Why Has Chile Embraced the Extremes?
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/chile-presidential-election-political-extremes-by-andres-velasco-2021-12
Can the Center Hold Any Meaning?
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/political-centrism-by-jan-werner-mueller-2021-11
During the twentieth-century “age of ideological extremes,” political centrism had an obvious role to play in preserving democracy. But once democracy itself is in jeopardy, as it is in countries like the United States today, centrism becomes meaningless – or even dangerous.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/chile-presidential-election-political-extremes-by-andres-velasco-2021-12
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/political-centrism-by-jan-werner-mueller-2021-11
During the twentieth-century “age of ideological extremes,” political centrism had an obvious role to play in preserving democracy. But once democracy itself is in jeopardy, as it is in countries like the United States today, centrism becomes meaningless – or even dangerous.
Is society coming apart?
A warning from Harvard Historian Jill Lepore:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/25/society-thatcher-reagan-covid-pandemic
In many parts of the world, totalitarianism remains a danger, not from the state but from corporations that control data, knowledge and information. There is no escape. They know everything about you. You can hardly engage in a transaction – political, financial, cultural or social – without them. It’s less that the social fabric has grown frayed, its edges unravelling, than that the so-called social fabric is now manufactured, for profit, by monopolistic businesses, a cheap, throwaway fake.
Before the pandemic, there was a real world, and this fake one, real friendships and “friends”, political communities and “followers”, genuine political expression and “likes”. The risk, when interactions with other human beings are narrowed to these remote, glancing and often combative exchanges – simulations – is that, once the lockdowns are over, people will bring the culture of the virtual into the real, creating even angrier, more impatient, more superficial, more transactional, more commercial and less democratic societies.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/25/society-thatcher-reagan-covid-pandemic
In many parts of the world, totalitarianism remains a danger, not from the state but from corporations that control data, knowledge and information. There is no escape. They know everything about you. You can hardly engage in a transaction – political, financial, cultural or social – without them. It’s less that the social fabric has grown frayed, its edges unravelling, than that the so-called social fabric is now manufactured, for profit, by monopolistic businesses, a cheap, throwaway fake.
Before the pandemic, there was a real world, and this fake one, real friendships and “friends”, political communities and “followers”, genuine political expression and “likes”. The risk, when interactions with other human beings are narrowed to these remote, glancing and often combative exchanges – simulations – is that, once the lockdowns are over, people will bring the culture of the virtual into the real, creating even angrier, more impatient, more superficial, more transactional, more commercial and less democratic societies.
The End of Trust: Suspicion is undermining the American economy.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/trust-recession-economy/620522/
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/trust-recession-economy/620522/
Why Denmark Is More Resilient Than Germany and the U.S. in the Covid Age
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-11-20/denmark-is-more-resilient-than-the-u-s-and-germany-because-of-trust
The vital ingredient appears to be the level of trust in a society. But once it’s gone, can you get it back?
Denmark’s Hard Lessons About Trust and the Pandemic
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/14/opinion/denmark-trust-covid-vaccine.html
Related:
A new key to covid success: Not states but societies
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/a-new-key-to-covid-success-not-states-but-societies/2021/04/08/31142d74-98a7-11eb-a6d0-13d207aadb78_story.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-11-20/denmark-is-more-resilient-than-the-u-s-and-germany-because-of-trust
The vital ingredient appears to be the level of trust in a society. But once it’s gone, can you get it back?
Denmark’s Hard Lessons About Trust and the Pandemic
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/14/opinion/denmark-trust-covid-vaccine.html
Related:
A new key to covid success: Not states but societies
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/a-new-key-to-covid-success-not-states-but-societies/2021/04/08/31142d74-98a7-11eb-a6d0-13d207aadb78_story.html