When times get tough, voting for autocratic leadership is the worst thing we can do

Do you long for the good old days?

Poem based on prose by pastor Martin Niemöller

The world is getting more and more complex, and more and more stressful. More and more we are seeing the consequences of our ancestors' actions and ideologies - from manifest destiny and empire-building to evangelism and Reaganomics which destroyed whole societies and gave political and/or economic power to the few. We now use technologies which most of us do not understand, and most of us are dependent on experts to fix our cars and computers. Supply chains are very long and leave us vulnerable to shortages. The continuous greed for growth and profit destroys the air we breathe, the water we drink, our health and the nature that we rely on.

It is no wonder that many people feel the need to go back to the 'good old days' when things were simpler, and are tempted to choose to be led by a dictator who will deal with everything for us. But that would be a huge mistake.

The people who want to control us are not kind or wise people

For our leaders and would-be leaders, that would mean their having more control over us. In the USA, Republicans are already trying to 'put women back in their place' with their bans on abortion and putting gays back in the closet with their 'don't say gay laws and book bans. They are gunning for birth control next. In many ways they resemble the Puritans or they have become the American Taliban. They make things simple for us by identifying anyone not like us as the enemy. Denoting the enemy as the other has long enabled us to be persuaded to use violence against them.

These people, full of their mistaken belief in themselves, are afraid of people who know more than them, and/or vastly underestimate the expertise of experts. And they don't want us to think. Pol Pot was so afraid of people who wore glasses or spoke multiple languages (because he thought they were intellectual) that he had them executed.

Trump thought he knew more about COVID than the experts. The result was that many more Americans died than would have if he had listened to them. In the UK, the Tories also ignored the experts in favour of their economic imperatives. They have continually talked down those asking for fair pay, including doctors and nurses. By running down the National Health Service they are making life worse for nearly everyone, while preparing to (and already partially) selling it off to the profit of their buddies. America is already much further down that route - they pay twice as much for healthcare, not everyone is covered, and the 'healthcare' companies (which are nothing of the sort, just parasitical middlemen) make their profits by denying healthcare to people who think they are covered, and cheating the government. The fragmented system also harmed the COVID response.

In the UK, they are paying doctors far less than they are worth and are introducing far less trained "physician's assistants". They want doctors to go the apprentice route too. I'm all for more apprenticeships, but not for doctors. The current system gives them the science and practical training they need.

Republicans governors are already seeking to educate kids to be copies of themselves, by rewriting history and excluding empathy and decency from education. They are rewriting history, banning books and the teaching anything about minorities or anything they consider 'woke'. Right wing billionaires are influencing universities to do the same.

People like Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng thought they understood the economy better than everyone else, and Britain is still paying for their disastrous mini budget. Britain is falling apart as a result of the Tories' belief in austerity. People who have strong belief in theories and little understanding of the real world make very bad leaders, even if they don't start killing their opponents like Putin and Argentina, or start a World War like Hitler did and Putin threatens to do.

Things may seem better under a dictatorship in the short term if they are able to organise. The trains may run on time for a while. But it is far more likely that things will soon go south. And you may feel protected because you are part of their cult, but as Trump has shown, dictators can turn against you on a dime, and he rarely pays the people who work for him.

Some Trump supporters are offering people 'Free Helicopter Rides'. Since these are Death flights as ordered by Pinochet, you can bet it isn't Trump followers they are offering them to. Unless it is ones who have begun to question or protest their leader's excesses. Do we really want a leadership where lynching is condoned or even encouraged? The Tories have not gone that far but they do have nasty things to say about many groups of people and opposition politicians.

We have got accustomed to more and more bad, autocratic behaviour.

Worse and worse behaviour on the part of several American Presidents has led to Trump saying things that would have been unthinkable back in the 'good old days', whether attacking politicians and judges or claiming that an election was rigged when there have been dozens of court cases saying it wasn't, and even inciting an insurrection, or telling Putin he could go ahead and attack NATO allies.

In his book, "They Thought They Were Free", Milton Mayer mayor explains "What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people". Britain has experienced this. Here in the UK we now have a government which is utterly clueless, with policies that do us no good whatsoever, and often harm, yet there are still people who will vote for them. In America, Trump's cult seeks to widen the gap between itself and everyone else with hate-filled rhetoric. Trump has said he would be dictator from day one and at least one ally is planning for the invocation of the Insurrection Act on Day One. Project 2025 gives some idea of the kind of country America would become. Trump is already planning Detention Camps, "Vermin" Rivals, and a Government Purge

I suspect we have all thought from time to time, "if I was king/queen/dictator I'd get that fixed in no time". Democracy is messy. But that king/queen/dictator will almost certainly have different priorities to you, and one of those priorities may well be to suppress your freedoms. You may think you will be free, but you won't. So resist!