New Despotism - The Tyranny of the Mob

A new form of totalitarianism is upon us. It has arrived in the form of ideological despotism, wielded by the aggressive and intolerant leftist mob. It is the bold attempt of the culturally and morally degenerate of our time to implement a kind of 'mental dictatorship.' The plebeians of our day are no longer a class of citizens unable to read and write. They are those ill-educated and ignorant, rationally and/or morally wanting individuals who can potentially come from all strata of society teachers, journalists, and academia, scientists and politicians. 

 

Besides third-wave feminists, Black-Lives Matter activists, and Never-Trumpers, the most prominent representatives of this vast group of misguided people, who combine education with moral deficiencies, are well known. I count many of the Democrats (Reid, Clinton, Pelosi, Schumer, and the like) and Republicans (McCain, Rubio, Graham, to name a few) in Congress and Senate plus the neo-conservative and neo-liberal nomenclature in the State Department to this group. Yet, to be found at the peak of this particular deprivation was the previous holder of the most powerful political office globally, B. Obama.  

In recent years, the intellectual-educational and moral-ethical decline in culture and politics became ever more tangible in all society and state segments. In my blog entries, I have criticized the idiocies regarding the destruction of the nation-state by open border policies and the interventionist foreign affairs approach, combined with astonishing neglect of strategic and geopolitical parameters in international relations by the U.S. government and the transatlantic alliance. I also addressed the self-destructive equating of the Muslim religion, the bewilderment over (trans-) gender relation, and the general cultural decline in western societies.  

The confusion reached a sad apex in the race for the White House and specifically in the open war waged by the bulk of the mainstream media against the new president and his administration since his inauguration. The level of injustice and sheer destructiveness of the political opposition and most of the press is almost incomprehensible. It has reached a degree indeed unparalleled in Western post-World War II societies and is seriously putting in question the U.S. political system's maturity and proficiency. 

What shook up our civilization's societal fabric to such a degree and corrupted the sanity and sound judgment of politicians, educators, communicators of essential parts of the citizenry? I have addressed the reasons in my blog essays over the past few years. I alluded, among others, to the absurdities of the ideological tools such as the exploitation of political correctness, the undifferentiated interpretation of the notion of equality, the anything-goes of value relativism, the socialization of the young generation along the lines of egotism and individual hedonism, the absence of character-building efforts at home and in the places of education and culturization. Finally, I addressed the corruption of the educational culture by depriving it of classical art instruction ingredients. In other words: At the bottom of the dilettantism in politics and political relations in domestic and international affairs lies the utter lack of philosophical depth and wisdom.

  

The political illiteracy and moral confusion led to the described and criticized follies in domestic (i.e., immigration) and foreign affairs (i.e., support of insurgents and destruction of nation-state structures). Based on their misconceptions regarding the ontology of political and social coexistence (see my blog essay of November 2015 https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2015/11/immigration-us-and-europe-governed-by.html), governing authorities in the U.S. and Europe engaged in unjust interventions in the Middle East, in the Caucasus, in Asia, severely damaged the social fabric of the U.S. and European societies, and widened the domestic ideological divide to the point of irremediableness. 

The portrayed intellectual and moral decline became forcibly apparent in the wake of the U.S. presidential elections. Blind individual prejudice and pride, assertiveness, and stubbornness seem to be more important than objectivity, dignity, truth. Personal vanity not to have been wrong seemingly trumps all insight and appears to override all disabusing by experience and learning from actual failure. People and governments maintain their positions of prejudice and ideological bias at all costs. Political discourse appears to have degenerated into nothing more than turf warfare over partisan policy notions and the constant denial of responsibility for failed decisions (shining example in its negativity again B. Obama - Syria, Libya, ACA)

The epitome of the intellectual and moral carnage that has characterized the political rivalry of recent weeks, months, and indeed years is the apparent attempt to delegitimize conservative opposition and virtually destroy the newly elected U.S. president and his administration. Instead of partaking constructively in the political business and contributing to the bonum commune despite contrasting and opposing stances, large parts of society engage in outright destruction and annihilation, including media and representatives of the legislative estate. The decadence has reached an alarming degree. 

Short of outright civil war, things could barely get worse. Think about this: The oscillation of governments is natural to democratic republics. Thus, the alteration of governing regimes astounds only the under-educated and ideologically stultified. And probably those few who fantasize about an authoritarian one-party rule in the People's Republic of China style. The apparent attempt to disregard the outcome of the presidential elections and delegitimize President Trump's governance is not just the political left being a sore loser and incapable of accepting the rebuke of their Marxist-utopian globalist ideas by the electorate. In essence, it is a fascistic move on the part of those liberal and progressive elements in society and state who, in their arrogant hubris to govern unimpeded for the foreseeable future, might not even be consciously aware of the baseness of their doings. 

As I made clear in my blog essay below on "Truth in Life and Politics," to acknowledge existential verities and show dignity in the face of a legitimate opponent's victory requires proper knowledge and understanding of human relations and necessitates ethical disposition and moral strength. The current state of social and political affairs in the United States of America demonstrates most ostensibly the interconnection between the theoretical and practical judgment, the inescapable bond between knowledge and action, cognition, and morality. 

When the intent to see elected officials fail becomes more important than helping them succeed, an existential threat emerges. When, in a democratic political system, partisan dogmatism and party-political arrogance gain the nation's best interest over partisan dogmatism and party-political arrogance, the disconnect between those two intrinsic components of sound practice and meaningful human behavior amplifies.

