The Erosion of Western Democracy

The reaction to the video where Erin O'Toole answers in a straight, one word affirmative to a very straightforward question of whether he agrees with more privatization of Canada's health care system has been instructional. But more on that in a minute.

I had a discussion with a friend about the rise of China in the world and I expressed my opinion that I believed that the size of its economy would overtake that of the United States in my lifetime. My friend said it is possible but he stated that it probably would not happen because China does not have a mechanism for channeling anger at the government. Therefore, if they hit serious bumps in the road the Chinese government will suffer an existential crisis and that would cause a vicious circle of lower economic output, which would cause further unrest thus deepening the political crisis, and so on.

I said that is definitely a possibility but the problem with that argument is the West no longer has a reliable safety valve for rising anger and unrest in the West either because of the increasing failure and the increasing loss of faith in western democracy so they could find themselves in the same vicious cycle. That loss of faith is caused by modern Western democracies inability to actually allow ordinary citizens to improve their lot. There is empirical evidence to suggest that my generation is worse off, economically, than my parents' generation and there is more empirical evidence that the generations coming after mine will be even worse off. We can see this coming. It is a plain as the nose on one's face but we seem to be helpless in preventing it. The reason for this is the failure of democracy.

This brings me back to the video mentioned in the first paragraph of this post. Fifteen, maybe even ten years ago, if the leader of a Federal political party would have made those statements during an election campaign his campaign would be finished. The media would have jumped all over it and they would have focused on what he said and they would stay focused on it for days. What was the reaction of the media and chattering classes to Erin O'Toole's video? They focused on Twitter flagging the video.

The Canadian health care system is a point of pride for Canadians. The vast majority of Canadians do not want it falling into private hands. Yet here is a federal politicians disagreeing with the majority and so far I have not seen any consequences.

Why? The answer is simple. The ruling class in Canada and the other Western democracies have completely lost touch with those that they rule. I include the main stream media as part of the ruling class, which is not where they should be because the media is supposed to challenge the ruling class not be coopted by it. 

So if Erin O'Toole were to become PM (he won't) and allows the introduction of further privatization in our health care system, despite the vast majority of Canadians who are against it, that would lead to a further erosion in the faith in democracy. We want to keep our health care system public, we voted, it became more private, therefore democracy does not work.

This erosion of faith will have serious consequences for the people of the West. We are already seeing it with the election of Donald Trump and his continued popularity, Brexit, the rise of far-right and neo-Nazi parties in Europe and the rise of authoritarian governments in some of the former Warsaw Bloc states. These outcomes to the failure of democracy will only get worse and Canada will not escape them.

Although PM Trudeau, President Biden and some other Western leaders are fighting a rear guard action they have been unable to restore faith in democracy and that will inevitably lead to authoritarian governments taking over current democracies, especially when the full impacts of climate change and automation start to be felt among ordinary people. With democracy failing, authoritarianism will be the only way to keep order.

Note, I am not trying to single out Mr. O'Toole. He is just another example of how out of touch our ruling class is with us. There are many more of other political stripes so he is by no means unique. The reaction to his video just demonstrates the continuing trend of our ruling class becoming further out of touch with those that they are supposed to be ruling.