FEAR populism & democracy! A brief explanation.

 

Populism is yet another self-inflicted consequence of our collective mental health problem - Anosognosia (a blindness to reality).  In this case we are blind to our global interdependence due to our mind’s belief in the illusion of independence.

Populism’s rise among the world’s democracies is a threat to human freedom and security globally.  And it may be heading toward another world war (something that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was intended to prevent).  

This predictable chaos is simple to explain and understand.  But only if one can admit the fundamental reason why democratic nations are increasingly failing to protect their voting populations from the unstoppable global forces that are persistently ignoring their national borders.   Pandemics, wars, genocides, extreme weather patterns, economic woes, corruption, cybercrimes, violent extremism, WMD proliferation, air pollution, forever chemicals, bio lab accidents...

Democratically derived laws intended to protect a nation’s freedoms and security cannot work in a world where ‘everything is connected, interdependent, and vulnerable.’  Humanities shared global reality requires global solutions.  Solutions that provide relief from these deadly pressures, build resilience everywhere, and intending to put humanity on a sustainable path of liberty and justice for all.

The bad news.  Even if all democracies united - but the billions of humans dominated by dictatorships and abject poverty can't join - the movement to establish global institutions (democratically elected with the sole purpose of protecting human freedom and security as Thomas Paine’s Common-Sense pamphlet implied) would fail.

In this context achieving the UNs 17 Sustainable Development Goals is our best chance of uniting humanity against the insanity of our current unsustainable global governance system.  A flawed system that persists in putting protection of national governments and corporations above the protection of inalienable human rights and the environment.  This will not end well. 

Here is one example of democracy leading to war.  

A 2017 Israeli Peace Index survey asked a question about applying the death penalty for Palestinians killing civilians and then specifically Palestinian killings of Israeli soldiers. The rate of Jewish Israelis supporting the first 70%, the latter 66%.  This result shows the view adopted by most Israeli Jews – as the survey itself noted:  “[I]n the view of a majority of the Jewish public, it makes no difference whether the victims of terror attacks are civilians or soldiers.” 

Yet the right to resist occupation, even and particularly through armed struggle, is internationally recognized, as in United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/RES/33/24 of 29 November 1978:  “2. Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, particularly armed struggle;”

So a majority of the Israeli public then of about 2/3 believes that Palestinian resistance as a crime deserving of death.