You know, it is a strange time to be looking at the global map. It is February twenty-sixth, twenty-twenty-six, and the world feels like it is pulling in two completely opposite directions at once. On one hand, we have this incredible era of technological decentralization. We have blockchain, peer-to-peer networks, and horizontal collaboration tools that allow a kid in Jakarta to build a software empire with a team in Berlin and Buenos Aires without ever talking to a central authority. But on the other hand, the actual seats of political power seem to be getting narrower, more vertical, and more concentrated in the hands of single individuals than we have seen in decades. Today’s prompt from Daniel is about exactly this tension. He’s looking at the dominant systems of governance and feeling like something is fundamentally off. He mentioned that despite the collective models we use in business or distributed networks, we are seeing this massive rise in authoritarian, strongman-style leadership.
Herman Poppleberry here. And Daniel is hitting on something that political scientists have been sounding the alarm about for years, something they call the third wave of autocratization. It is a heavy topic, but it is one that connects so many of the threads we have been pulling on lately. Daniel mentioned leaders like Donald Trump, who is now well into his second term here in the United States, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, and Xi Jinping. He is asking a really pointed question: is this a genuine flourishing of authoritarianism, a structural shift in how humans want to be led, or are we just seeing it more clearly because of the twenty-four hour news cycle and real-time information? Is the world actually getting darker, or is the spotlight just getting brighter and more focused on the shadows?
It is a great question because our perception of the world is so filtered through these digital lenses. We see every tweet, every rally, every decree in real-time. But I think before we get into the visibility aspect, we have to look at the hard numbers. We can't just rely on our gut feeling or our social media feeds. Is it actually happening, Herman? Are we objectively moving away from democracy on a global scale, or is this just a localized blip that feels bigger than it is?
Unfortunately, Corn, the data suggests this is much more than a blip. If you look at the reports from the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg—which is arguably the most comprehensive database on democracy in the world—the trend is pretty devastating. Their twenty-twenty-five report, which just came out, confirms that we are in a period of democratic backsliding that has erased almost thirty-five years of global progress. Freedom House has also reported nearly two decades of consecutive decline in global freedom. In their recent reports, they noted that the number of countries experiencing a decline in political rights and civil liberties far outnumbers those seeing improvements. We are currently at a point where more than seventy percent of the world’s population lives in autocracies—either closed autocracies or electoral autocracies. That is up from about forty-eight percent just ten years ago. For the first time since the late nineteen-eighties, there are more closed autocracies than liberal democracies. So, to Daniel’s point, it is not just a feeling or a result of social media. The democratic backsliding is a measurable, statistical reality. We are seeing the dismantling of checks and balances, the erosion of judicial independence, and the systematic targeting of the free press in countries that we used to consider stable democracies.
That is sobering. And it is interesting how Daniel framed it as being at odds with how we are told to operate in almost every other context of modern life. In the tech world, or even in modern corporate management, the mantra is all about flat hierarchies, agile teams, and collective decision-making. We talk about the wisdom of the crowd, we experiment with decentralized autonomous organizations where the code is the law, and we praise the "leader-as-servant" model. We are told that the most efficient way to solve a complex problem is to distribute the cognitive load across a network. But then you look at the nation-state level, and it feels like we are retreating back to the nineteenth-century model of the Great Man theory of history. We are looking for the one person who can stand on a stage and say, "I alone can fix it." Why is there such a massive disconnect between how we run a software company and how we run a country?
It is a massive contradiction, and it points to a deep psychological tension in the human species. I think part of the reason for that retreat is a direct reaction to the overwhelming complexity of the systems we talked about in episode eight hundred fifty-eight. When we discussed neoliberalism as the market's operating system, we talked about how it can feel cold, impersonal, and incredibly complex. Neoliberalism promised that if we just let the markets work and the institutions manage the technocratic details, everyone would eventually benefit. But for a lot of people, that hasn't happened. When people feel like they are being buffeted by global forces they cannot control—whether that is AI-driven automation, mass migration, or the sudden shifts in global supply chains—there is a very human psychological urge to look for a protector. A strongman promises to cut through the red tape, the complex institutional frameworks, and the "expert" consensus that people feel has failed them. The strongman offers a return to agency. He says, "The system is a maze, but I am a bulldozer."
