The End of Authoritarianism

Reposting this piece on authoritarianism. Today is the day after Election Day, November 6, 2024. There were two starkly clear choices on the ballot, and it seems a greater amount of American voters willingly chose authoritarianism over democracy. Polling and pundits didn’t tell us anything worthwhile, or useful. Giving our attention to them in any way harmed us, rather than helped us. The Electoral College system of choosing a president has ground democracy into the ground. The decades-long dismantling and dumbing down of the American Educational system has proven itself to be a horror show of wrongheadedness. When history and literature can only be taught in fact-erased and chopped-up versions, we are worse off for it.

Democracy Diverted / 2018 / Pasted paper collage / Russell C. Smith

We’re at a turning point in history.

We’ve reached a Hinge of History. Can you feel it? Like a strong wind, can you feel a global shift in everything that was before?

Put your hand over your heart and feel your breath moving in and out.

We are in a New Now. The choice is either a world of war or peace. And it’s decision time.

You think you’ve heard this before. But wait, there’s more.

Now, in 2023, the era of dictatorships, autocracies, theocracies, and totalitarian regimes is over.

Authoritarians, history has stuck a pin in your story, and put you in the history books as a done deal. You were a part of a failed global cultural structure, meant only to destructively harm people in your country, and the countries you invaded. So, build a time machine and head back to the Dark Ages where you’ll feel more at home.

In the year 2023, the authoritarian mindset has reached a dead end.

Authoritarianism is a cancer on every society and culture, where it has taken hold and destroyed lives.

It’s either one way or the other—and the stakes are high. One is choosing life, love, peace, and living joyfully—and the other is accepting pointless death at the hand of psychopaths. Human beings no longer want to be murdered for the sake of one controlling dictator’s mentally unhinged, faulty historical, or dangerous religious notions. Every reason that’s given on TV news about why someone decided to kill a person or a people, is a meaningless reason. It’s time for a global ceasefire. Stop the killing now!

Globally, authoritarianism must be brought to an end, wherever it has infiltrated and sought to destroy a society from within—by means of daily doses of poison lies, incessant propaganda, or nightly fabricated falsehoods and misdirection pretending to be news—it has poisoned the culture.

Humans everywhere on this planet have stood up, and history has made it clear. Their eyes have been opened, and they aren’t willing to close them again. No, not anymore! It’s over! The vile and horrific perpetrators of brutal wars, and destructive theocratic control systems must be held accountable. No more senseless murderous thuggery, and genocidal killing.

While these words are being written, torture and genocide is happening. Human beings are being slaughtered by an invading army for meaningless lies. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a horrific stain on the legacy of every Russian leader and anyone who’s in Russia’s military for generations to come.

In the United States, our own slaughter of the innocents happens on a weekly basis. When those profiting from the sale of military grade weapons let us know they are on the side of more deaths, let’s believe them. Automatic weapons are being bought as easily as going down to the corner convenience store and buying a soda. For decades, children have been buying weapons of war to kill other children. Death profiteers must be held accountable. Politicians who don’t care about freedom, liberty, free thinking—must be voted out of office.

Death happens in an instant, so must the response to mass murder—whether in a democratic country invaded by an unhinged madman, or in an elementary school classroom in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

War is terrorism, when brought to you by a despicable maniac, who at heart is a cowardly bully. A bully is just a coward wearing a see-through mask.

War is happening as lawless murdering thugs, killing, raping, looting. Which isn’t war, it’s terrorism. Murder committed by pretend soldiers thinking they are free from international laws against war crimes.

War as the killing of countless civilians—from newborns to those who want to live out their last days and hours in peace.

Make war an unprofitable business. Make selling authoritarian violence and weapons of war to the misinformed, misled, and lovers of violence among us a broken business model.

Enough is enough! It can go no further, after the most horrifically violent dictatorial regime since Hitler’s has committed brutal atrocities the whole world is aware of—killing babies and pregnant mothers, raping women, senselessly murdering old people who had nowhere else to go.

