SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Authoritarian leaders are seen as far more trustworthy than politicians in more openly democratic countries across the emerging world, according to data compiled by the World Economic Forum.
Leaders in Singapore, the Gulf states and Rwanda are rated as having the highest ethical standards in the emerging markets, closely followed by their Chinese and central Asian counterparts.
In contrast, politicians in democracies such as Brazil, Paraguay, Nigeria, Mexico and Romania are seen as exhibiting the lowest ethical standards.
Overall, among the 20 emerging market countries rated as having the most trustworthy politicians in the 2016 survey, 13 are rated as "not free" by Freedom House, a US government-funded non-governmental organisation, with three classed as partly free and just four classed as free.
Among the 20 emerging markets whose politicians are seen as having the lowest ethical standards, not one is classed by Freedom House as not free, with six free and 14 partly free.
https://www.ft.com/content/79d1ce36-8ca9-11e6-8aa5-f79f5696c731
Might be paywalled, but I got in using my normal combination of noscript, self-destructing cookies, and referrer spoofing (from google.com).
Text without charts: http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/world/2016/10/1823541-polls-show-low-approval-of-the-ethical-standards-of-leaders-in-latin-america.shtml
(Score: 4, Insightful) by isostatic on Wednesday October 19 2016, @06:36AM
We're in a post-truth world, perception is reality, reality is bias
(Score: 4, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday October 19 2016, @12:35PM
We're in a post-truth world, perception is reality, reality is bias
The irony of this situation is that the Left (particularly in academia) created the precursors to this. The war on "objective reality" began in the 1960s and spread far and wide as "post-modern" approaches sought to show how the way we talk about things is shaped by who we are, what we believe, etc., and this actually helps to create the underlying assumptions we live our lives by.
In some cases, these critiques were important and helpful -- they pointed out bias in the system that wasn't necessarily recognized on the surface. "Facts" can be biased after all -- you can selectively choose what facts to present, how to collect the data, how to analyze it, etc., and if you have assumptions about what the data should show, your "facts" will often come out to support those assumptions.
But the critiques went far beyond this, and by the 1990s or so, there were folks in academe who seemed to believe in full-blown relativism where facts no longer even exist.
Short anecdote: I still remember when I was in graduate school and encountered a humanities Ph.D. student who seriously wondered whether it should matter if we just "make up stories" in our history books, as long as they are roughly consistent with what we think we know. If we don't know stuff about a historical figure, why not just make something up and tell a good story? Her perspective is that history was only about "telling good stories" that support what we want to think about ourselves and our culture. (And, well, it *has* been used for those purposes at times.)
In that discussion, luckily I had a Jewish friend who jumped in and said, "Well, if it really doesn't matter if we make stuff up, where does it stop? Should we treat the Holocaust deniers and their 'stories' on equal footing as legitimate historians?"
These discussions became increasingly common, particularly in humanities academia over the past few decades. The Left thought it could use such tools to overcome bias -- and indeed it sometimes helped to point out that different perspectives on cultural and social values often shape our choice of "facts" in deep ways. But those who pushed further into full-blown relativism seemed unaware of the dangers it poses.
Now the Right has figured out how it can actually use the same arguments to manipulate the world in its favor. If "truth" really is out the window, then who are we to judge the opinions of some racist bigot, for example? For a long time, the Left was able to ignore such a possibility, only claiming "relativism" when it was tearing down views it didn't like. But now the extreme Right has figured out that this is actually an opportunity to legitimize its perceptions as a new kind of "reality." (Please note that I don't really buy the whole "Left vs. Right" way of looking at politics anyway, and I don't really consider myself to fall on either side, because I think political philosophies are much more multidimensional than that. But most people accept this binary opposition.)
Stephen Colbert figured this out a long time ago with his concept of "truthiness." I find it rather depressing -- but rather ironic -- that the subjective "reality" of folks like Trump was prepared by the philosophies of Leftist academia and a satirical talk-show host.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @01:00PM
Stephen Colbert figured this out a long time ago with his concept of "truthiness." I find it rather depressing -- but rather ironic -- that the subjective "reality" of folks like Trump was prepared by the philosophies of Leftist academia and a satirical talk-show host.
