An embattled chief of state. Demands
for leaving office. Demands for more freedom. Protests. Liberal progressives
versus die-hard conservatives focused on money. Is it the United States?
Venezuela? Hong Kong? Bolivia? Or is this just happening all over the world as
old-world autocratic socialism – which has lifted well over a billion people
out of poverty in China alone – confronts: Insert List: Free speech. Free markets.
Democracy. Capitalism. What do scarce and climate-change-impaired resources and
habitat, population growth and tectonic global power shifts, explosive
automation and information-sharing plus social media have to do with this? Add
people fleeing environmental death and war. Mass migration. The capacity to
impose “Big Brother” and make it work.
To those who say you cannot have
“socialism” (literally the abolition of meaningful private property) without
dictatorship – you have to force the rich to give up their financial, real
estate and market control, their privileged status – they believe that
autocratic force is absolutely required. Yesterday’s vision of Communism. The
Chinese deal: you give us prosperity, and government, you get total political control.
Venezuela tried to mandate prosperity but, without even the most rudimentary
understanding of economics, failed at every level. Everybody, except the
military, was big loser.
In the Western World, there is
actually very little true socialism. Private ownership abounds
everywhere, although tax rates vary as economies bear the strain. What we have
all over the West are social programs, ranging from public education, to
retirement and unemployment safety nets, to universal healthcare. To the
uninformed – or misinformed by the deeply manipulative – they are happy to take
the prefix “social” that appears in the description of “social programs” and
rewrite that word with a little “ism,” and too many Americans immediately merge
the two high divergent concepts into the much hated word “socialism.”
While those bone fide social programs
in Western nations are the product of elected leaders and legislatures, those
who prefer not to help their fellow citizens in need so as to line their
pockets and accelerate income inequality to the present intolerable levers,
conflate socialism and social programs purposely to confuse the
voters they need to maintain their playing field tilting privilege.
We already know the disasters we call
Venezuela and North Korea are failed states that exist solely by reason of a
powerful and repressive military. They have not bought into the Chinese
contract between citizenry and the rulers. But as economically successful as
China has become, those in Hong Kong have lived so long within their own sphere
of prosperity that the Chinese message of exploding prosperity carries
virtually no weight.
Since the 1997 handover of the former
British Crown Colony to the People’s Republic of China, it has been One Country
with Two Systems… under which British law was to continue for 50 years. China’s
patience with that construct wore thin; the PRC slowly eroded freedom,
repressed those who disagreed and slowly inculcated their autocratic views into
Hong Kong governance. Waves of HK residents left on or before the handover.
More left when protests erupted in 2003, when China clamped down on HK
residents under pretext of “national security.” Another flood of emigres as the
2014 Umbrella Movement protested for greater democratic protections.
But nothing remotely as nasty as the
violent protests, and the violent countermeasures, mounted in June (against
pro-PRC HK leader, Carrie Lam, pictured above) and the months following had
ever been experienced. It got a whole lot worse starting on November 18th.
More HK residents have had enough: “Early Monday [11/15], matters took an even
more perilous turn when Hong Kong police stormed a university campus held by
protesters after an all-night standoff that included barrages of tear gas and
water cannon. Police set up a dragnet around the campus to try to arrest
protesters, who typically try to melt away after blocking traffic or causing
other disruptions. Also Monday, the high court struck down a mask ban imposed
by the government last month.
“In some ways, [many are following]
of middle-class Hong Kongers, so many of whom left long ago for the United
States, Canada or Australia… They are the children of mainland Chinese who fled
a China afflicted by famines and purges. Mistrust of the Beijing government —
along with an instinct to seek safer pastures abroad — is practically ingrained
in their DNA… The agonizing choice to start new lives thousands of miles away
is often cinched by the belief they’re giving their children a more secure
future…
“Requests for background-check
documents needed to move abroad have surged since July, with the 3,597
applications in September more than doubling that month’s total a year earlier,
according to police. As of late last month, 25,768 applications had been filed
this year — far surpassing the total for all of 2018.
