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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   30967 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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Is there any indication that the opposition is any more competent and less corrupt?

This is an important point. Live long enough and you grow to become very skeptical of the Western narrative that different leaders will create different outcomes. People cheered when Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest and became leader of Burma. They jeered when she went on to persecute the Rohingya Muslims. The Arab Spring told a similar story. As did the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Simply adding Western democratic mores to a third world country doesn't seem to change much.

There is, however, one type of leader who tends to create long-term positive impacts for a country. And that is a benevolent dictator, or dictator-lite. Examples of leaders in this mold are Rwanda's Paul Kagame or Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew. Perhaps the most salient current example is President Bukele of El Salvador who has already achieved massive quality of life gains for his citizens by declaring martial law and throwing all the gang members in jail.

While these leaders improve their countries and achieve huge popularity, they are not cheered by Western governments and NGOs, who tend to favor untested opposition groups who inevitably become corrupt the moment they are handed real power.

There is, however, one type of leader who tends to create long-term positive impacts for a country. And that is a benevolent dictator, or dictator-lite. Examples of leaders in this mold are Rwanda's Paul Kagame or Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew.

That list is tiny, and you might have to drop a few if you consider whether they have successfully locked in their gains and had an orderly succession to a still flourishing system.

Nobody has any idea how to make Lee Kuan Yews or General Parks*, or they'd make a dozen of them. Often people act enlightened to fool the West and then do whatever (Obama used to think Erdogan was that guy) Which is why a lot of people default to "get a democracy going".

TBH there is no "Western narrative" - there's many. Even in the same government you'll find people supporting democracy and change until they turn around and support the only strongman on the grounds that they're the ones who can keep the state running or, at least, do what the US wants (basically Obama's relationship with Egypt after the Arab Spring).

(I don't think you're wrong about Western NGO-types framing people like Bukele as autocrats for violating "civil rights" but that just makes me skeptical that he is autocrat, as opposed to proving he's a successful one)

* This being The Motte, someone might also remark on it being a strange coincidence that the examples that immediately come to mind are East Asian...

The monarchies of Jordan and Morocco have not been democratic and have generally done very well by local standards- certainly better than we expect Arab democracies to do. The gulf monarchies have also produced Islamist petrostates that are at least much better than Libya or Iran.

Trujillo seems to have improved his country pretty massively, as well.

The gulf monarchies have also produced Islamist petrostates that are at least much better than Libya or Iran.

There is a massive "being an enemy of America is not good for your health" confounding factor here though right?

This is entirely true, but Arab petrostates which are not gulf monarchies don’t seem to be able to avoid making enemies with the US.

“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other ones.”

Pinochet was close to those god level rulers. Chile is the richest country south of our border.

A dictator who murdered thousands and imprisoned and tortured tens of thousands of people is not benevolent.

Park Chung-Hee and Lee Kwan Yew and Paul Kagame no doubt invite their opposition leaders to give conferences in five star hotels.

Honestly I think a big part of the difference in western attitude towards those three from the Latin generalissimos is that the critics of the latter are more sympathetic to the western literati, rather than actual behavior and results.

Presumably Park, Lee, and Kagame also don't escalate to systematic murder. I would especially hope not in Kagame's case, as the Rwandan Genocide most likely gave his people the moral high ground of subjugating genocidaires, even when they started shit with Zimbabwe.

The economic gains from removing communists makes the helicopter fuel pay for itself.

Low effort and just waging culture war.

If you seriously believe murdering communists is a good thing, you need to put a lot more effort into what you want to say.

If you're just trying to be funny, don't.

Why does that matter? He killed the right people (communists). And put the country on a path to have the highest per capita income in the region.

It’s not like these other dictators didn’t kill and imprison people.

As I told someone else, "Yes, actually, murdering all my political enemies is a good thing" is inflammatory enough to require more than a low effort hot take like this.

And you've been posting a lot of crappy comments like this, and apparently bans and warnings aren't making an impression.