Colbert didn't "prepare" it. He was mocking what O'Reilly, and Fox more generally, were already selling.
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/63ite2/the-colbert-report-the-word---truthiness [cc.com]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday October 19 2016, @05:52PM
I love how the Republican candidate for President has been running around repeating ridiculous conspiracy theories for 8 years now, and yet somehow it's the Left's fault.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 19 2016, @02:28PM
That reads pretty accurate to me. But then, you have to acknowledge that the Right had seized the commanding heights of government, business, and international institutions like the IMF, World Bank, etc. The entirety of the post-WWII global financial system has been tailor-made to right-wing specifications.
Want to have free and fair elections in a South American country? Too bad [wikipedia.org]!
Want a mortgage to buy a house while being black? Too bad [wikipedia.org]!
Want your freely elected leaders to regulate resource extraction in your country? Too bad [wikipedia.org]!
All of those things are real, and they were not aberrations. They were policy, and are policy. You could cite a hundred more cases like them. You could probably cite a hundred more cases like them in the last 3 years, the way things have been accelerating.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2016, @03:17PM
It's highly delusional to portray the communist takeover of Chile in the 1970s as merely having free and fair elections. It's delusional to ignore that certain regions of the US would be and often still are vicious money sinks for banking and similar businesses and that this characteristic is way too frequently ethnicity-based. It's delusional to equate outright theft from more powerful countries with mere regulation of resource extraction (Iran's takeover of foreign oil company assets in the early 1950s, for those not in the know BTW).
I won't pretend that the activities you coyly refer to as being the fault of some imaginary "Right" weren't harmful and unworthy of the developed world and the US in particular. But you blatantly sugarcoat some pretty vile problems and actions in the first place. Who knew that evil actions had evil consequences? Who knew that slums weren't banking magnets? People with half a brain knew.
All of those things are real, and they were not aberrations. They were policy, and are policy. You could cite a hundred more cases like them. You could probably cite a hundred more cases like them in the last 3 years, the way things have been accelerating.
It's policy for virtually every country to further the interests of that country. It's never policy to just enable the greed or lust of power of some outside party that decided to walk all over those interests. Similarly, banks and other businesses are here to make a profit not throw money down some rathole because the multi-cultural gods demand a sacrifice.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @04:26PM
Its funny to see how you get angry whenever your preconceptions are challenged.
Its almost as if you think repeating your beliefs more forcefully and disdainfully will make them more true.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 19 2016, @08:56PM
I see. So if the Right commits evil acts we shouldn't talk about that or even mention it because "that's just how they are?" I guess it's delusional to discuss how the Right has overthrown democratically elected leaders and destabilized entire countries and oppressed entire ethnicities, because it's ok when we're doing that to other countries or to people who are not white. Let's not talk about that at all, eh khallow, because it's profoundly naive to expect the Right to comport themselves with honor, justice, and compassion?
But let's do fly into a rage when we talk about academics who got a little carried away when they were questioning the use of language. Sure, that didn't physically harm anyone or oppress anyone in a profitable way, but it simply got khallow's dander up, and That. Will. Not. Stand!
Right? Who wouldn't prefer a right-wing fascist with death squads to a democratically elected social democrat? It's almost like people don't want to be disappeared, tortured, murdered, and dumped in unmarked graves. What's the world coming to?!
I'm white. You're black. I get a mortgage and a home. You don't. What's there to figure out?
How dare they live on top of OUR oil, right? I mean, it's almost as if they think the stuff in their country is theirs to do with as they please.
I am never coy.
I don't have a sweet tooth. I prefer acid.
Khallow doesn't. Khallow doesn't know that.
Ah, here at last I think we know how to parse what you write. Much like we are advised to append "...in bed" to the predictions in fortune cookies, we must append "...unless [khallow|the United States] [says so|does it]" to what you write.
It does sound like I triggered you. Sorry about that. Maybe you can check into the safe space nearest you where you can curl up into a little ball while big sweaty men named Bubba can stroke your hair and tell you it's ok to have irrational hatred for everyone who's not a white American man...
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @03:40PM