15 February

This is what’s really happening in the US, and in Australia too. Competitive status games, mostly carried out on social media, are taking over democratic institutions, and weaponising them for their competitive team sports. The article calls it competitive authoritarianism. But team sports is simpler, all status games are ‘authoritarian’, they’re about who is top dog. That’s the basis of all human society. Only those institutions ever act as a brake on these status games. All modern populist politicians target the institutions for exactly that reason, they hate the due process checks and balances they impose on them. They call it ‘red tape’. The gullible cheer on the destruction.