Thursday, 6 April 2017

The Authoritarian Impulse: Getting What We Really Don’t Want

Fred On Everything



As a society crumbles, as bitter divisions grow and disorder spreads and nothing seems to work, anger comes and people begin to want a man who will say “Enough!” and slap down the malefactors–by any means necessary. A man who will make the trains run on time. A man who will make it safe to walk in the parks.
This is the authoritarian impulse. As corruption grows,  as a coagulated government fails to function, the temptation comes. It is coming.
Recently I read that in Brazil some thirty men gang-raped a young woman, left her emotionally devastated, bleeding, with a ruptured bladder, and laughed as they did it before posting the video online. My first thought  was, that they should be rounded up, shot without ceremony, and dropped into a public sewer. I meant this without a trace of hyperbole.

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