Hispanic Fanatic

In my last post, I discussed how Finland was crowned the happiest country in the world for like the 19^th year in a row. In fact, all of Scandinavia is prosperous, peaceful, and delightful. 

This fact should put American conservatives in a quandary. After all, when multiple nations embrace the exact opposite of your values, and those countries go on to become the envy of the world, one would think it would constitute a strong rejection of your ideals.

But conservatives are a hardy lot. Even when total disaster befalls them, and everything they said would happen doesn’t occur, and their agenda implodes into chaos, they insist that they are right and everyone else is wrong.

One could call this perseverance. I prefer the term delusion, but perspectives vary.

In any case, conservatives have a quick answer for why the Nordic countries — all socially democratic with active governments and generous benefits for their citizens — are doing so well.

“It’s obvious,” says the conservative. “They are reaping the benefits of being small, culturally homogenous societies with little ethnic diversity.”

To the conservative, the Nordic governments prosper not because they provide universal healthcare and don’t allow their citizens to carry around assault rifles. No, they thrive because all of their citizens are white and blonde.

This is, to say the least, an interesting viewpoint. It’s also implied racism, but we will let that go for the moment.

Let’s take a look at each of these arguments in turn.

First, I agree with conservatives that smaller countries seem to be more hospitable. This is one reason why I advocate for splitting up the United States (or at least studying the idea more thoroughly). 

Huge countries like America, China, and Russia tend to devolve into unmanageable messes or international bullies. Maybe the Nordic countries have an advantage in that they don’t have to keep 300 million people happy under one system. 

However, there are large countries that seem to have their shit together, like Canada, and small countries that are hellholes, like North Korea. So this is a supporting factor at best.

What about being culturally homogenous? It makes sense that a shared culture and national character would bind a country together. However, many studies have shown that the most culturally diverse cities tend to be the safest and most productive within any given nation. So maybe we call this factor a draw.

That leaves us with the heart of the conservative argument, which is that the happiest countries don’t have a lot of foreigners running around, and most people there are the same skin hue and look like they could be related.

Again, this is an interesting position to advocate for.

To analyze this argument, let’s look at that list of nations again. According to the study, the five happiest countries, in order, are the following:

Finland 

Iceland 

Denmark 

Costa Rica 

Sweden 

Yes, those places are not exactly melting pots. But do me a favor and take a glance at the same study’s list of least-happiest nations. The five most miserable countries, in order, are the following:

Afghanistan 

Sierra Leone 

Malawi 

Zimbabwe 

Botswana

Um, those countries are even less racially diverse than the Nordic countries. 

Well, that’s a plot twist.

Now to be fair, if conservatives are talking about ethnic diversity, they may have a point, because Afghanistan, for example, is home to many different tribes, all of whom apparently hate each other. But if you’re talking about racial diversity — and let’s face it, that’s what conservatives really mean — then the conservative argument is backward. 

Places like Afghanistan and Sierra Leone have almost no racial diversity. The vast majority of the people in those nations enjoy the cultural and racial hegemony that conservatives dream of, and yet this has not led to paradise. Also, those countries have limited governments (to the point of almost nonexistent) and plenty of guns in the hands of residents, so they sound like conservative Edens.

And if we really want to get bossy, please note that the top five happiest nations, in addition to being more racially diverse than the five saddest countries, also have much higher immigration rates.

This makes sense, because if you were a refugee, would you rather escape to Denmark or Malawi? So once again, if an immigration rate of zero is your dream, you must really love Zimbabwe.

At this point, it’s fair to say that even this most fragile of conservative arguments for the success of Scandinavia is absurd. In truth, there is no logical way anyone can look at the most prosperous nations, line them up with American conservative ideals, and see a match.

So maybe conservatives are wrong about the ideal society, and perhaps we should not listen to people who want American to emulate Hungary (the 74^th happiest country in the world) rather than Norway ((the sixth happiest country in the world).I know where I would rather live. How about you?

Politicians have long employed vivid metaphors to explain how they envision America’s future. Maybe it’s a New Deal or a Great Society or a shining city on a hill.

But according to our friends in the Republican Party, our country’s future can be summed up in the phrase “serf city.”

You see, conservatives see Hungary as the model for America. This is because they love its leader, Viktor Orbán, “a small-time autocrat who has impoverished his country… while enriching his family and friends.” In turn, Orbán and other autocrats love “Americans who have broken the law, gone to jail, stolen from their own charities, or harassed women.” 

Hungary is now the poorest nation in the European Union, and the government oppresses the shit out of anyone who isn’t a straight Christian (so you see the appeal to Republicans).

It’s a bizarre role model for the world’s most powerful country to emulate. But that’s the direction in which we are headed, because the current occupant of the White House “has grown more impulsive, more vindictive, and more anarchic” while pursuing his “witless, incoherent, and incompetently executed policies.” The truth is that “if the behavior that this administration has exhibited in just its first six months continues and is amplified for its full four years, the America you know will be gone.”

We will be Hungary, just larger and with fatter people.

What can we do about this slide into oligarchal incompetence? Apparently, not much.

As our befuddled, furious, demented president “takes a sledgehammer to the rule of law, intimidates and bullies those who stand in his way, hacks away at press freedoms, guts government agencies, and continues to demonize those whom he sees as ‘woke,’ who will dare to stand in his way?”

His hardcore supporters will love him no matter what. This is because devoted right-wingers are often “abused people who identify with power so they’ll never be hurt again.” Their approach to a wannabe strongman is “Big Daddy will protect me so that I’ll never be hurt again, like I was hurt by my real daddy.” Such zealous Trumpers “attack vulnerable people because they hate their own vulnerability.”

So don’t count on angry people who have voted for Trump three times to reign in a guy who is “going to war against America” itself.

We are suffering through a rapidly escalating series of “moments where malignant normality… somehow keeps getting worse as the country collapses into autocracy and authoritarianism.”

America is in a horrific situation where if Trump fails, “then we all do.” But if he’s successful, “our republic fails. That’s the historic situation we find ourselves in.”

Damn. 

I hope you like Hungarian goulash.