02-09-2017, 03:53 PM
The greatest risk of a 4T is apocalyptic war, and war is an even more horrible prospect with a dictatorial order. The most horrific warfare ever in modern times was between two political orders infamous for their mass murder -- Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union. Political orders that treat the lives of their own citizens as consummately expendable even without war are especially prone to treating war as an enterprise to be waged without quarter, with genocide and slavery. Human life is incredibly cheap under any dictatorship, and I would expect no difference in that pattern in America. Our American culture is not that different in its foundations from that of Weimar Germany.
Dictatorial regimes act irresponsibly toward pariahs, whether Armenians in Ottoman Turkey, Jews in Germany, kulaks in the USSR, or educated people under the Khmer Rouge. No country has more potential targets for official misconduct than does America. Minorities doing well have proved especially vulnerable... Jews again? Middle-class blacks? Asian-Americans? The helpless wretches who do cheap labor under appalling conditions are comparatively safe because the exploiters protect them. But people seen as somewhat successful and somehow different are easy to blame for any economic distress or political tumult when the political leadership that must shift blame for its failures elsewhere.
Say what you want about the Democratic Peace Theory of the late Rudolph Rummell -- democracies do not end up in wars against each other no matter what the cultural differences are. Tyrannies wage war no matter what the cultural similarities are. Tyrants see resources to plunder and people to exploit beyond their borders. Democrats see resources available for fair dealing and people with much the same desires and motivations beyond their borders.
Dictatorial regimes act irresponsibly toward pariahs, whether Armenians in Ottoman Turkey, Jews in Germany, kulaks in the USSR, or educated people under the Khmer Rouge. No country has more potential targets for official misconduct than does America. Minorities doing well have proved especially vulnerable... Jews again? Middle-class blacks? Asian-Americans? The helpless wretches who do cheap labor under appalling conditions are comparatively safe because the exploiters protect them. But people seen as somewhat successful and somehow different are easy to blame for any economic distress or political tumult when the political leadership that must shift blame for its failures elsewhere.
Say what you want about the Democratic Peace Theory of the late Rudolph Rummell -- democracies do not end up in wars against each other no matter what the cultural differences are. Tyrannies wage war no matter what the cultural similarities are. Tyrants see resources to plunder and people to exploit beyond their borders. Democrats see resources available for fair dealing and people with much the same desires and motivations beyond their borders.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.