Right, the promise of simplicity in an over-complicated world. It’s the appeal of the clear, decisive voice in a room full of people arguing over footnotes. But then there is the second part of Daniel’s prompt, which is the lack of civility. He mentioned Keith Bybee’s essay, The Rise of Trump and the Death of Civility. Bybee, who is a professor at Syracuse, argues that the traditional norms of respectability and politeness in statesmanship are not just gone, but have been replaced by something much more abrasive and intentionally provocative. Daniel pointed out that he appreciates certain policies, especially regarding the international situation in Jerusalem, but the rhetoric, the name-calling, the nicknames like Sleepy Joe or the constant belittling of opponents—it feels like a total breakdown of the system itself. It’s like we’ve moved from the halls of parliament to a professional wrestling ring.
Bybee’s work is fascinating because he suggests that civility was never just about being nice or having good manners. Civility was a functional part of the democratic machinery. It was a set of protocols that allowed for the "managed disagreement" necessary for a pluralistic society to function. It provided a way for people who fundamentally disagree on the most basic values to still work together within the same institutions without resorting to violence. When you lose that, when you move into an era of what researchers call affective polarization—where you don’t just disagree with your opponent’s tax policy, but you view them as an existential threat, a moral failure, or an "enemy of the people"—the institutions stop working. You can't compromise with a monster. And if your opponent is a monster, then any tactic used to stop them is justified. That is the death spiral of democracy.
And that breakdown of civility seems to be a feature, not a bug, for these authoritarian-style leaders. It is a way of signaling to their base that they are genuine outsiders. They are not part of the polite, polished elite that the voters feel has ignored them for decades. By being abrasive, by breaking the "rules" of how a statesman is supposed to talk, they are proving their authenticity to their followers. It is a weird inversion where being rude is seen as being honest, and being diplomatic is seen as being a liar or a "snake." The more the media and the establishment gasp at a leader's lack of decorum, the more that leader's base feels like he is finally fighting for them.
It is the performance of strength through the rejection of norms. If you can break a long-standing norm—whether it is a norm about how you talk to the press or a norm about how you treat the Department of Justice—and you get away with it, you are demonstrating power. You are showing that you are bigger than the system. That is very appealing to people who feel like the current norms have only served a specific class of people while leaving them behind. But the cost is the disintegration of the public square. When we lose the ability to have a shared language of respect, we lose the ability to compromise. And democracy is, at its core, a system of managed compromise. Without it, you only have the exercise of raw power.
It makes me think about the world Daniel’s son Ezra is going to grow up in. If this trend continues, the concept of a statesman might be totally unrecognizable by the time he is an adult. We might be looking at a world where international relations are just a series of transactional, high-stakes personality clashes between various "big men" rather than institutional cooperation. We’re already seeing this with the way international treaties are being treated—not as binding obligations, but as temporary deals that can be torn up the moment they aren't convenient for the leader's domestic narrative.
That is the big fear. The international community, the United Nations, the various trade and climate treaties we have relied on since the end of the second world war—they are all built on the assumption of a certain level of institutional civility and shared truth. They require a belief that the person across the table represents a stable state, not just their own personal whims. If that is replaced by a global arena of strongmen, then the risk of miscalculation and conflict goes up exponentially. We actually touched on some of these statistics in episode six hundred forty-five when we looked at the return of large-scale war. When power is concentrated in one person, there are fewer people in the room who can say, "Wait, this is a bad idea." The "yes-man" effect is the greatest threat to global stability.
So let’s dig into the visibility question Daniel asked. Is it possible that we have always had these types of leaders, but we just didn't see them as clearly? I mean, throughout the twentieth century, there were plenty of dictators and strongmen, but maybe they were more localized. You had your Cold War despots, but they were often hidden behind a curtain of state-controlled media. Now, because of the internet, a populist movement in Hungary or a crackdown in Turkey can be seen, studied, and even emulated by people in the United States or Brazil in real-time. Is the "strongman" just a viral meme that has gone global?
I think visibility definitely plays a role in the contagion of these ideas. We are seeing a globalization of the authoritarian playbook. Leaders are learning from each other in a way that was impossible fifty years ago. They see what works in terms of media manipulation, how to "flood the zone" with conflicting information to exhaust the public's sense of truth, how to handle a rebellious judiciary, and how to use social media to bypass traditional gatekeepers like editors and journalists. Real-time information means that an oratory style or a specific type of nationalist propaganda that works in one country can be adapted and deployed elsewhere almost instantly. It’s like a political A-B test happening on a global scale.