The victory of Donald Trump has shocked the radical left in this country and united them in their desperation. The plebeians of our day have taken to the streets. Countrywide demonstrations peak in calls to remove Trump from office, with individual exponents even bluntly calling for his assassination. Rather than bringing people to their senses and quelling the riot, pundits and elected representatives stir the hatred and encourage the firebrand.  

Over time, the plebeians have managed to turn values and righteousness upside down through their aggressive agitation. They've turned right into wrong, straight into crooked, the upstanding is now considered insincere, and termed the reasonable 'un-American.' 

They deprived our societies of their religious foundation and are fervently working on dismantling any possible common denominator that could serve, beyond the pluralism of values and political stances, as a unifying force. (On that destructive aspect, read my blog essay on "The Crisis of Morality" of March 31, 2015, https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2015/03/the-crisis-of-morality.html). The plebeians of our day usurped the editorial offices of mainstream media outlets, they populate the academic quarters on the college campuses, and they became hateful obstructionists on Capitol Hill. 

At this juncture, perhaps the most pressing question is whether or not this culture war that is in full swing will escalate into what some commentators have already heralded as the Second American Civil War. We shall find out soon if the left's tyranny will ease up on their mental authoritarianism or drag this nation into a large-scale violent uprising and outright civil war.

Failed US Foreign Policies Result in New Form of Radicalized Warfare

When talking to friends before the presidential election in 2012, I repeatedly stated that if Barack Obama had character and proper self-awareness, he would resign. He would declare to his people that he found out that he was totally in over his head during his first tenure and realized his utter incapability to carry out the most powerful job in the world. While the option for him to resign is still on the table, albeit with minuscule probability, I ascribed his reelection to colossal political illiteracy on the part of the majority of American people. 

It demonstrated that irrational ideological prejudice and preconceived notions of politics control Americans' minds. The seed of liberal socialization and the lunacy of political correctness yield their fruits and cloud, if not incapacitate, sound political judgment. 

Yet, not even I, in my deep cultural pessimism about the decline of the Western world, was able to anticipate the utter disaster the Obama presidency, quite often not only supported by his party but rather by equally misguided politicians from the other side of the aisle, was going to bring about. I've been commenting on the blunder of Obama policies in domestic affairs (e.g., immigration, healthcare, same-sex marriage) and foreign affairs (e.g., Egypt, Libya, Syria, Ukraine) in previous blogs. While I am not happy that the catastrophes that unfolded inside and outside the U.S. proved me right, I shall not repeat myself. But the hope lives on that readers will scroll down and read expositions that can usually neither find in mainstream media nor high school and college education, for that matter. 

Here I focus on international relations and elaborate on another most destructive effect yielded by the Obama regime's failed policies. An outcome that moves into the limelight of international politics, especially after the Caucasus and the Middle East have become engulfed by raging conflagrations far beyond warfare's usual stakes. 

 

The encouragement and even unconditional military support and armament of the opposition forces at first in Libya, then in Syria, the childish announcement of "Assad must go" by Obama and his silly drawing of a red line regarding chemical weapons has caused irreversible damage. It brought the war back to Iraq and more or less nullified the progress achieved there in the past decade. But it also generated a new kind of asymmetrical threat, one that is far worse than the asymmetrical warfare against global terrorism we have become used to ever since September 11, 2001. The Obama administration has radicalized smoldering conflicts by taking out established regimes or politically emboldening and militarily strengthening dubious insurgent forces. They removed or significantly weakened regionally pacifying governments and political administrations that usually contain armed conflict or at least keep it within certain bounds and on a politically controllable level. 

The emergence of the I.S. - the Islamic State, a terrorist group that initially appeared on the scene as ISIS/Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) - would not have been possible without the incoherent and misguided foreign policy of the Obama administration. It ushered the Middle East into a new era of asymmetrical warfare that has a direct global impact and should concern the U.S. as well as the entire occidental world. 

The I.S. replaced the pinpointed and mostly arbitrary violence of terrorism with the horror of planned persecution of religious, foremost Christian minorities and magnitude and barbarity of killings that include crucifixions and the beheading of children. (For my article on the history of ideas of terrorism, go to the Homeland Security Digital Library at https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=455848). The brutality and destructiveness of I.S.'s operations have even scared away the Iraqi army, who did not put up a decent fight despite superiority in numbers and trained by American instructors. 

A self-appointed conglomerate of radical Islamist thugs, using to significant degree weapons sent to Syrian opposition forces by the U.S., made the established and decently trained, organized, and equipped regular Iraq army run. Human atrocities committed by the I.S. are accompanied by targeted vandalism, destruction of churches and other cultural treasures, causing irreversible damage to humankind's cultural heritage. I counted the armament of Syrian rebels as one of the disastrous foreign policy failures in my post of May 10, 2013 (https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2013/05/disastrous-foreign-policy-failures.html). 

It is mind-boggling to be aware that almost all of this could have been prevented. Alas, the ignorance of the incumbent political administration is stunning. A strategically overwhelmed president at the helm who has no sound concept of international affairs and cultural interrelations in his mind caused damage whose magnitude is mind-boggling, given the brevity of the few years he has been in office. If ever, it might take generations to correct the committed errors.

However, the fact is that fundamental misconceptions about political (and thus profoundly human) affairs magnify themselves in implementing political ideas. For preventing further damage to global issues, a swift turnaround must bring American (and Transatlantic, for that matter) foreign policy to its senses. 

Given Mr. Obama's stubbornness and hubris and conceitedness, there is little hope things will get better in the two years he has left in office. Unless, of course, his ignorance and ideological prejudice will be reined in by the Senate, by Congress, and by a significant majority of the American public.