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To give the critic of Bukele his due, the policies he's pursuing are remedial, akin to a father who can only restore of the family he failed to discipline be harsh beatings of violent and manipulative sons. I understand that he must circumvent the corrupt judiciary, as it has become a de facto arm of the gangs, but the policies Bukele pursues are the groundwork for a coercive government unaccountable to their people. I am not saying that he shouldn't pursue these policies--El Salvador is really in a state of emergency--but these solutions are indicative of a deeper disease. I think an ordered hierarchy of power is necessary to prevent a society from making the tradeoffs (unaccountable gov't control vs. violent gang control) that Bukele makes. Only when there are tiered, non-central nodes of power (think Charlemagne, his lords below him, and the lords below them) that have real authority and real coercive force do you find a third option between a powerful state and chaos in the streets.
As a note, I know that Bukele is crushing it in the polls. I am not saying that he is not popular or unqualifiedly unpopular; I am simply saying that the groundwork he is laying can used to circumvent any accountability.
So the regime(s) are putting the woke away, as AA predicted. But it's no time to be sanguine. There's a lot of work to do to just get back to normal a la the 90s, never mind a society with morals. I share your view of the Grateful Dead. I am a young Boomer. I missed all the 60s nonsense (thank God!) and frankly thought their music was kind of boring. My rebellion was punk rock in the late 70s.
Hey Niccolo. What's your take the expected retaliation by Iran? How do you view constant headlines like "US asks Iran not to escalate.", "Iran to retaliate in calibrated manner "?
If democracy is so good, why does it come with so many problems: corrupt judges, self-serving politicians, double standards, election fraud, usurpation of power, vague, ambiguous laws, continuous growth of government, disparity of income, elites, oligarchs, politicalization of everything, ever increasing taxes, political parties, over-regulation, government-corporate-media collusion, unresponsiveness to popular wants & needs, secrecy, surveillance, censorship, . . . . . .
Well, it's not like the previous administration was super accountable. Assuming they could achieve accountability in the first place is the issue. For some places and peoples, a Bukele is the best you can hope for.
My biggest problem with Bukele is the question what his long term vision is. The longer you keep people in prison the less suitable they are for the labor market and the more embedded they will be in the criminal mindset. Remember that Bukele throws the net very wide: many of those arrested are not (yet) criminals.
A second problem is that the lawlessness that the police can now indulge in tends to contaminate the rest of society. If you have a property dispute with your neighbor and he has a brother with the police you have a good chance to become one of the 77000.
I see this kind of policies as the criminal equivalent of "get rich quickly". We have seen many of them before and in the end they were all found to cause much more harm then they solved: three-strikes-out, broken-windows, zero tolerance for soft drugs, etc.
Those of us on the right should not take the French "fight" against wokeness too seriously. It’s just two siblings fighting, so there won't be any changes to the underlying Enlightenement based paradigms that created both the American woke and French laicite liberalism. It's almost like the Sunnis and Shias fighting it out in some God forsaken Middle Eastern country. Does it really matter to other religious minorities, which side wins? So it goes with the French "war" on wokeness.
I think you're misrepresenting the concept of anarchotyranny somewhat...as coined by Sam Francis the tyranny part doesn't refer to an eventual law and order backlash of the Bukele type, but rather to the repression by supposedly liberal states against people objecting to the anarcho part in the term (e. g. mass illegal immigration which is enabled through deliberate non-enforcement of laws, disproportionate crime rates of certain demographics enabled by lax punishment even for violent crimes, while hate speech legislation is steadily expanded).
This dynamic is also a crucial part of the rise of AfD's support in Germany btw. The foreign policy stuff, alleged pro-Russian sentiment etc. is much less important.
Transnationalist NGOs like Amnesty International and neoliberal outlets like the Economist sure do have a weird affinity for extortionist thugs. I'm certain that's just a coincidence though. They only care about 'democracy' and 'human rights.'
The US is slowly waking up to the reality that they are not as powerful as they used to believe:
- Russia's nuclear arsenal is now definitely newer and harder to defend against. Dreams about the missile shield can be forgotten.
- In conventional arms Russia is catching up quickly. They have learned from everything the US brought to the battle field in Ukraine and they can now match it and field something better against it. At the beginning of the conflict the combination of its satellites, Himars artillery, Starlink internet and drones gave Ukraine a big advantage. No longer...
I bet quite a few strategists in the US would like it to stop its foreign adventures and fix the problems of its army instead: more and better drones, more production capacity and weapons that are less vulnerable.
In the meantime the Europeans are living in the past. They still see the US as the unbeatable superpower and it is beyond their imagination that Russia might win in Ukraine. The US might lose in Vietnam or Afghanistan where the adversary was a guerrilla supported by a hostile population. But in a high tech war? Impossible!
Hit the like button at the top or bottom of this page to like this entry. Use the share and/or re-stack buttons to share this across social media. Leave a comment if the mood strikes you to do so.
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I'll take Bukele over "Our Democracy" any day of the week.
Bukele is going after dangerous criminals.
The "Our Democracy" Regime ARE the dangerous criminals.
Alas, let us ponder Psalms 2:1-6.