So while this comment itself was only a little bit bad, you're getting another one-week ban because we're tired of you posting one "little bit bad" comment after another.

Expect future bans to escalate.

When communism had a body count well into the tens of millions in the half century prior to the events described, “political enemies” does not do the category justice.

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This being The Motte, someone might also remark on it being a strange coincidence that the examples that immediately come to mind are East Asian...

Does Juan Carlos of Spain count?

I would expect a benevolent dictator to actually rule the country for a while as dictator. Juan Carlos basically immediately had Spain transition to a democratic constitutional monarchy with a figurehead monarch.

Yes, fair point that my sample may be biased towards Third Worlders and developing nations for multiple reasons.

Salazar of Portugal (1932–1968) is often given as an example of a benevolent dictator. There are a lot more example that aren't East Asian. France-Albert René of Seychelles is another.

I have never seen Salazar described as benevolent. Wikipedia says:

One opposition leader, Humberto Delgado, who openly challenged Salazar's regime in the 1958 presidential election, was first exiled and then killed by Salazar's secret police. (...) Salazar's rule is widely described as dictatorial and was characterized by systematic repression of civil and political rights, mass torture, arbitrary arrests, concentration camps, police brutality against civil rights protestors, electoral fraud and colonial wars that left hundreds of thousands dead.

Here's a book on Salazar.

https://www.amazon.com/Salazar-Dictator-Who-Refused-Die/dp/1787383881/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=&tag=reasonmagazinea-20

Fifty years after his death, Portugal's Salazar remains a controversial and enigmatic figure, whose conservative and authoritarian legacy still divides opinion. Some see him as a reactionary and oppressive figure who kept Portugal backward, while others praise his honesty, patriotism and dedication to duty. Contemporary radicals are wary of his unabashed elitism and skepticism about social progress, but many conservatives give credit to his persistent warnings about the threats to Western civilization from runaway materialism and endless experimentation.

For a dictator, Salazar's end was anti-climactic--a domestic accident. But during his nearly four decades in power, he survived less through reliance on force and more through guile and charm. This probing biography charts the highs and lows of Salazar's rule, from rescuing Portugal's finances and keeping his strategically-placed nation out of World War II to maintaining a police state while resisting the winds of change in Africa. It explores Salazar's long-running suspicion of and conflict with the United States, and how he kept Hitler and Mussolini at arm's length while persuading his fellow dictator Franco not to enter the war on their side.

Contrast Portugal's outcomes to Spain (Civil War) and Italy (Fascism/WWII) and he looks pretty good. But yeah, I doubt you're going to find mainstream hagiographies of any dictator.

But yeah, I doubt you're going to find mainstream hagiographies of any dictator.

Does an obituary of an austere religious scholar focusing on their academic career rather than time spent as dictator of a terrorist state count?

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That’s a highly selective quote when Wikipedia with a left bias includes a lot of quotes like this

“According to American scholar J. Wiarda, despite certain problems and continued poverty in many sectors, the consensus among historians and economists is that Salazar in the 1930s brought remarkable improvements in the economic sphere, public works, social services and governmental honesty, efficiency and stability.“

If you read your own Wikipedia source then you would find many paragraphs describing him as benevolent.

This being The Motte, someone might also remark on it being a strange coincidence that the examples that immediately come to mind are East Asian...

Very true. We don't have a model for how to bring a country like El Salvador or Rwanda up to 1st world level. This also being the Motte, I think we need to accept that this is likely impossible due to HBD.

So what Bukele is doing in El Salvador is really terrific. Going from murderous shithole to, let's say, Mexico level would be the likely maximum of what's possible. But people will criticize him for anything short of Nordic-level democracy.

Why do you believe that HBD is the limiting factor, and not geopolitics, geography, or just self-reinforcing systems? For that matter, how do you judge the “maximum of what’s possible” for a given country? I am confident that Mexico does not represent the peak of Hispanic achievement.

