Portrait of a Chilling Future
I’m publishing this series of articles to share and discuss my ruminations on coping with a troubled and messy world. Please “follow” me to never miss an article.
I’m well aware that in my previous blogs I’ve been an unrelenting voice of Doom and Gloom. It’s not because I’m normally given to pessimism. Indeed, growing up as I did in chronically dysfunctional family and using my God-given brains and hard work, my life has been blessed beyond my wildest dreams.
If I’m pessimistic about our future, it’s because of the endless spate of awful news pointing to our decline. A recent article in The New Yorker, “THE ILLIBERAL ORDER,” sums it up. It paints a chilling portrait of America’s future.[i] It shows how Republican Governors such as Ron DeSantis have turned to Hungary’s Victor Orban as a model of leadership. True to his Authoritarian nature, Orban has used every apparatus of the Government to maintain his grip on power. Indeed, more than once, he’s rewritten Hungary’s Constitution.
If The New Yorker article were the rare exception, it would of course be easy to dismiss its apocalyptic tone as a gross overreaction. Unfortunately, it’s not. Again, as I’ve indicated in previous blogs, The New York Times has in different words come to the same conclusions. Today’s Republican Party is deeply enamored of Authoritarianism. Given its unrelenting stance on Abortion and Guns, I urge Liberals and Independents to vote in the upcoming November Mid-Terms. We cannot stand by and allow this country to overtaken by the most despicable elements.
[i] Andrew Marantz, “THE ILLIBERAL ORDER,” The New Yorker, July 4, 2022, pp. 36–47.
Ian I. Mitroff is credited as being one of the principal founders of the modern field of Crisis Management. He has a BS, MS, and a PhD in Engineering and the Philosophy of Social Systems Science from UC Berkeley. He Is Professor Emeritus from the Marshall School of Business and the Annenberg School of Communication at USC. Currently, he is a Senior Research Affiliate in the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management, UC Berkeley. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Management. He has published 41 books. His latest is: The Socially Responsible Organization: Lessons from Covid, Springer, New York, 2022.
Photo by Louis Maniquet on Unsplash