It is like an open-source movement for autocracy. That is a dark thought. But it also means that the resistance to these trends is also more visible. We see protests in one capital city inspiring movements across borders. But the strongman model seems to have a natural advantage in the digital age because it thrives on conflict, and conflict is what the algorithms are designed to amplify. The digital landscape isn't a neutral field; it’s tilted toward the loudest, most divisive voice.
That is a crucial point. The attention economy is almost perfectly calibrated for the authoritarian style. Nuanced, civil, institutional discourse is boring. It doesn't get clicks. It doesn't go viral. It doesn't trigger the dopamine hit of "owning" the other side. But a leader who makes a shocking statement, who insults a rival, or who breaks a long-standing tradition? That dominates the feed. It forces everyone to react to them. In a way, our digital infrastructure has become a breeding ground for this style of leadership. We have built a colosseum and then we act surprised when gladiators show up to play.
It is a feedback loop. The more polarized the public becomes, the more they demand a leader who will "fight" for them. And the more the leader fights, the more polarized the public becomes. It feels like a cycle that is very hard to break once it starts, because the very tools we would use to break it—like calm, reasoned debate—are the tools that the system has already rendered obsolete.
Dorothy: Herman? Herman, are you there?
Mum? Oh, Mum, I am actually in the middle of recording the show right now. We are on the air, so to speak.
Dorothy: I know, I know, I just wanted to remind you that I left that container of vegetable soup by your front door this morning. Don’t let it sit out too long, bubbeleh, it has the good marrow in it. And did you call the dentist about that crown? You can't keep putting that off, Herman, your jaw will start to click.
Mum, I will call you back in twenty minutes. I promise. We are talking about global authoritarianism and the decline of the democratic world order.
Dorothy: Oh, that sounds very important. Just don’t forget the soup. It is your favorite. Hi Corn! I hope you're keeping Herman focused!
Hi Dorothy! Thanks for the soup update! I'll make sure he eats it!
Sorry about that. Where were we? Right, the cycle of polarization and the rise of the strongman. It’s hard to talk about the end of the world when your mother is worried about your dental work.
Actually, maybe that's the perfect transition. We were talking about how the digital infrastructure feeds into this. But I want to go back to Daniel’s point about business and distributed networks. Why hasn't the success of those models translated into politics? If we know that diverse, collaborative teams make better decisions in a tech company—if we know that "agile" is better than "waterfall"—why do we keep voting for the "waterfall" version of a human being to lead our governments? Why do we want a CEO-king instead of a Scrum Master-president?
I think it comes down to the difference between a goal-oriented organization and a nation-state. In a business, everyone is generally aligned on a single goal, which is the success of the company, usually measured in profit or growth. Because the goal is clear, distributed decision-making is an efficiency tool. But in a nation, you have millions of people with fundamentally different values, conflicting priorities, and totally different visions for the future. Distributed decision-making is incredibly hard when there is no consensus on what the goal even is. A strongman offers a false sense of consensus by saying, "I am the goal. I am the way. I am the voice of the people." It is a shortcut through the messiness of pluralism. It’s much easier to follow a person than it is to navigate a complex, multi-stakeholder process where you might not get everything you want.
And that shortcut is very tempting when people feel like the pluralistic system hasn't delivered for them. If the experts and the technocrats—the people we talked about in episode five hundred ninety-two—haven't been able to fix the economy, stop the wars, or address the housing crisis, then people start looking for a wrecking ball. They don't want a better committee; they want someone who will just smash the system because the system feels like it is failing them. They see the "civility" of the old guard as a mask for their incompetence or their corruption.
And Keith Bybee’s point about civility fits right in here. Civility is often seen by the frustrated public as a tool of the establishment to prevent real change. They see politeness as a way of "tone-policing" the marginalized or papering over deep-seated structural problems. So when a leader comes along and is intentionally uncivil, it feels like they are finally telling the truth. It feels like they are stripping away the "polite lies" of the ruling class. It is a very powerful rhetorical move. It’s the "he says what we’re all thinking" defense.