Brutal soldiers carried out the orders from on high, and then failed in a cover-up by partially burning bodies. When all this wasn’t enough horror to be heaped upon the people of Ukraine, they added landmines to blow apart schools and homes as they ran away from their war crimes. These were no soldiers, these were violent cowards killing innocent people for zero reasons.

This is 2023, not 1943. We carry around the Internet in our pockets. Russia’s unconscionable invasion is viewed in an instant, in the immediate moment the horrific murders happen. The brutality of how dictatorships are run has been made visceral, palpable, and personal to everyone everywhere.

All the destruction and mass murders are happening with a backdrop of the existential threat of an ongoing Climate Crisis. Our world is in crisis and World War III is happening. The leveling of cities. Mass graves. Erasing a country’s culture. All in a matter of months. Mass genocide has been transmitted to the communication device you carry in your pocket.

Any authoritarian dictator who thinks the world will put up with this insanity during the time of a global pandemic, while a climate crisis is threatening all life on planet Earth is living in their own delusional chamber of horrors. Killing innocents won’t fill the void in their black hearts.

Enough is enough! America was sold countless lies about why stricter gun laws couldn’t, wouldn’t, shouldn't happen. And here we are, decades after Columbine, asked to witness and somehow understand one more horrific killing spree by a young man who shouldn't have been able to purchase an AR-15 assault rifle. One more person who thought the answer to his problems was to buy military-grade rifles and kill innocent school children. What we see is money = murder. Murder of innocent lives. For far too long.

We live in a world of such love and such violence. Such beauty and such tragedy. Ongoing wars usually based on pure authoritarian stupidity and murderous hearts.

 At the very least, the mantra for all of it must be "Enough is Enough!" Now that we should be long past the time of lies and gaslighting, can those who are behind the horrific violence stand up and speak up, at long last, and even whisper the words: "Enough is Enough!" along with everyone else?

A 22-year-old woman in Iran, named Mahsa Amini, was killed by a brutal arm of their totalitarian theocratic regime. She was brutally murdered for just living her life, by the so-called morality police. Do they hate women to the core of their beings? Rioting in the streets every night since after she was brutally murdered tells the world “Enough is Enough!”

We can feel the future looking back at us, wondering why it took so long to act upon the Climate Crisis, the insanity of authoritarian control systems, enforcing theocratic rules and laws that shouldn’t even exist in this century, the gun violence epidemic, the descent of a culture into willful stupidity. Will they shake their heads in wonder, or just be disgusted? Will our future global citizens be thinking “We would have seen through the never-ending barrage of toxic lies; we would’ve found a way to change the whole system sooner.”

Authoritarianism is in the process of destroying the foundation of a free-thinking, democratic culture, from the inside-out. Authoritarianism must be brought to a quick end. It’s best for the culture, and for all humanity on planet Earth. If we go, it all goes. Generation after generation came here for the ideal of freedom, and for decades now it’s been thrown back in their faces, eroded around them, made a mockery of their ancestors and what they built with a belief that nothing could stop the future from getting brighter and brighter, for all those in their lineage who came after them.

Authoritarianism is against personal freedom, women, love, kindness, open minds, people who think for themselves, social justice, reading books, the environment, new ideas, asking questions, creating a society where we are all cared for.

Do you believe Democracy’s time has come and gone? Are you OK with letting it go with a shrug? Or are we as a culture, ready to help wake everyone up from the stupor? We can see it just ahead, past the next dead end road sign—the total end of authoritarianism.

We’re living on a Hinge of History. The time is right now. We’re going to get rid of dictators, the autocratic mindset, and theocratic authoritarians—and create a more livable planet, culture, and way of being. We no longer have a choice. Authoritarians have brought about their own end. Forget them. They are in history’s review mirror. They no longer matter. Remember how good feeling alive feels. Remember that people vote and march and change the world. Right now, let’s declare the end of authoritarianism. It’s gone too far, taken away too much, and destroyed too many lives. Stand up and speak up. What else can we do?

Grab your copy of The New Now on Amazon. In paperback or eBook.

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