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Global Zeitgeists

Entry 2354, on 2024-07-05 at 15:02:37 (Rating 3, Politics)

There seems to be a trend around the world in many countries, which have in recent years had left oriented governments, to move to the right. The most obvious recent example is France, but here in New Zealand we had a shift at the last election, although our right is fairly moderate compared with some. Other European countries have already gone right, it looks increasingly like the US will (although that is far from certain), and Canada has finally got sick of the hideous Justin Trudeau so they will go right at the next election there.

There are exceptions, of course: Australia shifted left at the last election, and the UK appears to be about to dump its long-time conservative government, but overall I think there is a shift away from the left.

I have moved right myself in recent years so maybe I should be celebrating this, and to some extent I do, because the left (who I supported in the past) have gone insane thanks to woke ideology. People put up with it for a while because of the overwhelming propaganda supporting it from the media, but you can only fool most people for a certain amount of time before they catch on to what is going on.

Political trends do tend to change over time and the most certain thing about governments in all truly democratic countries is that they won't last, because the voters will get sick of them and (rightly or wrongly) want to give the opposition a chance to do better, which they might even do for a while, until they get lazy and things swing back again to where they were.

So victories and defeats for any political ideology are temporary when looked at that way, and it is the greater underlying trends, the "zeitgeist", which is more important.

Starting in the 1980s (thanks in a large part to Ronald Regan) this trend was towards neoliberal political and economic systems. While that achieved some successes, it also had some bad side effects, and things changed at about the time of the new millennium. Then what I call "woke-ism" became dominant. I'm sure it had some good points, although being an avowed opponent I find it hard to think of any, but even if they existed, the bad effects outweighed the good and that has finally caught up with it and it is now on the way out.

Note that during the neoliberal era that philosophy was adopted by what was traditionally the left almost as much as its more natural home, the right. Here in New Zealand it was an allegedly leftist party (the 1984 Labour Government) which introduced it, and Tony Blair's Labour Party in the UK was also an enthusiastic proponent.

And also note that during the current woke era many parties on the right have a fair degree of enthusiasm for it too. It is arguably the woke attitude to political controversies like immigration which has contributed to the fall of the Tories in the UK.

So in many ways which party is in power is of lesser importance and which political philosophy (or ideology if you want to be less generous) is popular is what rally matters. Maybe this is why many people feel like whoever they vote for there is often no improvement in their life. Most parties are following the currently popular trend.

Another factor which cannot be ignored when considering current political change is COVID. There was, and still is, significant resentment for some of the policies adopted during the pandemic. These vary greatly, from people who consider all the restrictions necessary and might have preferred going even further, to those who saw the initial lockdowns as necessary but think they were used too much, to those who reject government control of that type completely.

There seems to be an increasing opinion that many countries did go too far, including here in New Zealand, especially regarding the extensive Auckland lockdowns. And related to that subject, vaccine mandates also have a range of views, but agan many think the government exercised control far too strictly.

For the record, I think we had too many lockdowns and they were too strict here in New Zealand, although I think they were the safest approach initially, and I am ambivalent about vaccine policies, because I am generally pro-vaccination but anti-mandate.

In a previous post I was challenged to say what I thought the mechanism for global political (and other) trends was, and I said it was likely basically "random" ideas which gained positive feedback in an evolutionary way and became dominant. I don't know whether that is true, but the fact that these trends exist seems indisputable.

The only thing I can offer as a remedy is to remain vigilant. If you are becoming too accepting of the material which is being promoted almost universally by the media, or is seen as being "the right thing to do", or being "on the right side of history", or being "the new way we do things now" be cautious. You might just have become a victim of the latest global zeitgeist. Be skeptical, people!

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