I’ve held off posting this in the hope of coming up with some kind of positive response, but I haven’t got one.

When I wrote back in November 2024 that Trump’s dictatorship was a fait accompi there was still plenty of room for people to disagree. But (with the exception of an announced state of emergency) it’s turned out far worse than I thought possible.

Opposition politicians and judges have been arrested for doing their jobs, and many more have been threatened. The limited resistance of the courts has been effectively halted by the Supreme Court’s decision ending nationwide injunctions. University leaders have been forced to comply or quit. The press has been cowed into submission by the threat of litigation or harm to corporate owners. Political assassinations are laughed about and will soon become routine. With the use of troops to suppress peaceful protests, and the open support of Trump and his followers, more deaths are inevitable, quite possibly on a scale not seen since the Civil War.

The idea that this process might be stopped by a free and fair election in 2026 or 2028 is absurdly optimistic. Unless age catches up with him, Trump will appoint himself as President for life, just as Xi and Putin have done.

None of this is, or at least ought to be, news. Yet the political implications are still being discussed in the familiar terms of US party politics: swing voters, the centre ground, mobilisation versus moderation, rehashes of the 2024 election and so on. Having given up hope, I have no interest in these debates. Instead, I want to consider the implications for the idea of democracy.

The starting point is the observation that around half of all US voters at the last three elections have supported a corrupt, incompetent, criminal racist and rapist, while another third or more of US citizens have failed to vote at all. And Trump’s support has not been diminished to any significant extent (if at all) by his actions since returning to power.

Any claims that might be made to exonerate Trump’s voters or mitigate the crime they have committed don’t stand up to scrutiny. The US did not face any kind of crisis that might justify such an extreme outcome (as, for example, Germany did in 1933). Unemployment was at historically low levels. The short-lived inflation resulting from the pandemic was well below the rates of the late 20th century, crime was far below those rates. And so on. The only real driving factor was the resentment and hatred felt by Trump’s voters for large groups of their compatriots.

One part of this is fear of immigrants, particularly but not exclusively, asylum seekers and other undocumented immigrants. But this fear has long been a winning issue for the political right, in many countries including Australia. It has not produced anything like the turn to dictatorship we have now seen in the US.

In this context what matters is not the marginal groups of swinging voters who have absorbed so much attention: the “left behind”, the “manosphere” and so on. It’s the fact that comfortably off, self-described “conservative”, white suburbanites, historically the core of the Republican base, have overwhelmingly voted for, and welcomed, the end of American democracy.

This is something that, as far as I can tell, is unprecedented in the history of modern democracy, and threatens the basic assumptions on which democracy is built. While the last 200 years of modern (partial or complete) democracy have seen plenty of demagoguery, authoritarian populism and so on, these have invariably been temporary eruptions rejected, relatively quickly, by an enduring democratic majority. The idea that a party that has been part of the constitutional fabric of a major democracy for more than 150 years, would abandon democracy and keep the support of its voters was inconceivable. That’s why so many have refused to admit it, even to themselves.

Nothing lasts forever, but there is no obvious way back from dictatorship for the US. Viewed in retrospect, the the Republican party was a deadly threat to US democracy from the moment of Trump’s nomination in 2016 and certainly after the 2021 insurrection.

With the benefit of hindsight, Biden might have declared a state of emergency immediately after the insurrection, arrested Trump, and expelled all the congressional Republicans who had voted to overturn the election. But this would itself have represented an admission that democratic norms had failed. It was far more comfortable to suppose that Trump had been an aberration and that those norms would prevail as they had done at previous moments of crisis. That is no longer possible.

As I siad, I’ve held off posting this in the hope of coming up with some kind of positive response, but I haven’t got one. The best I can put forward is that the US, founded on slavery, has never been able to escape its original sin, and is unique in that respect. Every country has its original sin and a dominant group with its racist core. But only in the US (so far) has that core secured unqualified majority support. The downfall of American democracy should serve as a warning. For conservative parties, flirting with fascism is a deal with the devil that must be avoided. For the left, the nostalgic appeal of the “white (implicitly male) working class” should not tempt us into pandering to racist and misogynist reaction.

I don’t know whether that will be enough to save us. At least in Australia, Trumpism is political poison. But until we understand that Trumpism is not an aberration but the course Americans have chosen, we will not be able to free ourselves from our past allegiance to an idea which is now an illusion.

Pro-natalism (the idea that people, or rather, women, should have more babies than they choose to do at present) has become an established orthodoxy,[1]. The central claim is that, unless something changes soon, human populations both global and national, are going to decline rapidly, with a lot of negative consequences. This is simply not true, on any plausible assumptions about fertility[2]

There’s no need for me to do any calculations here. For many decades he Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs has been producing population projections for the world, and individual countries, under a variety of scenarios. One finding is unambiguous. Short of a drastic decline in fertility, far beyond what we are now seeing there will be more people on Earth at the end of this century than there were at the beginning

The range of projections considered plausible is the shaded area. All the projections in that range show population increasing for several decades to come, and remaining higher than at present at the end of the century. The reason is simple. Global fertility is close to the replacement level (one surviving daughter per woman) at present, but past growth means that a large proportion of the population is in, or approaching, child-bearing years. It’s only when this group ages out that the effects of declining fertility, assumed in the lower projections will start to dominate

What about the blue dotted lines? These assume drastic reductions in fertility. On the low side, that involves the entire world becoming like South Korea, where the combination of high employment rates for women and pre-modern male attitudes on gender role has produced reproduction rates below 0.5.

