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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNo country with a McDonalds can remain a democracy -Nice read
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/06/mcdonalds-democracy-corporate-globalisation-trump-le-pen-farage<snip>
A wave of revulsion rolls around the world. Approval ratings for incumbent leaders are everywhere collapsing. Symbols, slogans and sensation trump facts and nuanced argument. One in six Americans now believe that military rule would be a good idea. From all this I draw the following, peculiar conclusion: no country with a McDonalds can remain a democracy.
Twenty years ago, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman proposed his golden arches theory of conflict prevention. This holds that no two countries that both have McDonalds have ever fought a war against each other since they each got their McDonalds.
In using McDonalds as shorthand for the forces tearing democracy apart, I am, like him, writing figuratively. I do not mean that the presence of the burger chain itself is the cause of the decline of open, democratic societies (though it has played its part in Britain, using our defamation laws against its critics). Nor do I mean that countries hosting McDonalds will necessarily mutate into dictatorships.
The old forms and forums still exist, but their power seeps away, re-emerging where we can no longer reach it
What I mean is that, under the onslaught of the placeless, transnational capital that McDonalds exemplifies, democracy as a living system withers and dies. The old forms and forums still exist parliaments and congresses remain standing but the power they once contained seeps away, re-emerging where we can no longer reach it.
The political power that should belong to us has flitted into confidential meetings with the lobbyists and donors who establish the limits of debate and action. It has slipped into the diktats of the IMF and the European Central Bank, which respond not to the people but to the financial sector. It has been transported, under armed guard, into the icy fastness of Davos, where Friedman finds so warm a welcome (even when hes talking cobblers).
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No country with a McDonalds can remain a democracy -Nice read (Original Post)
malaise
Dec 2016
OP
But... "Did you know that no country with a McDonald's has ever attacked the US?"
discntnt_irny_srcsm
Dec 2016
#6
el_bryanto
(11,804 posts)1. Thanks for sharing - that's a really interesting read
I don't entirely agree with it but in may points its very compelling.
Bryant
malaise
(267,823 posts)2. Same here
It does make you pause
roamer65
(36,739 posts)3. LOL...when I was in Australia in 2001 they had a nickname for Mickey D's.
"The American Embassy"
malaise
(267,823 posts)5. People in Barbados simply ignored them until
they packed up and left. I never understood it - KFC and Burger King are still there but they do support their fast food giant Cheffette.
Solly Mack
(90,740 posts)4. K&R
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,470 posts)6. But... "Did you know that no country with a McDonald's has ever attacked the US?"