The Super Summary of World History - Alan Dale Daniel [285]
Propaganda in all its subtle forms including sophistry, visceral methods, psychological methods, big lies and the rest is coupled with mass marketing through television, radio, the print media, and the Internet and now poses a real problem for the Western Democracies. If public opinion can be manipulated using the modern media, then elections and law making will warp to the side of those with the best, and maybe the most expensive, sophist and propaganda artists. This will make democracy something less than the will of the people and more of the will of the manipulators. If history is any guide, the ability to manipulate the masses will grow exponentially.
Beyond the Cold War
After the Cold War, the United States was the only “superpower” on the planet. Today, China is one of the foremost nations in the world, and its technological, economic, and military rise has been swift. China is a superpower by any standard, and many Asian nations are falling under the broadening Chinese sphere of influence. China became communist in 1949, and until the death of Mao it was fraught with political and economic repression. Mao’s death on September 9, 1976 allowed Deng Xiaoping to take over. President Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 started the process of opening the nation up to economic reform, and Deng Xiaoping acted to expand the economy through doses of capitalism. It worked. China is growing to be the most economically powerful nation on earth. Nonetheless, the political repression remains. The rise of China also threatens the survival of Taiwan. As China is communist and seeking more power and influence in the world, this will result in yet another challenge to the democracies. In the East, Japan remains the only indigenous power that can match the Chinese economically; however, it cannot match the Chinese militarily. The testing of medium-range missiles by North Korea in 2007, another communist power, threatens Japan as well.
The fall of the USSR led to a bad economic time in Russia. Criminal elements literally stole the Russian economy and destroyed it for their own gain. After the fall of the communists dictators, Russia turned to democracy as their plan for the future; however, as time has moved forward the forces of democracy began to lose out to the forces of totalitarianism in Russia, and the elections put men into power who were not going to leave when their terms of office expired. As former strong men in the old USSR began to move to the top of Russian politics, they promised a return to past glories by confronting America and building up the Russian military to match the West. It seems old ways die hard, and Russia is turning back to its past of individual oppression and state supremacy. It appears that the dictators are returning as men such as Putin find ways to stay in office, newspaper reporters are murdered, the Russian legislature has less and less power, and foreigners who report on the activities of the Kremlin die mysterious deaths by radiation poisoning—or they just disappear into the snows of Moscow. As Russia melts into its past and transforms itself back to its old monstrous self, the impact on the world will be profound; however, it is too early to say where this will go. All the observer can do is compare where Russia seems to be going with where they were in the past and report that the ground looks familiar.
Europe is also growing into an economic powerhouse through its uniting in any economic, and now political, union. After the EEC showed its promise in the 1960s, other European nations began to join. They formed into a single market and a free trade zone named the European Union in 1995. Then they moved to a single currency about 2002, the Euro. Since 1995 the number of nations