Impediments (2022) 描画 Edwin Loftus によって

There they go again, those pesky impediments to achieving something called "progress."
If any of us survive the next year, what with Russia trying to seize the Donbas region in the Ukraine and China wanting to seize Taiwan and America led by a doddering old crook whose idea of "progress" is to reduce America to a copy of Russia and China ... that issue is in doubt as it hasn't been since the Cold War ... we will find ourselves still at an 'inflection point', in which the world is poised between two choices: Authoritarianism or Democracy.
Both sides view themselves as the 'True Friends of the People'. So, whether you're on my side or the other, or think you can ignore it all because it doesn't really matter, you can probably identify with this image.
You might think you are the green giant who is reaching for the light but held back by all of those little fools who can't see as clearly as you can. If you think your cause is in the ascendency, that's who you probably identify with.
If you don't think your cause is in the ascendency, you more likely identify with the many little pink people trying to drag the green giant down, (or hold it back).
At the most fundamental level, both sides are right because both sides are based on fundamental truths about a large part of humanity. Many of us would fare better under authoritarian but benevolent rule. And many of us would fare better under democracy, one form or another of rule of the people.
There is an alternative. American Federalism, in its original design, (not its current practice), allows both approaches to exist at the same time, (democracy in some regions, authoritarianism in others). But that alternative won't necessarily work for every people in every part of the world, and it didn't work as well as it should have for everybody that lived in the original United States of America.
The 20th Century may only have been the beginning of an age of conflict between these two opposed directions, so it might behoove all of us to take a longer and closer look at this system that allowed compromise and coexistence, until it didn't.
Historically, autonomous regional governments with the individual right to choose which style of government you wanted to live under, failed because of that failure to extend its benefits to all of its citizens, but even in that failure, (The American Civil War, 1860 - 1865), it recovered and established a better place to live than most, in many important ways, (people still risk their lives to get a chance to live in America, about 2 million last year, 2021). What James Madison described as "Doubly Divided Government", was a new idea when America became a union of states. You have two hundred years of observing the problems with that first effort to learn from and should be able to do better.
It's that or the scene depicted in this image, a struggle between two opposing philosophies of government with no way to found a system that will work for the other half of the people, and neither side ever being able to achieve its promise because of the impediments presented by those who disagree.

関連テーマ

AuthoritarianismDemocracyFederalism