Isn’t that an argument against democracy? What good is it, if all it does is give you moral culpability? Better to live in a state of innocent victimhood, right? I happen to disagree. People living in a dictatorship bear as much responsibility for the actions of their government as people living in a democracy. Accepting oppression should not be an excuse.
Hell, no. You just said Nelson Mandela bears as much responsibility for Apartheid as Leave voters did for Brexit. That’s ridiculous.
Well, definitely not Mandela. He was one of the people who actually did something about it.
But I wasn’t really referring to situations like South Africa, which I admit are somewhat more complex; instead, at the risk of Godwinizing this thread, I was referring to the Holocaust (funny how we all apply our own filters to things, isn’t it?). There seems to be this trend, which I’ve seen more and more recently, assigning all the blame to Hitler and his close circle, as if they were outsiders - space aliens, even - who came out of nowhere and forced the poor, innocent German people to do all those atrocities. Absurd, obviously, but by saying that it’s all the fault of the “rich” and “powerful”, and the people actually committing the crimes are blameless, you’re (unwittingly) saying something similar. I can’t accept that. People are always accountable for the actions of their leaders, and leaders only have the power people are willing to give them.
Well, obviously, people actually committing atrocities are to blame for what they do.
And I haven’t said it’s all the fault of the elites. But “the people committing the crimes” and “the people” are not the same thing.
How exactly are these people accountable for the actions of unelected leaders? By not waging bloody revolution, protest or insurgency (which people do try)?
Sure, OK, you can give them a little blame for inaction. A very little blame. Most of the blame still falls on the people actively doing bad things. So the masses are not the main problem.
I think my main objection here is how you divide humanity into two separate groups, the elites and the masses, and act as if the two groups are completely unrelated to each other - if they’re even the same species. That may be the case where you live, but it’s not the case in the Middle East. Here, the divisions are by nation, tribe and faith far more than it is by social class. A rich Arab has a lot more in common with a poor Arab than he has with a rich Jew. Inside the same tribe or nation, the different social classes, elite, masses and the very wide range of people in between, basically share the same beliefs, resentments and goals; the only thing different is how much power they have to carry them out. Move the people around, get rid of the elites, and you won’t really change anything.
Excluded middle, there, there are lots of other involved groups besides wealthy elites and man-on-اal-sharie. we’ve already mentioned the military and the clerics, I’m sure there are others.
That’s all that concerns me, though.
Obviously there’s more that would have to change. I have not presented a complete solution to anything, yet. I’m trying to put it together like a puzzle. I’ve already said more stable forms of democracy are needed, but I haven’t suggested any way to get there yet.
Removing autocracy and the nobility seems like a necessary first step to me, though, the way “Destroy Islam as it exists today” seems to be the first step for some others.
Add all those groups and their supporters together, and you’ve basically got the entire society.
Just as long as you remember that like everywhere else in the world, autocracy and nobility are to a large degree something people choose to do to themselves, and not something that is imposed upon them from the outside. For a system to work, everyone has to accept it, not just those in power.
Oh, c’mon. You have to know that’s bullshit. A system can be imposed on unwilling people for a very long time before it breaks down. Centuries, even. Look at Feudalism. Look at American slavery. Look at Apartheid.
American slavery and Apartheid I’ll give you - although note that these are cases of one “tribe” oppressing another, and not so much a matter of class or money. Feudalism, I’m not so sure. I think the serfs were a lot more complicit in the system than you imagine.
The notion of free cities and frequency of peasant revolts would tend to disagree
The peasants are revolting!
Here’s an interesting observation you might have already made; I don’t know if that’s a comprehensive list but notably missing are rebellions in the ME. I wonder if that’s meaningful in the context of this conversation and the socio-political dynamics of the ME with respect to cultural and religious roots and related power structures. Perhaps the Arab peasantry isn’t particularly unhappy with authoritarianism after all. Seems that every time there is a revolution of sorts in the ME, things go from one form of authoritarianism to another. Often from bad to worse. Now is that because Arabs don’t want or deserve democracy, or are somehow incapable of achieving it? Or is it more the fact that tribalism, religion and theocracy are by far the greatest tools of power and control? Perhaps it’s difficult for peasants to maintain a full head of steam if they are interrupted by calls to prayer five times a day.
