https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-10-2023
"Over all the torrent of news these days is a fundamental struggle about the
nature of human government. Is democracy still a viable form of government, or
is it better for a country to have a strongman in charge?
Democracy stands on the principle of equality for all people, and those who are
turning away from democracy, including the right wing in the United States,
object to that equality. They worry that equal rights for women and
minorities—especially LGBTQ people—will undermine traditional religion and
traditional power structures. They believe democracy saps the morals of a
country and are eager for a strong leader who will use the power of the
government to reinforce their worldview.
But empowering a strongman ends oversight and enables those in power to think
of themselves as above the law. In the short term, it permits those in power to
use the apparatus of their government to enrich themselves at the expense of
the people of their country. Their supporters don’t care: they are willing to
accept the cost of corruption so long as the government persecutes those they
see as their enemies. But that deal is vulnerable when it becomes clear the
government cannot respond to an immediate public crisis.
That equation is painfully clear right now in Turkey and Syria, where more than
380,000 people are homeless after Monday’s devastating earthquakes. The death
toll has climbed to more than 23,000, and more than 78,000 are injured. So far.
Just a month ago, Turkey’s president President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan promised
that the country had the fastest and most effective system of response to
disaster in the world.
But that promise has been exposed as a lie. As Jen Kirby pointed out in Vox
yesterday, Erdoğan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), who have
been moving the country toward autocracy, rose to power thanks to a
construction boom in the 2010s that both drove economic growth and permitted
Erdoğan to hand out contracts to his supporters. The collapse of more than
6,400 buildings in Monday’s quakes have brought attention to cost cutting and
bribery to get around building codes. At the same time, since a big quake in
1999, homeowners have been paying an earthquake tax that should, by now, have
been worth tens of billions of dollars, but none of that money seems to be
available, and Erdoğan won’t say where it went."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
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mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
