by W.D. James

I know many of us are still trying to make sense of the seemingly insane, and definitely disturbing, political developments of the past several years. Left and right, up and down, seem all jumbled up. Perhaps most disorienting has been the rapidity of the changes in how ‘Western Liberal Democracies’ behave as political actors.

Personally, for most of my life, I have been used to our governments at least appearing (and obviously trying to appear) to respect freedom, protect civil rights, and maintain credible democratic legitimacy. Much of that may have been hypocritical, superficial, and ideologically motivated, but you could kind of count on it under most circumstances.

So, when most of these regimes used the COVID pandemic to eagerly deploy authoritarian and even totalitarian means, with little attempt to disguise them, it was a little surprising. Of course, those means did not stop with the pandemic…