“The increase has rekindled memories
of the 1990s, when an estimated 800,000 people fled Hong Kong. The exodus was
motivated in large part by the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, which
many people worried was a preview of Chinese rule in Hong Kong after the
handover from Britain.” Los Angeles Times, November 18th.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the
world, home to a failed socialist experiment, sits the abdication of Bolivian
President Evo Morales (pictured above), friend to Cuba’s Castro regime and that
of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, nemesis to the United States. Writing for the
LA Times (11/18), Patrick McDonnell fills in some of the relevant history: “The
Andean nation of Bolivia, home to 11 million, has been engulfed in political
turmoil since disputed elections were held last month. Ex-President Evo Morales
is now in exile in Mexico…
“Morales, 60, was elected in 2005 on
a socialist platform and served as the first president from Bolivia’s
historically marginalized indigenous community. His rise was significant in a
nation long run by a mostly white and mixed-race elite with close ties to the
United States and multinational corporations. Morales has emerged as an icon of
the international left… [and] comes from humble origins — before seeking public
office he had been a llama herder, bricklayer, sugar-cane cutter, trumpet
player in a traveling band and head of the federation representing growers of
the coca leaf, from which cocaine is derived… The latter post propelled Morales
into national prominence, and the country’s many cocaleros remain crucial
allies.
“What happened in Bolivia’s
elections?... Morales says he won reelection cleanly in the Oct. 20 balloting.
But thousands took to the streets alleging that the results had been rigged.
Morales finally agreed to new balloting after a team from the Organization of
American States found widespread irregularities…
“Morales’ policies during almost 14
years in office helped reduce poverty and elevate living standards in what has
long been one of South America’s poorest nations. A country with a long history
of social unrest and military takeovers was mostly stable. Despite his fiery
socialist pronouncements, Morales was known for pragmatic economic decisions.
Revenue from natural gas — the country’s major export — was funneled to social
programs. Bolivia remains extremely poor, but inequality has been reduced.
Millions credit Morales and revere him.
“What do his detractors say about
Morales?... Critics say Morales has shown increasingly autocratic tendencies
and an apparent desire to be president for life. He refused to abide by a 2016
national referendum in which Bolivians upheld term limits, saying ‘the people’
urged him to run again. A ruling from a court that critics say was packed with
Morales supporters paved the way for him to seek a fourth term this year.”
Despite the court ruling, that’s not exactly what the Bolivian constitution
says.
The nation is now racked with violent
protests. Instability reigns supreme. What now? “Morales’ departure, and the
exit of his vice president and other constitutionally designated successors,
left a power vacuum in Bolivia. A conservative opposition senator, Jeanine
Añez, declared herself Senate leader and interim president at a legislative
session lacking a legal quorum and absent lawmakers from Morales’ Movement
Toward Socialism party, which has majorities in both congressional houses. The
self-appointed interim leader toted an oversized Bible to the presidential
palace, a rebuke of Morales’ preference for indigenous religious symbols in a
nation where much of the population remains Roman Catholic. Añez is allied with
right-wing activists based in the eastern city of Santa Cruz, long a bastion of
anti-Morales sentiment.” LA Times.
An exchange of autocracies? Perhaps.
But what resonates in Venezuela, Bolivia and Hong Kong is the difficulty of an
autocracy trying to shield its people from the tsunami of news from media and
social media that clearly shows how freedom is increasingly universally
expressed. Even as the United States is witnessing a powerful attempt to rule
by fiat, increasingly autocracy is not finding root with peoples from all
economic strata.
What does this say for the world?
While we might like to think that democracy trumps dictatorships, in fact what
we are witnessing is an increase in the resultant confrontation as the old and
the new battle, rather literally, against each other. Guns, police/military,
tear gas and repression from governments with military power. Which
increasingly suggests that the “decider” is almost always the military. Not a
good vision, but the increase in global repression is becoming scary.
I’m
Peter Dekom, and the world almost seems as if a new pinball of unrest is fired
into the world every month.
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