Category Archives: The Sleep of Reason

The Weird World of the West

Decline of the west, Pessimism, reason, Sacred Ignorance, The Sleep of Reason

 

One thing at least is clear. The world is weird and so is Donald Trump. He may be the weirdest of them all.

 

First of all, we all know that Trump hates renewable energy with a passion. He likes oil, gas, and coal, even when the world, particularly China is moving towards renewable energy. So he has done everything he could do to hold back the turn to renewable energy in the United States because he thinks that the United States is tied to fossil fuels and can benefit from holding back renewables. Added to that the giant energy corporations which he solicited Bigly in the 2024 election are his buddies. He likes them. He understands them. They are greedy like him and are trying to squeeze every dollar out of the fossil fuel economy while it is still significant.

 

There is one other important element here. Trump started the war against Iran entirely on his own initiative. That war is on him and he caused it when no one was encouraging him to attack Iran except right wing zealots from times of yore.

 

Many countries have reacted to this scary thing in variety of ways. Some have tried to find new ways to get their oil to the markets by avoiding the Straight of Hormuz. The allies of the United States like Saudi Arabia and many others have relied on the United States to provide order, stability, and protection. But their American  guarantor has heavily disappointed them.

 

That was has scared a lot of countries. They saw how a relatively small country like Iran without a great deal of power could react to a punishing attack by the richest and most heavily armed country in the world and in effect hold a massive world economy up for ransom in the process.  Ian Bremner an international risk assessment expert had some interesting things to say about this on Fareed Zakaria’s television show on CNN:

 

“It really unnerves them, because they understand that on the back of a unilateral American decision that a relatively small country, can put them at risk  put and can hold a 100 plus trillion dollar global economy at risk and there are tremendous implications of this. One is that OPEC is functionally dead. That is why the Emirates have left. They don’t want to be held with stranded assets…This is also going to affect countries around the world because they can see that these straits, not just here [Hormuz] but also the Red Sea also the Malaqqa are very vulnerable, moving them to renewable energy in a much, much, faster way…We can look back at this in 10 years and see that orange is the new Green. Trump will have done more for renewable energy unintentionally than any other president in US history!”

 

All of this accumulated so much that Bremner said Trump’s starting the War against Iran was “the biggest foreign [policy] mistake of his administration by a very long margin.” This of course was such a big mistake not because it pushed many countries towards renewables, for that was a good thing, but because it pushed China even farther down its agenda in turning away from fossil fuels and more towards renewables which is givng it an incredibe leg up on the US in making its shift to green energy when the US stupidly goes in the opposite direction. China will be eating the US’s lunch.

 

The world is really weird all. And getting weirder all the time.

 

This should hardly be surprising to anyone though. What do you expect when you combine great ignorance with great power as America has done? That’s what sacred ignorance is all about.

Worshipping Ignorance 

Climate change, The Sleep of Reason, The War on Smart

 

On his first day in office President Trump withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords, even though many heads of American corporations urged him not to do that. In Canada, on his first day as Prime Minister, Mark Carney axed the carbon tax as Pierre Polievre had been demanding.

 

Trump has actually gone farther than Carney, because he has also rolled back what McKibben referred to as “an incredible rollback of pretty much of all environmental regulation dating back to 1970.”

 

What makes McKibben particularly disappointed in America is that it is where so much of the important science warning us about climate change has come from, and now they are turning their backs on all of this knowledge and ignoring it. Another case of what I have been calling sacred ignorance.

 

As McKibben said,

 

“The U.S. was the place where we first understood what was happening. We were the first people to measure carbon in the atmosphere. The people that built the computer models that helped give us the warnings about what was coming. And those are precisely the programs that are now being chopped off. Even the programs where we measure the amount of carbon in the atmosphere or the temperature of the Earth are under assault, as if, by not measuring it, it might go away. But that’s not how physics works…. And willfully blinding ourselves to it is — has to rank high on the list of dumbest things that governments have ever done.”

