tyranny you spoke about in a context that surely was meant as something negative, worth to get rid of or to get past beyond. I wanted to make the point of my message clear in a rush.

Well, on the basis of preventing a singular person from installing themselves as a dictator, autocrat, tyrant, etc etc. I do agree. Our system has worked, and it has worked exceedingly well.

Where i find myself skeptical is your statement of"government by the people". A statement which harkens Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address, "government of the people, by the people, for the people". Which again, is where my skepticism lays in today's Government.

Money, like knowledge, is power. Lobbyists, influential people, and organizations with bags of money have tremendous influence and sway in our government that often enough supersedes the will of the people.

@Penguin

Why am I commenting? I read an article, and I passively pointed out that I agreed with some things in it.


You can call him whatever you want, but it is obvious to everyone that he is "gaming" the constitution to get himself a third term. I frankly don't think he cares, and I pointed that out earlier.

Now there is a really interesting comment under the article:

Mind you, Putin is ex-KGB, but I don't think he is that good.
And anyways, even if the results are inflated by a few %, he must have gotten more than 50%, AKA, enough to avoid a runoff

:DL I understand. Rush posting has got me in more trouble, especially on this particular forum, than one might think!

But I do believe that tyranny is always a negative, especially in the long run. Sure you might be able to cite a benevolent king or dictator here and there throughout history but such good will never lasts beyond their lifetime, which is the great failing of such a political system. It is just not stable. Certainly not as stable as our present system with all it's warts.

It's understandable to be skeptical but I believe there is danger in making such feelings too public as they have a tendency to become reality. It's like how people often say, usually with a sigh, that they will never see the social security they have been contributing for. To my mind that only gives the powers that be reason to believe that they can get away with it. After all it's always easier to steal what folks don't believe they have.

I was just pointing out the original meaning of the word "tyrant". It simply means the reign by one leader - good or evil king, despot, hero, villain, whatever. The negative understanding of it seems to have been added the more termns like individual liberty and individuality won in value in Western culture/history. In other parts of the world the belief in the principle goodness of "tyranny" - following a leader at the top - is still pretty much beyond doubt. Especially in cultural contexts that put more emphasis on collectivism, and less on individuality.

I would also argue that the stability of the system we have in the West is the problem, since it has first bred the warts it now gets eaten up by - and right that inherent "stability" - realised by the self-protection of those running it - now makes it so difficult if not impossible to get rid of the warts. We live in Wartistan now, therefore.

We should have started to burn out warts from the very first one on. Now our once so smooth and shiny teint is ruined, making us look like heads of old vultures.

The obvious dysfunctionality of our ideas for economic and financial systems, that started to hijack the world in 2007 at the latest, does not help in giving us more credibility. We created a loud party - but the hotter the going, the shorter it lasts. Illustrating a copmpoetence to design and maintain a system that survives over longer time and can achiueve a dynamic balance in ther situation, and is self-maintaining in its use of resources, our system is NOT. I see the gloss and the glamour, of course I do, yes. But that is not by what I define the value of a way of life. The lasting survivability of a set of ideas, of ways of life, giving back to the future what we take from the present so that it can all go on in later cycles as well and benefits later generations as well instead of just allowing us a short period of high life and creating cataclysm for all coming later - that is what counts. I think we still have a long way to go before enough people of us understand this - if the learning does not take place too late already.

I think you're confusing normal human nature with political systems. Those warts might be a problem for us but in spite of them we still have a functioning republic.

No system run by a tyrant, however benevolent, survives him. So do I want to live under a somewhat flawed system that can and has lasted (so far) for over two centuries or do I want to live under a benevolent dictator and watch that benevolence and all shreds of civil rights and freedom vanish when he dies? I'll pick the former every time, warts and all.

