Reading AUTOCRACY, INC. by Anne Applebaum

Are we the world?

I read Autocracy, Inc. after Sam Harris had the author on his podcast. It’s not what I typically read. My core genre was once harshly described as books “by self-absorbed white male nitwits.” So I was playing against type. Let this post stand as a beacon. Let the fact that I started by talking about myself stand as a . . .

“Harbinger” would be a fair description of the book and what the rest of the world should be for us. The book is ominous, thought-provoking, and short. I recommend it, if that is meaningful to you, and if you find yourself in the “how dangerous is the world these days?” or “what should I actually fear?” frame of mind. For me, it easily beats reading regular, rabbit-hole news of the day, though it’s sluggish at times in ways common to “foreign policy” op-ed pieces and part of why I avoid them (too much look at me, I know people in world capitals!, or even just, look at me, I know world capitals! and other boggish facticity). But that’s mostly the middle part.

Overall, it’s excellent and validates movies and TV shows about international crime, espionage, and subversion syndicates tied to Russia, China, and smaller rogue states and the guns, gold, drugs, lawyers, and money men. The truth—especially because it’s the truth—is far more disturbing than the fiction. And I suspect I’m even more worried than Applebaum, who’s awfully worried. But that’s probably because I have a dimmer view of the species than her. Though not of the bad guys, interestingly enough. She has the dimmer view of the bad guys. What I may have is a dimmer view of the rest of us.

* * *

What do we make of the map below? Compared to 100, 200, or 1000 years ago, democracy (the blue and turquoise) is doing pretty well. Kind of a new-fangled thing, though. Worldwide one might say the glass is half-full. Or half-empty, of course.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/democracy-countries

What’s the prediction for the next 100 years? Do you believe in love? The power of love? (Wanna new drug? Is the heart of rock and roll still beating?) Or do you think, a hundred years hence, the selfish, scheming, bullying, biffing, hierarchical (plus religious fanatic) assholes will somehow wind up making the map worse? I.e., are we actually at some high-water mark for democratic governance? (And if this is it, please let me know.)

What struck me repeatedly reading Applebaum’s book is that behavior at the country and world-leader level felt so familiar. And whatever prediction we would hazard or hope for reflects what we think motivates various people and whether people are basically good or not. Or to be less binary, whether we are good enough to succeed against the worse people. Including bad people with killer technology, a shit ton of money, and lots of rich, bad fellow travelers. And being good enough likely requires learning and improving, at a species level. And learning fast enough to avoid the killer technology.

* * *

Perhaps with intentional dark humor or irony, but more likely a solemn prayer, Applebaum dedicates her book “[f]or the optimists.” She then systematically seeks and destroys the (frequently self-interested) trade and technology optimists of the West, especially in the 1990s and early 2000s. She recounts with apparent relish a conference in 2000 where President Clinton yuck-yucked over the idea that anyone could keep the Internet out. Trade, the Internet, knowledge of Western awesomeness—it’s just an obvious one-way ratchet to world improvement. Yuckety-yuck-yuck. If there’s one thing we learned from the Cold War, it’s that wanting western goodies will topple dictatorships. Hee-haw. (Applebaum notes how white-knuckled nuclear and other military and economic deterrence tends to get left out of the optimist narrative.)

The last 25 years should be sobering. The opening of worldwide finance, lawyering, property ownership, and communications has made it far too easy to steal, move, hide, and launder money, secrets, and treasure, especially when governments are complicit. And it’s only getting easier. Further, naïve optimism, self-interest, complacency, and the norms of identity politics rationalized meeting authoritarian regimes where they’re at and respecting their sovereignty and culture in exchange for whatever the West wants to sell them or extract from them. It has even led the West to acquiesce in (when it has not outright assisted with) sophisticated control and manipulation of the Internet and other communications in those countries. Citizens get tracked, reported, and oppressively misinformed about the world, their own and everyone else’s. (Who’s yucking now?)

The focus and facilitation of the information control is fascinating (and returns 1984 to its prescient perch). According to Applebaum, the “news” in the oppressive regimes is obsessively curated and dominated by how terrible and dysfunctional the democratic countries are, especially the United States. And when editorial choices with actual events aren’t incendiary enough, the “news” can just be made up.

As I was reading that, I thought of the domestic “news” all around me. It’s the same god-damned thing. We’ve got liberals and conservatives constantly wanting to talk about what some school board did in some town or city they’ll never visit. Just like with the authoritarians, their respective “news” is dominated by tales of the horror of the other side. Fear them! Look what they do! And see how they mock and hate you!

That is not the Cold War-inspired optimist scenario at all. Instead of suffering people seeing America (thanks to that irrepressible Internet thing) as a shining city on a hill, they get a firehose of disinformation spraying that there are no shining cities. Give up hope. Nowhere else is better. Even America sucks. Indeed, look what Americans are saying about America. And your current government is doing the best it can against America’s evil interference and cultural sewage.

* * *

It’s a mess. It’s a no good, very bad, terrible, and dangerous mess. As things stand now, the optimists were wrong. Their choices facilitated massive kleptocracy and oppression and made the world more dangerous, as enriching bad guys and giving them killer technology and a massive chip on their shoulder tends to do.