 

That is an example of what I have called devotion to ignorance. Not the best approach.

 

But there might even be one thing they have done that is even dumber. That is ignoring the fact that it is already well understood that the cheapest power now on the planet is solar energy and America is ignoring that, unlike its chief world rival China. China now produces 2/3 of the world’s solar power while America is ramping up coal production! As McKibben said, “they’re going to own the future and we’re going to have some coal mines.” That’s why he says, “China will be eating our lunch.”

They don’t worship stupidity.

Why do Countries that Know Fascism Slip Back into Fascism?

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Authoritarianism, Death of Democracy, Fascism, Hungary, Populism, The Sleep of Reason, Tyranny and Fascism

 

 

During the entire time I was cruising through the Balkans along the Danube River I kept coming back to a question that was haunting me:  Why do so many countries that experienced fascism and know how awful it is, slip back into it?  You would think they know better and would avoid it, but so often they don’t.  Perhaps the best example of this is Hungary.  It was a long-time vassal state of the Soviet Union. Then for a very short time it was a genuine democracy. Yet it seems to be sliding back into fascism and some even suggest it has already gone all the way back. What happened and why?

 

After I got back to Canada without solving the problem on the trip, I heard an interview by Fareed Zakaria with a very interesting Bulgarian born political scientist, Ivan Krastev. Zakaria was interested in the same question as I was.  He put the question this way: “One of the biggest threats to liberal democracy these days comes from a region that was once considered its brightest horizon, Eastern Europe.” He, like me, was particularly interested in Hungary because of its sharp turn towards autocracy after Viktor Orbán was re-elected after losing his Parliamentary majority after the first election.

 

Krastev started said this:

 

“This is very interesting about the liberal revolutions. After every revolution, people were leaving the country. But normally this is the defeated party. This is the white Russians who left after the Bolshevik Revolution. After the liberal revolution of 1989, the first to leave with the liberals because they went immediately to study, to work, to live abroad. And suddenly the idea was that what they should do is to imitate the West.”

 

Every expected them to follow the west. The people who were left in Poland after Communism collapsed, just as in Hungary as well, were resentful that they were told by the political elites that were left, that they ought to copy the west. They were left out, just like non-college educated people in the United States, have felt left out by the liberal elites. And, as Friedrich Nietzsche knew, resentment is a very powerful emotion. Resentment is dynamite.

 

If they were expected to be like Germany, for example, then why not rather just go to Germany. No one likes to slavish follow someone else. They felt like losers. And as the American Democrats have learned the hard way, no one likes that.

 

Added to that, if the west won the war so conclusively, as it seemed, why did the “winners,” from the west leave the country? That is highly unusual, yet in so many of the former satellite countries, the liberals left the country, leaving a mess behind.

 

According to Krastev, after the fall of communism when the liberals were gone, the people were expected to imitate the west who won the cold war, but none of them wanted to do that. As Krastev said,

“But you know what? Imitation is not a fun business. If I’m imitating you, it means that I recognize that you are better than me. And then, if I’m imitating you, what about me? So, this resentment against imitation, in my view, was the reason why in eastern Europe, much earlier than in other parts, you have this kind of populist resentment saying, OK, you are not better than us.”

 

The pride of the people left out was hurt. Many of the people felt like they were looked down upon by the west and very much resented that.

Added to that, as Krastev  Orbán was a “very gifted politician”  who  could manipulate the system in Hungary so that the rules of the game would be rigged to ensure his election. For example, he made sure all of the media supported him. If they didn’t’ they lost their licences.  Trump has been threatening the same thing in the US and the threats have worked. As a result of all of this, the former Russian satellites became  more like Russia and eastern Europe than America, even though Russia lost the Cold War. And they are transforming the west to be more like Russia! And as if that is not weird enough, the American right-wing is making America more like Russia too. The world is topsy-turvy. Led in part—a large part—by Donald Trump.

