Trump's victory has raised again the issue of the crisis of democracy (https://www.ft.com/content/e8ac09ea-c300-4249-af7d-109003afb893?s=08). Incumbents in the ten major countries have lost their elections, allegedly the first time it happens "in almost 120 years of records" (https://www.ft.com/content/e8ac09ea-c300-4249-af7d-109003afb893?s=08). It looks like Russia and China have won (or are winning) the cultural battle against the West. Totalitarianism has arisen from the ashes; the fact is: it was never dead.
The concept of crisis comes from the field of medicine in Ancient Greece and it contains both a description of a state of affairs and a call to action. It describes a body in a transition state, namely, in such a delicate state that something needs to be done or it will perish. The seriousness of the situation thus becomes a call to action: it's now or never! However, semantics, as Niklas Luhmann used to say, always lags behind social structure, which is faster and more dynamic. So, as a rule of thumb, if there's a talk about crisis, it's probably too late.
And it seems that in fact it is. There is a crucial difference between democracy as property of the political system and democracy as a political program. As a property of the political system it describes the behavior of the system in time. Since social systems behave pretty much like dynamic systems, this means that the system's autopoiesis oscillates within an attractor basin, where all of the options (namely, the spectrum of political parties) converge around the principles of the rule of law, freedom of speech, balance of powers and so on (that is, the main ideas that are historically associated with democracy).
However, when the natural oscillation of the modern and complex world political system moves between one or more allegedly democratic options and one or more non-democratic options, there is no longer such a property. And this is the point we are at right now. We are living in a period of instability and, in some sense, it is sound to talk about crisis because, at least in principle, a turn back to democracy is still possible.
Nonetheless, what is prevalent here is that democracy is no longer an "institution", but a political program (more or less ideologized). When the performance of democratic governments is no longer appealing to the electorate, it looks like what is needed is to appeal to those historical principles. But is it enough?
What Fukuyama called The End of History opened a period in contemporary history where people forgot what democracy stood against; it was thought that the totalitarian threat was over, dead. So when totalitarianism made its comeback no one was prepared, let alone be able to recognize it as such. Younger generations never lived or experienced totalitarianism. So, like Venezuelans did in 1998, many are willing to throw away democracy and embrace new promises of greatness and welfare.
What contains or foster the propagation of the authoritarianism and its varieties, are the forms of organization of power, namely, the institutions so to speak of each nation state. Will institutions in the USA keep authoritarianism at bay?
There’s another crisis at play, one that is often ignored. I will call it the crisis of the individual. There are, for certain, external factors that have contributed to the erosion of democracy and to the moral decay of the individual. Russia’s and China’s propaganda and missinformation campaigns cannot be ignored. Nevertheless, the fall of democracy has come from within. Moral relativism and its expressions often defined as woke are to blame. Besides, leftist ideology has always been a trojan horse; it is essentially undemocratic.
The root of the problem is moral relativism enabled by industrial chemistry and cosmetology. I mean, we live in times where there are men that are not men, women that are not women, burgers without meet, beers without alcohol, and so forth. This state of affairs has allowed the individual not to confront their inner contradictions and to resign to introspection. For instance, if I am on a diet I should not eat burgers in the first place; if I am vegetarian, vegan or whatever, why do I need meat-looking food? And the examples may go on and on.
Don’t get me wrong! I have nothing against the LGTB community or against vegans and the like. I am against the ideology the left has built around these communities and their rights.
I mean, marketing and cosmetology allow us to believe the lies we tell ourselves. It’s the erasure of distinction, and consequently, the disguise of contradiction as choice. It blinds us to the fact that every choice we make has trade-offs and that we are responsible for our decisions, not marketing, not the media, not capitalism.
And this is what every discourse tackling the political problems of our time lacks: where is individual responsibility? What is the fate of democracy if citizens are not used to reflect, to resolve their contradictions and to face and assume the consequences of their choices?