But it is a move that has massive downstream consequences. When you kill civility, you also kill the possibility of a peaceful transfer of power or a shared reality. If your opponent is not just wrong, but a monster who must be destroyed, then you can't afford to lose an election. Losing an election becomes a death sentence for your way of life. That is where the authoritarianism really starts to set in. It becomes a matter of survival rather than a matter of policy. And once you're in survival mode, you'll support any "strongman" who promises to keep the other side away from the levers of power.
That is the core of the democratic backsliding we are seeing. It is not just that people are voting for strongmen, it is that the strongmen are then dismantling the guardrails that were designed to limit their power. They are changing the rules of the game so they can't lose. They are gerrymandering, they are packing courts, they are changing election laws. And they use the lack of civility to justify it. They say, "The other side is so dangerous, so radical, so uncivilized, that we have to take these extreme measures to save the country." It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy of institutional destruction.
It is interesting that Daniel mentioned he is based in Israel, because that is a place where these tensions are incredibly visible. You have a society that is a global leader in tech and innovation—the "Start-up Nation"—which is built on collaboration and flat hierarchies. But at the same time, the country has been grappling with some of the most intense political and social divisions in its history. We saw the massive protests over judicial reform in twenty-twenty-three, and then the existential crisis of the war starting in late twenty-twenty-three. The role of the leader in that context becomes even more central, and the rhetoric becomes even more charged.
And you see the same patterns there as you do in the United States, Hungary, or India. The use of rhetoric to divide the public into "us" versus "them." The attacks on the judiciary as being an "unelected elite." The move toward a more personalistic form of power where the leader's survival is equated with the nation's survival. It is a global phenomenon, and it is happening in countries with very different histories and cultures, which suggests there is something about our current global moment—perhaps our digital and economic infrastructure—that is making this model of leadership more viable.
So, what do we do with this? If the trend is real, if it’s backed by data, and if it is being fueled by the very way we communicate, is there a way back to a more civil, collective form of governance? Or are we just in a new era where the "strongman" is the dominant style, and we have to figure out how to survive it?
I think we have to look at how we can rebuild the institutions that foster civility without them feeling like tools of an out-of-touch elite. We need to find ways to make distributed and collective decision-making work at scale, which is something we explored in episode five hundred eighty-three. It might mean moving away from the massive, centralized nation-state model toward something more local or more network-based. We need to find ways to give people a sense of agency and protection that doesn't require a "strongman" at the top. We need to close the "complexity gap" so people don't feel so overwhelmed that they reach for the simplest, loudest solution.
But that feels like a very long-term project, Herman. Rebuilding institutions takes generations. And the strongmen are here right now. They are making decisions about climate change, about nuclear weapons, about the global economy today. We can't wait fifty years for a new model of "liquid democracy" to emerge while the current system is being dismantled.
No, we can't. In the short term, I think it comes down to the public demanding a return to certain norms. We have to stop rewarding the most abrasive voices with our attention. We have to recognize that civility is not just about being polite; it is a public good, like clean air or clean water. If we continue to treat politics as a blood sport, we shouldn't be surprised when we end up with gladiators instead of statesmen. We have to consciously choose to support leaders who value institutions over their own personality.
It is a tough sell, though. It is like telling people to eat their vegetables when there is a giant bowl of candy right in front of them. The outrage and the conflict are addictive. They provide a sense of belonging and a sense of purpose. It feels good to be part of a "tribe" that is fighting a "monster."
They do. But the hangover from that addiction is what we are seeing in the news every day. It is the wars, the social inequality, the failure of international cooperation that Daniel mentioned. At some point, the cost of the "candy" becomes too high. I think we are reaching that point. People are starting to realize that the strongman promise is often an empty one. They might be strong, but they are often only strong for themselves and their immediate circle. They don't actually fix the complex problems; they just find new people to blame for them.
That is a key insight. The strongman model is inherently exclusionary. It relies on having an enemy to fight. If you aren't part of the "chosen" group, then the strength of the leader is a threat to you, not a benefit. And eventually, the circle of the chosen group tends to get smaller and smaller as the leader becomes more paranoid and more protective of their power. It’s a model that eventually eats itself.
Precisely. That is the historical pattern of authoritarianism. It starts by targeting a specific minority or an outside group, but eventually, it turns inward. It is an unstable system because it relies on constant escalation and constant conflict to maintain its legitimacy. Democracy, for all its messiness, its slow pace, and its frustrating compromises, is a much more stable way to manage a complex society in the long run because it allows for peaceful correction.