 

Orbán could cleverly navigate that world so his victory would be ensured. That was more important to him than democracy. Trump was pretty good at that too

 

Autocratic Leaders take advantage of our weaknesses

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, American Fascism, Authoritarianism, Critical thinking, Death of Democracy, Death of Truth, Fascism, Populism, The Sleep of Reason, Tyranny and Fascism

 

Populist, Machiavellian, and autocratic leaders have learned to take advantage of our natural (evolved) biases against us.  Goodman used the example of Andrew Tate in England to illustrate his point. I would use leaders with autocratic tendencies instead, like Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán. And of course, it seems to me, that the young people, being even more impressionable than the older people, seem to be most attracted to such strong man leaders.  Perhaps they are more impressionable, or perhaps, even more likely, they are the most unhappy with themselves.  In modern society, young people are starting to realize that their parent’s generation has screwed them by rigging the rules of society against them. It is no accident that this current generation, for the first time in history, is likely to live less well off than financially than their parents.

 

Strongmen, like Trump, are masters at using deceit and manipulation to create absurd trust in their abilities, against all evidence to the contrary, and then use that ability to propel themselves into positions of authority where they can use that authority to improve their own financial position at the expense of those who supported them. It’s a nasty trick if you can get away with it, and none is better at it than Donald Trump. Trump has done it many times and continues to do it as his supporters don’t seem to notice or don’t seem to care.

 

One of the techniques that strongmen in the past have used to gain influence over the populace include attacking science and knowledge. Hitler did it. Stalin did. And now Trump is doing it. When the Bolsheviks took power in Russia they quickly attacked the scientific community with claims that they were merely, “bourgeois” scientists who were acting on behalf of their financial supporters and then replaced them with more compliant and ideologically pure scientists. This is precisely what Trump has done by attacking woke scientists.

 

We must be careful to avoid allowing this to happen. As Jonathan Goodman said in his Guardian article,

 

“Where we see brute power combined with ignorance, we can throw our support behind knowledge, peaceful protest and education.

 

And finally, when reigns of terror end – and eventually, they always do – it is critical to learn and absorb the lessons. That way, we inoculate ourselves afresh against our natural tendency to trust the untrustworthy, carrying that wisdom forward into the future so that we’re better able to stymie the autocrats who seek to close our minds.

 

The best tool we can muster to defend ourselves from such attacks is our ability to think critically. We must cherish and protect that skill, as it is our most powerful weapon of self-defence. This is always our most powerful tool. When we give it up we submit to arbitrary and ruthless authority. That is why autocrats are so quick to attack it because that makes us defenceless to their attacks.

 

Are we hard-wired for autocracy?

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, American Fascism, Authoritarianism, Critical thinking, Death of Democracy, Fascism, The Sleep of Reason, Tyranny and Fascism

 

Jonathan R Goodman in an article in the Guaridan earlier this year asked this question “Are we hard-wired for autocracy? That is the big question.

 

Here is what he said,

A recent piece of research [in the UK] suggested that more than half of people aged between 13 and 27 would prefer the UK to be an authoritarian dictatorship… The way we evolved predisposes us to place trust in those who often deserve it least – in a sense, hardwiring us to support the most Machiavellian among us and to propel them into power. This seems like an intractable problem. But it’s what we do in the face of that knowledge that matters.

 

Yascha Mounk, Associate professor  at Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C. made similar claims about the US and backed it up with personal research. If both the US and UK are headed toward autocracy the world is in trouble. Sadly, there is a lot of evidence that this is the case.

