The lessons from Trump's rise and the flaws of modern Democracy
- By Sumantra Maitra
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E-mail China.org.cn, March 19, 2016
Modern governance is therefore essentially a form of meritocracy, where people who are experts on subjects are there to form policy and make decisions. It is a fine balance to maintain, but no governance can be without experts.
That changed in the last twenty years, especially with the growth of social media. Social media gave the power of information, and with it, disinformation, in the hands of people who basically, don't know what they are talking about. They share and retweet things which they "think and feel" are true, without confirming whether they actually are. The entire world is essentially a gigantic mutating case of confirmation bias.
It breeds resentment. People, who are xenophobic by nature, for example, but whose ideas were hidden under layers and layers of propriety, are now openly forming their own cocooned groups, and sharing and perpetuating blatant propaganda, blaming migrants for job losses, for which they are completely unprepared anyway. The same free market competition, which has been promoted as a virtue since the 1980s, is now regarded as evil, as these same people who lose jobs to competition as manufacturing goes to China and the service sector office jobs go to India.
Donald Trump is essentially a manifestation of a sore loser complex, leading a pack of losers, while berating losers on twitter. The greatest irony is this: the U.S. is by no means in recession anymore. People, who support Trump, are not even on the streets, or without food. The entire victimhood is perceived, because victimhood is worshipped in modern Western societies. For someone, with the luxury of tweeting from an iPad about how they are the victims of a cruel society is laughable, but that's exactly what is happening. And no one is being called out for constantly disseminating or perpetuating these lies or propaganda on social media, nothing is controlled anymore.
Social media, which was supposed to make society more open and modern, fomented the rise of some of the most undemocratic, hateful and xenophobic crowds in the history of humanity. Modern democracy is now essentially freedom without consequences, and naturally bigots are leading movements again, just like in the 1930s.
There's a lesson that other powers should take. The greatest debate in philosophy was never between ideologies or economic policies. It was always between order and chaos. We, both in the West and East, now know how chaos spreads. We must learn how to control it.
Sumantra Maitra is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:
http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/SumantraMaitra.htm
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