People will criticize Bukele as long as his policy looks suspiciously beneficial to him, personally. As a distant second, they may criticize the human right violations inherent to his chosen approach. But the important thing is that locking up everyone who might stop you is the oldest trick in the autocrat’s playbook, other than killing the outright. Whether or not it is also effective, that’s the main source of criticism.

People criticize Bukele because they have zero skin in the game and don't have to suffer the consequences of their criticism. What does a Western NGO care if El Salvador collapses into anarchy again? They don't have to live there.

Hanania has written a couple essays about this which I've found rather convincing:

https://www.richardhanania.com/p/the-invisible-graveyard-of-crime

https://www.richardhanania.com/p/the-midwit-meme-and-the-denial-of

From the comments of the first article

Excellent analysis as ever, Richard. One thing I'd emphasise is the unique savagery of the gangs in question, which I think has an important bearing on this argument.

Following this story on Twitter, I keep seeing affluent American liberals complaining about 'creeping fascism' etc. receiving replies from actual Salvadoreans saying things like, 'Shut the fuck up, these people cut off my uncle's head for not paying extortion money and left it in our doorway.'

Yeah, I was actually just reading those (and finding them convincing) but one of the articles he linked about the difference in Western European policing vs American (basically: European cops have more leeway in policing which means they can provide more consistent but lower-level deterrence vs. American cops who are hobbled by rights and respond by oversentencing those they do have dead to rights) was even better for his argument tbh.

Really fits the view that it's just tradeoffs and all of the sacralization doesn't help think about them.

EDIT: David Simon of all people basically came out and said "Hanania an asshole [which he is] but he's not wrong". I wonder how The Wire "fans" will react? They shouldn't be surprised but you know how that goes.

I very much agree with his assertion in the second article that analysts often try to avoid mentioning (or even thinking about) tradeoffs in political discussions, even that's almost always how the real world works. Being honest about tradeoffs is a good strategy for correctly comprehending the world, but not for "winning" arguments.

Somewhat related to the civil rights violations of prisoners, I remember the arguments about Guantanamo back in the War on Terror days. It was common to hear politicians and pundits - in full seriousness - make the claim that "torture doesn't work anyway." I hated the fact that, post-9/11, it was politically impossible to say "torture is against our values, so we won't do it even though this makes our anti-terror efforts less effective and costs lives." Despite the fact that (I suspect) most people would agree privately with this statement...

The context I always got for "torture doesn't work" was that, while torture works great to get an insurgent to confess that his neighbor is also part of the insurgency, torture is great at eliciting that confession whether it's true or not. If you're lucky you get to parade the neighbor's IED cache out in front of the neighborhood and you have 1 fewer insurgent; if you're unlucky you have to let the suffering neighbor go and you still might have pissed off his further neighbors and cousins and so forth sufficiently to have 5 more insurgents.

Thus everyone had to go to the "ticking time bomb" thought experiment to get a real ethical conundrum: if the tortured suspect is being asked for information where a lie won't hurt any (more) innocents and won't radicalize any more enemies and will be quickly and reliably discovered, then we have to determine whether our values are really enough to say "no".

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I am confident that Mexico does not represent the peak of Hispanic achievement.

‘Hispanic’ is a broad and extremely diverse category. It’s entirely consistent to think that Mexico-level prosperity is towards the top of what’s possible for El Salvador(Mexicans seem to think this is well out of reach) while acknowledging that, say, Costa Rica can be much richer.

Obviously you can also think that El Salvador can achieve much higher than Mexico currently does. But El Salvador, Mexico, and Costa Rica are three very different countries that happen to speak (different dialects of)the same language. It’s not unreasonable to expect them to have different futures.

That’s pretty much exactly why I objected to the OP. Saying that El Salvador can’t do better than Mexico does right now is…bizarre. Since he led with “because HBD,” I assumed he was painting them with the same brush.

It’s worth noting that Mexico has a much, much better hbd situation than El Salvador from the perspective of ‘what percentage of the population is above 95 IQ’, because in large parts of Mexico the average person is phenotypically Spanish and that presumably extends to IQ.

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