 

Part of the problem is that humans have a strong liking to be led by strong men. Like our primate cousins. As Goodman wrote,

 

“Recent work in anthropology and primatology shows how this wiring evolved. Our ancient ancestors, like most primates today, lived in groups dominated by violent and aggressive alpha males. Yet over the course of our biological and cultural evolution, unlike our primate cousins, we learned to work together to counter those bullyboys, organising to diminish their influence.We learned that cooperation was more effective than bloody competition. We don’t have to be ruled by bullies, but it is natural so we must be careful, diligent and smart to resist the “natural” tendency. In fact, many now realized that it is through cooperation much more than individual initiative that humans have mastered the globe, where our primate cousins have fallen behind us in development.  As Goodman said, “Where we see brute power combined with ignorance, we can throw our support behind knowledge, peaceful protest and education.”

 

Our nearest evolutionary neighbours, chimpanzees,  also cooperate but not to the extent that we do. They are much more likely to be led by strong alpha males, though sadly and unwisely, in my view, we seem to be evolving towards their approach. Goodman put it this way in his article: “It’s human nature to trust strongmen, but we’ve also evolved the tools to resist them…”

 

The researchers  pointed out we have more recently evolved to cooperate more and compete less. That has come about from learning biases. In other words humans have evolved to believe what other people around us believe, particularly those we see as being successful. For example, in the US many people see Trump as successful. I don’t but they do. People evolved to believe the strong men in their group because that was where they could find protection. Scientists call these conformity or prestige biases.

 

There was an interesting scientific work by the  psychologist Solomon Asch that showed people would tend to believe what successful people around them believed, even when they were wrong. For example, he devised a test where people were asked a simple question. He asked them to compare 2 lines on a piece of paper that were actually the same length. But when they heard others around them say one was longer than the other, they tended to believe it as well.  This probably evolved with us when we lived in small hunting groups. However, those overly trusting beliefs can lead us into serious trouble. Autocratic leaders for example can exploit this natural tendency. Many of the autocrats  are very skillful at manipulating others. Goodman put it this way:

 

Some people call this trait proactive aggression, others, Machiavellian intelligence,  or the ability and inclination to dominate not with violence, but via social manoeuvring and deceit.

 

It is easy to see how this can apply to autocratic or wanna be autocratic leader, such as Victor Orbán in Hungary  or Trump. In other words they found that we can favor those among us who pretend to cooperate at least until they stop. Then they become rivals. We have to be smarter and think more critically.

 

These evolutionary traits can be helpful or dangerous.  When we realize we have these traits, as do most people around us, we have to be careful to look out for bad signs of trouble ahead. We can resist these tendencies, but too often don’t,

How did Hungary fall into Authoritarianism?

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, American Fascism, Death of Democracy, Fascism, Hungary, Populism, The Sleep of Reason, Tyranny and Fascism

 

Retuning to my question of how was it possible for a country such as Hungary to move from democracy to autocracy, I want to look at Hungary as a prime example.

 

Guardian writer Danielle Renwick wrote about how people learn to live with a dictator. To look at this issue from the perspective of Hungary she interviewed  Stefania Kapronczay the former head of Hungarian Civil Liberties Union.

 

In comparing the United States to Hungary she made one very important point that surprised me. Kapronczay said what is happening in the US does in fact echo what happened in Hungary but with one big difference:

 

“It’s happening much faster, and it’s surprising for me that so many private companies and institutions just complied with the perceived or expressed will of president Trump. I didn’t expect so many people would be so risk-averse.”

 

 

Viktor Orbán was first elected to power in Hungary as a capitalistic liberal in 1998 when the people in Hungary were very unhappy with post-cold war politics. That was actually a common reaction among countries that were from the Communist bloc and then felt lost when that bloc collapsed after 1989. This is not entirely different than the recent collapse of support for democracy among large segments of American and Canadian societies. That is why Hungry is so important.

 

A lot of people in Hungary thought Democracy did not deliver what people expected after the fall of communism. They hated communism but thought they would do better with democracy than they got.  In 2002 Orbán’s party lost power as people were dissatisfied and voted out his party.

