Commentary

The Tie is Too Tight

May 22, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

Take an elected leader of a country, trusted by dint of a well-founded reputation for honesty and clarity of vision; of compassion for those citizens in need and a realistic understanding of how important caring for this earth is.

Sometimes the choices of whom to lead are too few and we take what we hope is the best of who there is and watch.

There are leaders ready for corruption: could be the family’s culture; could be the natural inclination for self-serving; could be a surge of opportunities one would feel foolish to deny. The birth of an autocrat in the making.

What makes it better for the would-be autocrat is when the opportunities payout or if a few steps backward are required with the likelihood of several steps forward later, that is welcomed as well.

In this world, which I really feel is in some sort of retreat backwards as a global society, in this world as I was saying, the autocrats are having their day, like a festering disease creeping carefully or sometimes in a bigger hurry, the absolute determination to have it all is spreading. 

A government shivers as a single entity is noisier, more manipulative, completely disingenuous and conniving. One who pressures here and there, convinces them and those and before enough of them are aware, their laws begin to change, to darken, to seize power rather than hold it as trustfully given with respect for those who gave it.

There are those autocrats who win the admiration of a budding autocrat elsewhere, not there yet but watching how it is done and planning, planning.

The trick is to acquire fans – followers in the thousands, by seeking them among the poorest educated, among them who live all their lives in ignorance, to talk to them and promise anything they need for their support. Nobody cares about truth – what is truth after al l– it was left by the wayside by a single question between the prisoner and the executioner 2,000 years ago… and now truth is mangled by the permissiveness of people who do not know how to question but only stand back in the shadows. So, the puppy autocrat can say anything and be believed no matter how that one’s truth is stained nor how evidence stands to deny.

It is becoming more and more a fashion for people in power, which they have already been seen not to deserve; they have been trusted and failed the trust before but where no other stands strong enough, the trust must be ready to be disappointed again.

We are seeing so much of this in the world as our screens display and we pretend “it can never happen here.”

The fall of – let’s call it democracy even if not all the people are a part of the process of electing the leader. As long as there is a process and rules of accountability, laws controlling actions are obeyed – that the limits to power are finite and constrained by long-standing sheets of rules, carefully constructed and time-honoured.

When those bricks begin to fall or they are surreptitiously being loosened, the secret or even the boasted grasping for the autocrat’s throne begins in earnest.

There are so many cases setting the example, the how-to, for the student to admire and from whom to learn the steps, even the leaps to running the “whole show my way!”

How easy it is to just walk in to another country – no problem by George, only though, as long as all the power of the invader rests on one head.

Then, the masses are obviously in favour of an invasion, whether they are or not but thanks to this century’s amazing power to communicate what in what is passing for truth this time around to everyone, inescapably in every box and every screen which no one ever puts down or turns their faces away. 

It is just a guess but achieving the loyalty of the military is crucial at this point of an ascending autocrat and we have seen the internal struggles before.

The people must be wary of the signs of the ambitions of their leaders and a leader showing signs of corruption and indifference to the land and the homes and the value of the rule of law – that leader must be brought to heel – to the public’s heel and be told that violations of trust and misuse of office will not be allowed.

The leader who well and truly shows his ambitions for more strength and freedom to do as he will for himself or those who have encouraged the grabbing of power with new laws, that could drag the population into conflict with the authorities charged with upholding new and onerous laws can bring chaos and harm…

Now, we here in Dufferin and across our own province and our own country must watch very carefully the ambitions and new laws being presented to pass through our legislature. These new laws will repeal well-tested and binding laws that restrain radical and unwise development. They will put our own gardens at risk and the nature we have guarded, burying land that must be preserved for future generations, not ruining it for the few. We must not give power to the potential lawlessness of a new regime.

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