Disordered minds and the vortex of decline

The West, entrenched in a self-inflicted spiral of decline and denial, has become a global burden....

“In her book on Stalin’s Gulag, Anne Applebaum wrote, ‘This…was not written “so that it will not happen again”, as the cliche would have it. This… was written because it almost certainly will happen again.’1 As Applebaum recognizes, the seizure of power by pathologically disordered individuals and groups is not an aberration. Sadly, and regrettably, it has been the norm throughout history.”—Hughes, Ian. Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personalities Are Destroying Democracy

When Anne Applebaum wrote Gulag in 2003, she included the above cautionary note. Hughes later quoted her in his own book, published in 2018. Applebaum’s work was a retrospective documentation of Stalin’s Gulag—one of the world’s greatest atrocities.

Just seven years later, if Hughes were to write his book now, I suggest he would need to revise the title to… Have Destroyed Democracy rather than… Are Destroying Democracy. In an empire’s late stages of decline both events and change happen with accelerated rapidity, chaos and desperation. His book acquires even greater relevance and the issues there in more urgency.

When your native land shares a 4000 km border with empire next door you have a front row seat to the rise and fall of empire, the colonization of your own country, and the decline of democracy in both. Many books have been written so these are well documented but of course both countries are historically illiterate. History has a powerful prescience—a guide book for dummies—and we pay a horrendous price for ignoring it. Democracy becomes dead in the water when powerful ideologies are at play with no regard for consequences. Political parties by their very nature and systemic corruptions have been instrumental in the death of democracy.

J.L. Granatstein, an eminent Canadian historian, wrote a book, Who Killed Canadian History? (1998). The very short answer is: colonization, imperialism, corporatism, capitalism. When such powerful all-pervasive ideologies prevail, trivialities like history and democracy are flushable items. When you add a few more reckless ideologies like neoliberalism, militarism, and perpetual war the agenda is fixed, decline inevitable.

In the first chapters of his book he outlines for us the atrocities of four of the world’s greatest tyrants, all of the 20th century. These were Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot. These were the “Disordered Minds” of their times. All suffered mental abnormalities including psychopathy, narcissism, paranoia and megalomania. Suffering from these pathologies all of them inflicted mass murder, endless suffering, famines, death by starvation, on millions of their country men. These accounts make for very grim reading raising the alarming question how can one person’s “disordered mind” be allowed to inflict so much damage on their societies.

The origins of the disordered mind are basic to modern psychology where early childhood traumas implant pathologies that later manifest themselves in adult behaviors.

Hughes explains for us how one rotten apple rots the whole barrel. As one disordered mind attracts other like minded disciples, and these attract others, to where a powerful tyranny is born. People with normal psychological profiles follow through fear, intimidation and indoctrination. Those who openly oppose the tyranny will be killed or imprisoned— becoming the de facto rule of lawlessness. To maintain absolute power the killing becomes gratuitous.

“At the beginning of the twenty-first century a strengthening of democracy is urgently required if human progress is to continue, immense human suffering is to be avoided, and perhaps even if humanity is to survive, in the decades to come.”—Ian Hughes from the book’s introduction

The above quote is central to his book, as democracy, whole and vigorous, is our best defense against such atrocities. The above quote is also one of the underlying reasons I am a blogger. Central to this blog is the concern that some semblance of democracy may be no longer achievable. We talk about democracy, claim to be democrats but over the last 100 years its existence in the West has become more tenuous to the point its resurrection may never happen.

As I write this the global crisis as perpetrated moronic war mongers of the West only becomes deeper and projects its devastation further into the future, ever closer to collapse and rendering positive outcomes impossible.

The West is suffering from the grimmest of fallacies thinking it can win a war between East and West at a time in history when the East clearly has the upper hand. The West has squandered its future, suffering a failing empire and moral and fiscal bankruptcy.

The West, led to the slaughter by a delusional America, projects the infantile fallacy that Russia and China are the great evils of the world that must be defeated at all costs— when if fact America is it’s own worst enemy and the healing must begin within its own borders.

In the 20th Century Russia and China went through their tumultuous social revolutions and great suffering to emerge as modern industrial autonomous states. They live in the hope that never again will “disordered minds” afflict their nations. America and its NATO vassals are stuck in the 20th century yet to undergo their own social revolutions ready and willing to face the challenges of the 21st century and those there after.

The claim “Make America Great Again” is fatuous political sloganeering as it has yet to exist as Ronald Reagan’s “shining citadel on the hill”. It had the opportunity to do so at the end of WW ll where the “American Dream” could become the new reality. It was though quickly undermined by the “disordered minds” who fell in love with war and the prospect of empire building. As some historians have observed the Fourth Reich was born. Donald Trump promised that as president he would deliver a “unified Reich”— a term quickly deleted, heavily criticized, and most likely a Freudian slip.

“Building Back Better” (BBB) is a more worthy slogan in abeyance waiting to take center stage.

The true measure of greatness and legitimate power over others is to be exemplary in thought, word and deed.

In the seven year interval since the publication of Hughes’ book, again we must refer back to Applebaum when she says,This… was written because it almost certainly will happen again.’1 It is happening again in the here and now. The locales have changed, the players different. Where Hitler’s and Stalin’s atrocities were committed within a bordered a world the incumbent empire is contemptuous of national borders and the international rule of law. It is a repeat offender over a long duration. Tragically the “norms” of history appear unassailable.

Until the empire quells its dying rage and repudiates war the world is under grave threat. We are frozen in time as the empire has spent decades practicing “containment” of its contrived adversaries and vainly trying to bend the world to its will. Now the impetus is reversed and the world community, must for its own sake, impose a containment on the dying empire.

The West, entrenched in a self-inflicted spiral of decline and denial, has become a global burden. It too must undergo a profound social reckoning—one that reimagines its role, confronts its contradictions, and restores its relevance in a world where, morality, positive change and adaption are the driving forces we must live by.

History’s Parrot is read in 38 US states and 54 countries world wide.