 

Then later Orbán returned to power as the head of government after the Hungarian democratic elections in 2010 and then he was a different leader. He was no longer the liberal, so he changed the rules in his own favor. First, he changed the voting rules so it would be easier to get his party elected the next time. Trump did this too and is doing it now. I know Democrats have done that too but during this time Republicans in the US controlled more states. I often think very few people in the US actually want democracy.  Each time one party is in power they change rules for their own benefit.

 

Orbán, again like Trump, also stacked the judicial system with people who supported him. He also attacked the liberal universities, like the one run by Canada’s former leader of the Liberal party, Michael Ignatieff. Trump has done the same thing in the US. Orbán also went after the press to toe the party line, just as Trump has been doing with vigor. Orbán also attack unfriendly NGOs and again Trump has followed suit.  Also, Orbán made some changes that that helped the poor in Hungary.  Trump has done a little of this, but much less.

 

The key here is gradual steps of dismantling democracy.  It does not happen with a bang. It usually happens by small steps. innocuous, but ominous small steps.

 

Kapronczay warned us in the west that opposition parties must understand that it is not good enough to run on platforms defending democracy.  That is too esoteric for many electors. Opposition parties in the west must not fail to address basic pocket book issues or they will be turfed out of office or never get back in.

 

Kapronczay also pointed out one more important thing opponents of autocracy should do is to avoid extremism. Tas she said,: “Autocrats really want to polarize the society, so any kind of initiative that goes against it is really important.”  Politicians like Trump thrive on the extremes. The more the liberals rant and scream at him and his supporters the more Trump likes it and the more his supporters think he must be doing a great job.

Polarization and autocracy go together like love and marriage.

 

So how does a country slip into autocracy from a democracy? By small steps. No steps are more dangerous than baby steps.

 

Is Hungary a Fascist State?

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, American Fascism, Death of Democracy, Fascism, Populism, The Sleep of Reason

 

 

Andrew Marantz is a writer from the New Yorker and in the last couple of years has been paying a lot of attention to Hungary. He has visited it a number of times and he is very concerned about it. Besides writing about it, he has appeared in a number of podcasts together with Tyler Foggatt as part of The New Yorker Political Scene Podcasts.

 

Like me Marantz and Foggatt wanted to know: How bad have things got? How close to an authoritarian state has the United Statement become? And they started by looking at Hungary.

 

First, Marantz said when you go to Hungary, “it’s not a police state. It’s not like Russia.” This made me feel a little better. I was at the time travelling there. I have now been there again. When I was there I worried a bit about whether or not I had to be careful of what I looked at or read or wrote about. To the extent that fear was justified, Hungary is no longer a democracy, but an authoritarian state.

 

I wondered when I was there whether or not I should worry about what I wrote on my computer? Could I criticize Hungary? Could I criticize their leader Orbán? I really didn’t  want to go to jail. But I also didn’t want to shut up either.

 

Marantz also said this about Hungary on the podcast:

 

“It’s not like, you know, North Korea.  It’s a beautiful European capital where you walk around and it’s nice and you sit by the river and sip an espresso. And I interviewed all kinds of dissidents, academics, journalists who are opposed to the regime. And they didn’t say okay, you know, we can’t talk here. We have to go somewhere where we’re not going to be, you know hauled off into a van or something. Like that’s not the vibe.”

 

That sounded pretty good. I know Christiane and I visited Budapest in 2004 and I never once, not once, felt uneasy about being in a former Soviet satellite country.  But that was then. This is now.  And thanks to Viktor Orbán things now in 2025 are very different. And Hungary is a very good example for the rest of us about what can happen to a functioning democracy. Democratic countries can slide into autocracy or illiberal democracy or even fascism and many believe Hungary has done so under the second presidency of Viktor Orbán. He changed.

 

I know this time I felt a little different. I don’t want to exaggerate the feeling, but I don’t want to deny it either. So, what happened in Hungary between our last visit in 2004 2025.