So maybe the visibility Daniel asked about is actually a good thing in the end. Maybe by seeing these patterns play out in real-time across the globe—by seeing the "strongman playbook" being used in different languages and different contexts—we can start to recognize it for what it is. We can see the "glitch in the matrix." We can see the playbook and we can start to develop a counter-playbook.
I hope so. And I think that counter-playbook has to involve a new kind of civility. Not the old, stuffy, elitist politeness that was used to exclude people, but a functional, digital-age civility that allows for deep disagreement without dehumanization. We need to learn how to fight for our values without destroying the arena we are fighting in. We need to protect the "rules of the game" even when we really want to win.
That is a great way to put it. We have to protect the arena. Because once the arena is gone, there is no place left for politics, only for force. And that is a world that nobody wants to live in, regardless of their political leanings. Force doesn't care about your ideology; it only cares about who has the bigger stick.
And that brings us back to Keith Bybee’s essay. He points out that civility is a public good. It is something we all benefit from, even if we don’t realize it. When it is gone, everyone loses. So the task for our generation is to figure out how to reinvest in that public good in a way that feels authentic, inclusive, and capable of handling the complexities of the twenty-first century.
It feels like we are at a tipping point. The next decade or two will probably determine whether this authoritarian wave is a temporary regression—a "last gasp" of the nineteenth-century model—or a fundamental shift in how humanity governs itself in the digital age.
It is a high-stakes moment, for sure. But I am encouraged by the fact that people like Daniel are asking these questions. The first step toward fixing a system is recognizing that it is broken and understanding why. Daniel’s observation about the contrast between our collaborative tech models and our top-down political models is a really important piece of that puzzle. It shows that we already know there is a better way to organize ourselves; we just haven't figured out how to scale it to the level of the nation-state yet.
It really is. We have the tools for a more collective future, we just haven't figured out how to apply them to the biggest problems we face as a species. But the potential is there. If we can run a global open-source project with thousands of contributors, why can't we run a city or a country with that same level of transparency and collaboration?
It’s the challenge of our time. And maybe that is the takeaway for our listeners. Don’t just look at the strongmen on the screen. Look at the ways you are collaborating and building things in your own lives, in your businesses, in your communities. Those are the seeds of a different kind of power. That is the "horizontal" world trying to be born.
I like that. The strongman is a relic of the past, even if he is using the tools of the future to stay in power. The real future is likely to be much more distributed, much more collaborative, and much more complex than any one person can control.
I agree. And as we navigate this transition, we should probably keep an eye on the data. Let’s look for those small signs of democratic resilience. They are out there—in local elections, in new forms of digital organizing, in the persistence of independent journalists. They are out there, even if they don’t get as many headlines as the latest abrasive tweet.
Well, this has been a deep one. Daniel, thank you for sending this in. It is a topic that is clearly on a lot of people's minds, and for good reason. It is the big story of our time.
It really is. And if you want to dive deeper into the historical context of how we divide ourselves, I highly recommend checking out episode seven hundred fifty, where we talked about the architecture of the other. It fits perfectly with what we discussed today regarding the rise of the us versus them mentality and how it is physically and digitally constructed.
That is a great suggestion. And hey, if you are enjoying these deep dives, we would really appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your podcast app or Spotify. It genuinely helps the show reach new people who are looking for this kind of discussion. We're trying to build our own little decentralized community here, and every review helps.
It really does. We love seeing the show grow and hearing from more of you. It makes the research worth it.
You can find all our past episodes, including the ones we mentioned today, at myweirdprompts.com. We have a full archive there and a contact form if you want to send us a prompt like Daniel did. You can also email us at show at myweirdprompts.com. We read every single one.
And we should mention that our music is generated with Suno. It is always interesting to see how these AI tools can contribute to the creative process, even as we discuss the challenges they pose to our political systems.
Definitely. Well, Herman, I think I need to go see if I can find some of that soup your mum left. It sounded delicious, and I'm starving after all this talk of global collapse.
You stay away from my soup, Corn! That is my Shabbat lunch! I can see you eyeing the door from here!
We will see about that. I'm faster than I look. Thanks for listening, everyone. This has been My Weird Prompts.
Thanks for joining us. Until next time, keep questioning the systems!