To give the critic of Bukele his due, the policies he's pursuing are remedial, akin to a father who can only restore of the family he failed to discipline be harsh beatings of violent and manipulative sons. I understand that he must circumvent the corrupt judiciary, as it has become a de facto arm of the gangs, but the policies Bukele pursues are the groundwork for a coercive government unaccountable to their people. I am not saying that he shouldn't pursue these policies--El Salvador is really in a state of emergency--but these solutions are indicative of a deeper disease. I think an ordered hierarchy of power is necessary to prevent a society from making the tradeoffs (unaccountable gov't control vs. violent gang control) that Bukele makes. Only when there are tiered, non-central nodes of power (think Charlemagne, his lords below him, and the lords below them) that have real authority and real coercive force do you find a third option between a powerful state and chaos in the streets.
As a note, I know that Bukele is crushing it in the polls. I am not saying that he is not popular or unqualifiedly unpopular; I am simply saying that the groundwork he is laying can used to circumvent any accountability.
So the regime(s) are putting the woke away, as AA predicted. But it's no time to be sanguine. There's a lot of work to do to just get back to normal a la the 90s, never mind a society with morals. I share your view of the Grateful Dead. I am a young Boomer. I missed all the 60s nonsense (thank God!) and frankly thought their music was kind of boring. My rebellion was punk rock in the late 70s.
Reminds me of the Thomas Sowell quote: "There are no solutions, there are only trade-offs."
El Salvadorians appear to like the trade-offs, preferring public safety.
Hey Niccolo. What's your take the expected retaliation by Iran? How do you view constant headlines like "US asks Iran not to escalate.", "Iran to retaliate in calibrated manner "?
Good old Vonnegut, right again.
If democracy is so good, why does it come with so many problems: corrupt judges, self-serving politicians, double standards, election fraud, usurpation of power, vague, ambiguous laws, continuous growth of government, disparity of income, elites, oligarchs, politicalization of everything, ever increasing taxes, political parties, over-regulation, government-corporate-media collusion, unresponsiveness to popular wants & needs, secrecy, surveillance, censorship, . . . . . .
Well, it's not like the previous administration was super accountable. Assuming they could achieve accountability in the first place is the issue. For some places and peoples, a Bukele is the best you can hope for.
My biggest problem with Bukele is the question what his long term vision is. The longer you keep people in prison the less suitable they are for the labor market and the more embedded they will be in the criminal mindset. Remember that Bukele throws the net very wide: many of those arrested are not (yet) criminals.
A second problem is that the lawlessness that the police can now indulge in tends to contaminate the rest of society. If you have a property dispute with your neighbor and he has a brother with the police you have a good chance to become one of the 77000.
I see this kind of policies as the criminal equivalent of "get rich quickly". We have seen many of them before and in the end they were all found to cause much more harm then they solved: three-strikes-out, broken-windows, zero tolerance for soft drugs, etc.
French anti-wokeness crossing political lines reminds me of what you said about Lubic on Alex's show
Those of us on the right should not take the French "fight" against wokeness too seriously. It’s just two siblings fighting, so there won't be any changes to the underlying Enlightenement based paradigms that created both the American woke and French laicite liberalism. It's almost like the Sunnis and Shias fighting it out in some God forsaken Middle Eastern country. Does it really matter to other religious minorities, which side wins? So it goes with the French "war" on wokeness.
I think you're misrepresenting the concept of anarchotyranny somewhat...as coined by Sam Francis the tyranny part doesn't refer to an eventual law and order backlash of the Bukele type, but rather to the repression by supposedly liberal states against people objecting to the anarcho part in the term (e. g. mass illegal immigration which is enabled through deliberate non-enforcement of laws, disproportionate crime rates of certain demographics enabled by lax punishment even for violent crimes, while hate speech legislation is steadily expanded).
This dynamic is also a crucial part of the rise of AfD's support in Germany btw. The foreign policy stuff, alleged pro-Russian sentiment etc. is much less important.
Regarding El Salvador:
Transnationalist NGOs like Amnesty International and neoliberal outlets like the Economist sure do have a weird affinity for extortionist thugs. I'm certain that's just a coincidence though. They only care about 'democracy' and 'human rights.'
The US is slowly waking up to the reality that they are not as powerful as they used to believe:
- Russia's nuclear arsenal is now definitely newer and harder to defend against. Dreams about the missile shield can be forgotten.
- In conventional arms Russia is catching up quickly. They have learned from everything the US brought to the battle field in Ukraine and they can now match it and field something better against it. At the beginning of the conflict the combination of its satellites, Himars artillery, Starlink internet and drones gave Ukraine a big advantage. No longer...
I bet quite a few strategists in the US would like it to stop its foreign adventures and fix the problems of its army instead: more and better drones, more production capacity and weapons that are less vulnerable.
In the meantime the Europeans are living in the past. They still see the US as the unbeatable superpower and it is beyond their imagination that Russia might win in Ukraine. The US might lose in Vietnam or Afghanistan where the adversary was a guerrilla supported by a hostile population. But in a high tech war? Impossible!
Bukele's policy cannot work in the long run because El Salvador is a desperately impoverished country. Cures aren't found by addressing symptoms.