 

First, what happened in Hungary has happened in many places in varying degrees.  A lot of countries around the world have been flirting with autocracy?  I visited some of them on this trip? Romania. Bulgaria. Serbia. And above all, Hungary. Why did this happen? That is the question I would really like to answer.

 

Some have suggested that we have a natural inclination to autocracy and not democracy. Disturbing research has shown that in many countries the popularity of democracy as a political system is in serious decline. And most disturbing of all is that the decline is pronounced in the United States, the country long known as the leader of the free world. It often claims to be the first constitutional democracy. Is it possible that democracy is declining even there? There is actually a lot of evidence, particular in the reign of Trump 2.0 that it has moved sharply in that direction.  Can America and Canada learn something from what happened in Hungary? Those are things that interest me.

Hungary: From Communism to Democracy to Fascism?

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Authoritarianism, Fascism, Hungary, The Sleep of Reason

Ever since we signed up for the tour of the Balkans, tour without adequate thought as I have said, I have thinking about Hungary?  Why would a country that came so close to a successful revolt against Soviet Union domination in 1956 that it became for a while the darling of the west, now, after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, and Hungary became a democracy  not very long ago, be sliding back into autocracy?  Hungarians  know what Communism was like? How and why could this happen? Why would they allow it to happen? These are the questions that have haunted me and for which I have sought an answer, or at least an insight. I never have answers, who am I kidding? I just get more questions.

 

It seems like such a long journey: from Communism to Democracy to Fascism, but Hungary seems to have moved there in a flash. Not that is completely fascist yet, but it sure seems to headed in that disturbing direction. To me it seems like that is the journey Hungary has embarked upon under the direction of its populist leader Viktor Orbán. But is that really such a long journey? I actually think not. After all, communists and fascists agree on one very important thing—democracy is bad; autocracy is good. It is a movement from extremism on the left communism, to democracy and then to extremism on right namely fascism.

 

It is actually a very short journey from communism to fascism. Communism began with a dream of universal brotherhood of man—i.e. from each according to his means to each according to his needs. A beautiful dream that turned into a nightmare.  As Max Eastman, said, communism was “the God that failed”. The dream curdled from hope to violence. Lenin may have been the cook that switched the recipe when the proletariat, working people, gave up the hopes of freedom and justice in favor of a dictatorship of the proletariat. When the communist leaders crushed the dreams of fellow feeling in their citizens  the  dreams of the proletariat turned inward and their hate and pain transformed  them into wolves instead.

 

When there is no longer room in the heart for empathy, it dies and kills part of us and the result is, as the singer song-writer Martyn Joseph said, “the good in us is dead.” Joseph feared would happen in that other Balkan state, Kosovo. What was left there were vicious dogs snarling and biting each other. And the brotherhood of man was given up as an empty dream. The best in them was dead. Leaving an empty burnt-out husk, incapable of love, empathy or fellow feeling. Only a corpse remained. That is the power of hate. It is as transformative as the power of love but in the opposite direction.

 

A couple of decades later, the world was left with another leader, Donald Trump who as I have said before, has the empathy of a turnip. His hatred turned a nation of brave men and women into a nation that feared itself, and found a scapegoat, the immigrants, who could be dispatched by a crowd in a packed arena at the 2020 Republican National Convention chanting gleefully, “Deportation Now.”  All of this while holding signs underneath smiling faces that read “Mass Deportation.”  This looked to me like the brownshirts of Nazi Germany who viciously turned on their Jewish neighbours. That was how the American MAGA crowd turned on their brown immigrant neighbours, demanding they be deported or sent to Latin American jails for torture. When your empathy is shredded what else could you do but shout for joy around calls to “lock them up?” The ugly ideology of Nazi Germany’s Kristallnacht had taken over in America. To me it felt viscerally, like there was a direct lineal line of descendant, from the Night of Broken glass in Germany against Jews led by the Nazi Party’s SS troops and aided by the hateful Hitler youth and then ordinary, but rancid, Germans to those American Republicans. The bullies again were in control, only this time in America.