My argukment that our countries by far no NO functional republics, states, democracies. Notm only have their functionality been hijacked by the few and tailored to serve the few's own interest for power and financial and economic influence, but the distortions also produced a self-dynamic in distorting the system ever on. Cliques are running the system over here, bypassing the electorate'S votings. Big money runs your country, bypassing the electorate. Maybe you think that having elections have a meaning today anymore, but I say they are just clever camouflage to keep the people quite in the streets while securing the statzus quo for those soicial castes controlling things in the background. And the factual constraints and inherent necessities of ordinary everyday politics do the rest for limiting the freedom degrees of any govenrment being elected to form something new creatively , or even to just break the pattern of the very system itself. Our states are effectively bancrupt, and live on tic, which means they have no freedom of acting at all - or only at the price of increasing debts. There are the obligations from older treaties. Laws formed by past adminsitrations. And always again yiou run into the cliques in the background who make sure that nobvody is able to chnager so much that the system of maintaining these cliques would suffer real damage. Its in Germany that way. It is in europe that way. And it is in America that way. By its Bsic Law, Germayn was meant to be something different. So was the US meant to be different by the general thinoing of the founders and first influential polticalins and thinkers and authors of those old historic documents.

And tyrants not leaving behind a state surving their own death, that is not necessarily true. Sometimes tyrants form dynastieys, may it be on the basis of brutal force, may it be on the basis of the love of their people. A king, in the end, also is a tyrant. Or the Romans, in the young republic: in times of war, they stepped back from the principles of having a "democratic" gremium where the social elites and the representaitves of the ordinary people met and decided in disucssion how to run the state. Much rivalry there due to different interests between the upper class, and the lower class. However, int imes of war and crisis, they elected two tribunes, who then took over all power and command and reigned in y tyrant'S style until the crisis was solved. After that they were expected to hand over power again, and to step back. In theory at least :) : some did, some tried to do that not.

Demcioarcy was another attempt to solve the problpem of tynrannies: tyranny is nice and well if the leader is competent and righteous. Ifg he is not, if he is a dilletant or a criminal egoist, thenh you have a problem.

But have modern democracies really solved this probkem by having a cycle or electing or re-electing representatives in regualr intervals peacefully? Incompetence and narcissm reigns. Lobbyism is omnipresent. And as I just explained and argue all, the time, the system makes sure that only candidates representing its own rules, the interests of the cliques having hijacked it, come to influence and power. Democracy is no safeguard against corrupt leaders, not at all, we just learn it the hard way once again both in the EU and in the US currently; and it also brings not the bright and cpompetent to power, but for the molst: the loudest, the richest, the influential ones having good ties in the network of cliques, the good manipulators and liars to the masses.

It just does not work as intended.

It could mayb eonly work as intended in social communtiies that are to small that every member can seed and know what every other member is doing, and what consequnces the other'S actions have for all others, and what consequences one's own actions have for all others. That limits the functionality of democracies to extremely small community sizes: as I said, only a few hundred, at best a very few thousand people. But our current national states? With dozens of millions of people? Complexity degrees of organisations and process and interaction patterns that nobody can overwatch and understand anymore? Or supranational organisations like the EU, the UN ? Impossible. I cannot imagine that to ever function as advertised. Why is that? You said it yourself, you pointed to human nature.

In our historical papers, our nations look nice and well. But the reality that they came to, has little or nothing to do with these old visions.

Which, for a closing, brings me to my favourite sentence that I have repeated already so often:

We are too many people.

If you really believe that then that is your truth. Myself, i'm not willing to so easily surrender the game.

Exactly my point. Once you surrender your liberty to a tyrant you cannot guarantee that he will ever give it back. When a successful tyrant dies, however popular or beneficial he may have been, there is absolutely no guarantee that his successor will be anything like him. Whatever stability his regime had quickly dissolves into a bloodbath as the various factions vie for power so whoever does emerge as the new "dear leader" already has blood on his hands before he ever issues his first edict.

I just don't see how any of that is preferable to the system that I live under now. YMMV.

This implies that such things do not also happen in a dictatorship too. Obviously that is not true, especially in the internecine warfare that I mention above. I suppose that a potentate, if he is strong enough, might be able to put some damper on this but then again he might just as easily encourage it if it helps to keep him on his throne.

It is a system that bases everything upon the whims of a single fallible man who is under the absolutely corrupting influence of absolute power. No thanks.

Well maybe not but it certainly does work well enough to be a better choice than any transitory utopia created by a benevolent dictator.

Quote:

We are too many people.

You'll get no argument from me there. This is ultimately a self correcting problem though. If we don't figure out a way to regulate world population on our own then eventually nature will do it for us through disease or some other equally effective way.