Greetings from Istanbul. For the last week I've watched my friends' anxiety rise as the Turkish lira plummets. We've naturally been comparing notes on the egomaniacs running our respective countries. #Turkey
I'm not a currency expert, and I can't speak with confidence about how this crisis affects Erdogan's standing at home, but I do know that authoritarians plan for the short term and benefit from chaos.
This is especially true when, as in Turkey, there's no real opposition left, the media is effectively under government control, and the possibility of a power vacuum frightens everyone more than continued repression.
My friends are in a privileged position: those who can afford it have made exit plans, that is unless their jobs or businesses limit their ability to leave Turkey.
There are recurrent themes to our conversations. We agree that the traditional notions of left and right are increasingly obsolete, and that it's more helpful to think of governments as open or closed. Reactionary populist movements are a result of globalization.
Meanwhile, the post-WWII order is dead. Human rights norms have no bite without US backing, and Trump isn't planning to uphold public intl law. Farewell to refugee protections, humanitarian aid, and intl criminal tribunals, at least for the foreseeable future.
My friends view the US through a geopolitical lens, and so they see Trump as an escalation of bad policies rather than as a disruption. I remind them that Americans think almost exclusively in domestic terms, despite being the most powerful military and economy in the world.
Their perspective has been refreshing in that they've been dealing with this crap longer and are already thinking ahead to when this global fascist contraction will end. I remember when Erdogan's regime was young - back then Russia was the newly failed democracy.
I don't know yet how we'll dig ourselves out of this hole, but I believe that we can do something to soften the blow. @NoToNihilism was created as a counter measure to the global trend away from long-term planning, peace, and cooperation.
Policy going forward has to account for emotion, because feelings drive human decision-making, particularly how people vote. People like to vote for dictators who provide easy slogans, solutions, and enemies to blame.
We can't fight human nature with facts alone, though we must keep asserting them. We need new, inclusive communities to remind each other that cooperation is our best shot at survival as a species. Let's face it: tyrants or no tyrants, climate change is here to kick our butts.
