Are you ready for “Putinism?”

A friend of mine just shared an interview from Raffaele Simone, an Italian philosopher who claims that our politicians have done their best to screw up the political system by losing touch with people's daily reality, causing them to to lose interest in the political world and eventually, stop participating in elections. He seems convinced that modernity is under the influence of planetary capitalist power, a dual-headed system that is both monstrous and gentle. People crave economic comfort without having to get involved at all in a political system they feel alienated from.

The rise of populism that we're seeing is no surprise to him with Trump on this side of the Atlantic and Putin on the other. He call that new movement “Putinism”, in which “people are willing to give up political freedoms for economic peace of mind”.

To me the only alternative open to the failed representative democracy we must endure today is a more direct (or perhaps total) form of democracy like we see in Switzerland. More on this later...