Five Hundred
12th June 2015
If the 20th century proved that democracy could beat totalitarianism, the history of 21st so far suggests that dedicated totalitarians can beat the living daylights out of half-baked ones. All over the world, countries have put their trust in elites. Now, in the globalized world of 2015, when every economy aspires to be a crony capitalism — a “mixed economy” to you, the deciding factor in international contests appears to be whether my totalitarian is better than your totalitarian.
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Fortunately the ignorant and bigoted masses are being retired from any real role in decision making. In every part of the world the Enlightened are in taking charge. They even meet occasionally to exchange notes at Davos and in Climate Change events. The rise of the few was inevitable since Marxist-democracy and Islamic-democracy are alike contradictions in terms where nothing after the hyphen can contradict what came before. Ideologies are jealous; there’s no elite like an ideological elite.