‘Danse Macabre’:Strong leaders,US$and gold

As in medieval allegory of ‘Danse Macabre’ (or dance of death), there is aremarkable resurrection in the reputation of leaders who while long deadseem to continue inviting the populace to dance towards the grave. Some ofthese former leaders killed more people than at any time since the BlackDeath. For example in Russia, the popularity of Stalin (who once said ‘noman, no problem’) has shot up from 12% in ‘89 to 49% today. In China, thepositive view of Mao’s legacy is ~90%, while 37% of Americans believe it isbetter to have a strong leader who does not need to bother with elections andonly 32% of US millennials strongly support democracy (~43% in Europe).

Most surveys indicate that it is the younger cohorts (millennium and later Xgenerations) that have a higher predisposition to glorify strength and todenigrate cumbersome and quite often corrupt democracies. The oldercohorts, who have experience of dictatorships (whatever their creed) tend tohave a higher respect for democracy. For example, in a survey of the USmillennials, 26% think that more people died under GW Bush than underStalin and ~50% of younger people would vote for a socialist or communist.

It became popular in the ‘20s to call a period leading to the World War as‘sleepwalking’ to disaster. By the time ‘brain woke up’, it was too late. Somemight argue that this time is different; the answer is that it is never different.