I disagree. I won’t say that people living under a dictatorial regime bear no responsibility for the actions of their government. But I feel they bear a significantly smaller amount of responsibility than people living under a democratic regime do.
At the limit case, ask a typical North Korean farmer, truck driver, factory worker, or even soldier how much influence he/she has in the actions of the government over them and what practical activities they could engage in to effect a change.
Assuming they’d not be too afraid to even admit hearing your question, you’re going to get some pretty dispirited (and dispiriting) answers.
I have a cunning plan!
Let’s send Mormons and Jehova’s Witnesses to spread the good news.
I once got a second cat, kitten, Vera, after having an adult cat, Gladys, already in residence. Gladys made it clear from day one that she considered her home to be a one-cat facility. Despite (or because of) Vera’s ongoing campaign to coax Gladys into playtime–and by coax I mean Tiggering Gladys into a frazzled wreck-- years went by, maybe 5, and relations never thawed.
One day, looking at the wall of cat toys on display at the pet store where I worked, it dawned on me I’d never given them a store bought toy; crumpled paper and milk jug rings had always seemed to do the trick. So, thinking market research or focus group or similar, I grabbed a random dozen cat toys, took them home, and dumped them in a pile on the living room floor.
The girls circled suspiciously, Gladys on one side and Vera on the other, in a kind of Yin Yang maneuver that maintained the maximum strategic distance: each cat a relative 6 to the other’s 12. I left them to it.
After a little while I went to check on them. They were sprawled, lolling, there’s no other word for it, among the toys that contained catnip, which they’d separated out from the the toys that offered nothing but bells and ribbons. They were approximately as high as fuck. Like two cantankerous old geezers whose lifelong feud ended one day over a jug of moonshine. As I watched in amazement, Gladys began grooming Vera. Pretty soon they were in a literal Yin-Yang configuration of mutual ablution.
Now you may believe me or you may not. But they remained lifelong cuddlebuddies from that day forward.
Perhaps you see where I’m going with this.
But there’s not enough water there to grow that much dope!
When I was stationed in Japan (Atsugi Naval Air Facility), it was explained to me that the USN base and the JMSDF base are “collocated”. I thought that was a great idea and that something similar could work in Israel: have two countries collocated.
For those living in that territory now, they could choose which of the two countries they’d be citizen. For religious things, the legislature would split up having the Muslim citizenship governed by the Muslim legislature (or “mini-legislature” [essentially a committee with full legislative authority for issues under its purview]), the Christians would be governed by the Christian mini-legislature, the Jews by the Jewish mini-legislature, atheists by the non-religious mini-legislature, etc. For common issues, such as defense, building codes, road traffic laws, food and drug safety, currency, etc., the legislature would meet as a whole and decide such things. All of these religious (and the non-religious group, too) would have Jerusalem as the capital.
This might sound silly on first blush, but for religious issues, Israel already has a form of this, at least as far as marriage and divorce are concerned. And the only thing I think that would prevent its acceptance would be the lack of willingness of the population to accept it.
What are some other advantages and disadvantages of such a plan?
In such a system, if a Jewish citizen and a Muslim citizen had a dispute, in which court would they settle it?
For another thought for how peace migh be achieved, how about a common enemy? A new religion arises somewhere outside of the Middle East, that believes that Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike must all be persecuted. And extremist terrorists of this new religion stage successful attacks on all three. As long as the external enemy exists, the internal factions must all cooperate, until eventually (probably not until multiple generations) such cooperation becomes the normal habit.
I don’t know if a solution to a problem largely fueled by a two thousand year long religious conflict is one more religion.
Dude, where do you think the word “Assassin” comes from?