A new spectre is haunting the world: the spectre of authoritarian democracy. Soon enough, history books will tell the story about the times when the American Empire´s two great ideological flags – democracy and freedom – ended up turned into pieces of a stage of power that gave birth to the age of the Authoritarian Democracy.
China, the economic engine of the 21st century, is the best prove that capitalism does not need to dress up as a democracy to prosper. In its return to power in Russia, the Soviet oligarchy also did not need the effective suffrage or the non-reelection. Even in old Europe it is not concealed that current democratic processes have been reduced to simple marketing game. With Brexit or without Brexit, the UK has an increasingly inefficient governing class. The southern continent is plunged by the weight of its demography and the inefficiency of its economies.
And the United States? As in all other regions of the world where the huge wave of popular tsunami severely hit the establishment associated with savage capitalism, in the land of the twittering president, democracy is today a caricature of what it once purported to be.
It was only half a year before the benchmark of impeachment became the benchmark for the new tenant in the White House.
Not so different from the populist leftist governments that governed much of Latin America in recent years, in the big U.S.A. the speeches are hardening and the rhetoric heating up along with the inefficiency and evidence of corruption.
Dangerous summer
Beyond its hot rhetoric, diplomatic failures and deep internal problems, the U.S. government is preparing for the only way out that its own “rationality” points to: war.
Will it be against Iran, as it has promoted for the last couple of decades the most radical wing of the alliance between the Arab sheiks and the big companies of the era of hydrocarbons? Will it be in Qatar, the new objective of the warlords who would profit so much from the return of the crusades? All against the Shiite version of the Muslim world? Or perhaps an easy conflict against the corruption and incompetence of the remains of the South American Chavismo?
As climate change continues to accelerate the devastation of the environment in virtually every corner of the world, economic inequality accelerates social distress, especially among those nearly one billion young people aimlessly and without too much faith in the system.
Like 100 years ago, the old oligarchies run out of time and collide with each other, the masses are hungry and the drums of conflict are music to the ears of those who, from terrorism or the law and order version of the same, seek to build the new global order.
As witnesses or as participants, we all must be part of this historical moment, due the world has become a smaller place due to the digital revolution of the last half century. With or without democracy, the power of the individual has never been greater. During the next few months, the balance of power will be defined in each place, in each network, in each social group. Morally the option is very simple: We should to be on the right side of history.
