THE PSYCHOLOGIST : The Albanian thinks democracy is under threat

The Albanian thinks democracy is under threat

He is too sweeping. He himself is a very popular leader and Scott Morrison must the be the most wishy washy authoritarian ever. So where is the threat to democracy in that?

The USA could be a better case for a breakdown of democracy, with the Left going all out to suppress conservative comment. They have censored one of my blogs, even. But the election underway there at the moment will see the Left lose control of Congress so that will put a stop to any new moves in that direction

Russia, Iran, China and the African and Arab states are a different matter, of course. Democracy has never flourished there

Anthony Albanese says the hammer attack on US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, is a symptom of the increased polarisation and extremism of political discourse across the West.

“The attack on Mr Pelosi was horrifying – to think that something like that could happen,” the Prime Minister said in an exclusive interview.

Mr Albanese described democracy as “fragile” and said the contest between democracy and authoritarianism was part of the broader strategic competition between democracy and the various different types of authoritarianism around the world.

“Democrats have to stand up for democracy; we can’t duck these issues,” he said.

Mr Albanese was critical of his predecessor, Scott Morrison, for not denouncing former US president Donald Trump for inspiring the riots on Washington’s Capitol Hill on January 6 last year by supporters who believed the presidential election had been stolen.

“Then prime minister Scott Morrison was alone, really, among democratic leaders in not calling it out; in the UK, France, Germany, Canada, it was called out and it should have been,” he said. “The circumstances in the US, with people almost in paramilitary gear, is a concern. That concern has been expressed, quite rightly, by President (Joe) Biden.”

Mr Albanese said he has been worried for years about increasing extremism and intolerance in political exchanges.

“Much of the debate in politics generally has got far worse” during the quarter of a century he had been in parliament, he said.

Mr Albanese has drawn attention to increased polarisation, to people suffering “conflict fatigue”, and to the role of social media.

“The way political discourse is being conducted is far less civil. I think it is of real concern,” he said. “I can look at any time at a social media feed of mine and find something (in response) that is completely over the top.

“You see the rise of social media where people, sometimes anonymously, behind anonymous handles, will say things that they would never say face-to-face. “That then leads to responses and to an escalation that is extraordinary.”

All of this, he said, had a damaging effect on politics itself. “It undermines people’s participation in the process,” Mr Albanese said. “I think for young people considering going into politics, they’ve got to worry about what will be said about them. They’ve also got to worry about what’s on their social media feed from 30 years ago.”

Such entries furnished “gotcha” moments to be used against people, he said. “We’re going to end up with no one who has ever done anything interesting participating.”

The Prime Minister also called for media companies to take a more discriminating attitude to what they allowed to be published and broadcast: “Some of the media commentary is far more aggressive and I think that media operators have a responsibility to be more responsible about that.”

He contended that much of the political debate carried out on social media was far too simplistic: “A lot of these issues don’t have a 24-hour time grab, or don’t have an easy sound-bite grab. Dealing with the energy crisis, for example, is not a simple thing.”

Most of all, he wanted people committed to democracy from all parts of the political spectrum to behave with civility and to defend democratic principles.

“Sophistication in political dialogue is an asset,” he said. “It’s something that we have that differentiates us from the lack of political discourse in Russia, for example.”

Mr Albanese made his remarks as part of the most wide-ranging and forthright interview he has done on foreign policy and national security since coming to office in May.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/fragile-democracy-is-under-threat-anthony-albanese/news-story/6cf8fbe0d4b1e26e609f0289fd536498

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Background

The essence of conservatism is caution. The essence of Leftism is anger

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists.

The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Global warming

Calibrated in whole degrees. Larger graph here

Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. “The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.”

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Two examples of Leftist racism below (much more here and here):

Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".

Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."

Defensible and indefensible usages of the term "racism"

The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began.

FDR prolonged the Depression. He certainly didn't cure it.

WWII did NOT end the Great Depression. It just concealed it. It in fact made living standards worse

Joe McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse anyone of McCarthyism is to accuse them of accuracy!

The KKK was intimately associated with the Democratic party. They ATTACKED Republicans!

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter:

The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

America's uncivil war was caused by trade protectionism. The slavery issue was just camouflage, as Abraham Lincoln himself admitted. See also here

Did William Zantzinger kill poor Hattie Carroll?

Did Bismarck predict where WWI would start or was it just a "free" translation by Churchill?

Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being kadaver gehorsam (to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey.

A good article on Leftist hate

The real history of social Darwinism

Some personal memoirs

Memoir highlights

THE PSYCHOLOGIST

The Albanian thinks democracy is under threat

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