But will things improve in the long run? I.e., is the good stuff on the ultimately irrepressible Internet along with a deep yearning for truth and freedom going to win out (not looking great)? Or must we start getting better control of the bad guys (yes) and stop underestimating their badness (yes)?

Applebaum ends the book with various ideas for reform of domestic and international rules to at least make the kleptocracy more difficult and perhaps make some bad guys fear prison or worse. Those things matter. On some of this stuff, as she emphasizes, details matter. Like being able to purchase property in America or other western democracies without accounting for who the owner is and where the money came from, and having enforced rules limiting that. And she has some interesting discussion of non-violent ways we can nudge each other in virtuous directions.

Obviously, she’s not optimistic like the optimists she criticizes, and there are varying levels of optimism. Some (especially those with money devoted to it) believe technology like the Internet, social media, artificial intelligence, or whatever else will somehow eventually be for the best. Somehow. Always. I don’t know, like cats landing on their feet. Only that’s basically physics so some way other than physics. Unless there’s some heretofore unknown rule of physics that technology will always help and not hurt people. I’m no physicist, but that doesn’t sound like physics. I’m more of an expert in self-absorbed white male nitwits. And I think my detector is . . .

Sounding the alarm about bad guys to get serious and clear-eyed on their badness and the optimists’ wrongness and then deterring and hemming in the bad guys to slowly make the world better would seem to be where Applebaum lands. But what do we make of the bad guys? What is their deal?

The subtitle of Applebaum’s book is “[t]he dictators who want to run the world,” and at the end of the first chapter she says that their aim is to “create a new world order.” In the case of jihadists—who would rule the world by wiping out non-believers, starting with Israel—her appraisal is fair. But she notes repeatedly that the coordination among bad guys has no real ideological consistency beyond being anti-American or anti-West. So take out the jihadists and cartoonish evil leaders in small countries. Should we believe that the more historically run-of-the-mill dictators of large and/or resource-rich countries have taken some psychological turn and want to “run the world”?

I’m skeptical. They seem too small-minded, and her detailing of the kleptocracy (self-enrichment) for me cuts against running the world (world-obsession). To be sure, like many who rise in flawed regimes, they are bullies and sociopaths, and many are down with all kinds of theft, violence, deceit, and oppression. Applebaum lays it out. And they have their territory, real and perceived, like criminal gangs. But “run the world”?

Maybe run the world away from their yachts, palaces, and junkyards. They don’t want to be judged, pushed around, or deterred, and they will steal our stuff, terrorize, and diminish us, to say nothing of harming and killing millions. All that is worth deterring. And of course, seated next to some vacuous dictator aspiring to be Tony Soprano on the world stage may be an actual, messianic maniac. So we shouldn’t falsely assure ourselves that any given tyrant doesn’t seem psychologically up for the big, crazy things. His replacement, consigliere, or fellow traveler might be. Truly insane aspirants elsewhere might be. And they all have killer technology.

But in my skepticism of the “run the world” subtitle—which is not lack of support for deterrence, not at all—what do I know? I only actually know the smallest, pettiest “dictators” of mundane life. They are empty, humorless, and uninteresting. Narrow. Small. Overly focused on themselves and their money or perceived realm. They’ll lie and mess with people, but it’s all about them. That’s the “world” they want to run and protect, not everyone else’s. I worry about the rest of us being overly obsessed with our own small worlds, hoping the bullies and dictators just leave our little worlds alone. That’s a problem. And it scales.

I remember one time when I was maybe ten or eleven on a hot, blustery summer day waiting for baseball practice to start. The coaches hadn’t arrived. Two older kids came by, and they were pushing us around and making fun of us. When the coaches arrived, we told them, and one of the coaches lectured us: “All you kids could have stood up for yourselves together. Christ, you each had a baseball bat. Be a team and defend each other.” To this day, I sometimes wish we could have a do-over. Though it would be weird (and probably newsworthy) if a gang of 50-year-old men once on a little league team together descended upon two seemingly random 54-year-old men and beat them with bats. Better late than . . .

You never really know what you or anyone else will do until the bully arrives at your baseball practice. And that’s where I may worry more than Applebaum. Do we have the historical learning, the software upgrade to the collective unconscious, the bonds to each other, the forethought, the personal courage, the inspiration from a leader, or even just a leader to do something other than individually retreat into our small worlds and hope the bullies don’t harm us? Maybe if you see it happen to some other group of kids, perhaps just like you and your team. Maybe if you get a chance to talk as a team and formulate a plan ahead of time. Maybe if you pledge yourself to each other because of some bond that you feel for each other. Maybe if one person sets a courageous example to follow, solving the first-mover problem. Maybe if a leader sets that example. Maybe. Maybe then, when action is called for, there’s a power that is strong, sudden, and cruel sometimes. That ought to be the power of . . .

The news in Autocracy, Inc. can seem like it is from distant lands. Most of it literally is. But as Mary Oliver reminds in “Beyond the Snow Belt,” a storm taking lives two counties north of us can seem “far away.”

And till the principle of things takes root,
How shall examples move us from our calm?
I do not say that is not a fault.
I only say, except as we have loved,
All news arrives as from a distant land.