But even in this extreme case, world population in 2100 only falls to 6 billion, the same as in 2000. I was around at the time, and did not feel as if there were too few people about.

One reason these predictions have only a limited range of variation is that most of the growth in population is already baked in. There are 2 billion or so children under 14 at present in the world, and most of them will be around in 2100 as will their soon-to-be-born siblings.

What about the need for workers? One unsatisfactory feature of long-running projections like this is the use of outdated statistical concepts such as the “dependency ratio”, that is, the ratio of people aged 15-64 to everyone else. That made sense 50 years ago, when this range represented the period between leaving school and retiring in most industrial societies. But these days (and it will be even more so in 2100) education continues well past 20 and retirement is often deferred to 70 or more. A look at the age group 25-69 shows that it is going to remain more or less stable in absolute numbers declinging only marginally relative to the growing population

Population projections for individual countries depend largely on what happens to migration. In the absence of stringent restrictions, the flow of migrants from poorer to richer countries will largely offset differences in fertility, meaning that the trajectory for individual countries will look similar to that for the world.

Of course, if you combine low fertility and an already-old population with hostility to immigrants, and you can’t stop your own young people from seeking a better life abroad, you end up with a sharply declining population, as in South Korea and Hungary. But it’s much easier to let more migrants in (there are plenty of young adults, many of them well-educated, knocking at the door) than to persuade people to have more babies.

There is no difficulty in gaining access to these projections, and anyone with a spreadsheet and a bit of time can reproduce them. Yet I’ve read dozens of pro-natalist articles in both traditional and new media and the evidence is never mentioned. Maybe I’m living on the wrong planet.

fn1. Some this is driven by racists worrying specifically about the lack of white babies. But the belief that declining fertility is a crisis is also dominant among centrists, like those pushing the “abundance agenda”, who also support high levels of immigration. Archetypal example is Matt Yglesias who advocates One billion Americans

fn2 There are plenty of ways in which we are risking massively increased mortality (nuclear war, climate catastrophe, pandemics, AI apocalypse etc), but having babies won’t help in those cases.

Hi everyone

My  Brissie to the Bay cycle for MS Queensland, a huge success. Donations totalled $2595, which gave me the title of “Neuro Legend”. Thanks again to all the readers and friends who keep me going on events like this. I’ll never be competitive as a triathlete, but I’m still on top of my game as a fundraiser.

The weather leading up to the event was bitterly cold by Brisbane standards, falling as low as 3° C, but on the day it was very pleasant, starting at 9° C and warming up after sunrise. I had a great time for the first 80km, but suffered a bit on the final 50, which accounted for most of the 1100 metres of total climbing, moderated by some nice downhill runs.

I had only returned on Friday from a three-week trip overseas, during which I couldn’t do any real cycling, so I’m going to attribute my lack of stamina to being out of practice, rather than to my advancing years. I’ll be testing this theory in the Sunshine Coast 70.3 Ironman in September, which includes a 90km ride, between the 1.9km swim and half-marathon run.

As usual, my beautiful Canyon bike attracted lots of nice comments, and my jersey showing status as an MS Legend from previous years got me some encouragement as fellow-riders passed me towards the end.

My reward was another MS cycle jersey. Unfortunately, by the time I finished they’d run out of all sizes except XXL. If anyone who donated would like a huge cycle jersey, just email me at john.quiggin@icloud.com

As always when raising money to fight disease and illness, I’m reminded how lucky I am to have made it to the Biblical three score years and ten (next birthday) without any significant impairment to my health, as well as being in good shape financially. I know that many of my readers aren’t so lucky, and need to focus on looking after their own difficulties. But if you can help, please do.

Hi everyone

I’m riding 130km on Sunday to raise money for the Brissie to the Bay cycle for MS Queensland, my longest running fundraising event. I reached my target of $2000, with a couple of days to spare. So of course, I’ve set my sights higher. The top level in the fundraising hierarchy is “Neuro Legend”, and it will only take another $500 to get there. The reward is a lovely MS cycle jersey. I already have a couple, so I’ll use this as an incentive/gimmick. I’ll give the jersey to the first person to donate $100 and include contact details. If you’ve already donated $100 and would like the jersey, get in touch, first come best dressed.

Thanks again to all the readers and friends who keep me going on events like this. I’ll never be competitive as a triathlete, but I’m still on top of my game as a fundraiser.

As always when raising money to fight disease and illness, I’m reminded how lucky I am to have made it to the Biblical three score years and ten (next birthday) without any significant impairment to my health, as well as being in good shape financially. I know that many of my readers aren’t so lucky, and need to focus on looking after their own difficulties. But if you can help, please do.