Yes, Conservative Judaism is a distinct movement from Reform and Orthodox Judaism, generally regarded as existing in between the two in terms of theology and practice.
I don't quite understand the second question: Most Orthodox Jews never see through the lies, so they don't have that formative experience. But for those who do leave their faith, it tends to be an important part of their identity.
(Note that I don't really know what percentage of Conservative and Reform Jews believe in God. I do think that the two movements have converged in beliefs and practices to a considerable degree over the last 50 years. Also, this is a very late response: I don't comment here often.)
I wondered if there was a selection effect in your hybrid -> dictatorship statement (we don't talk much about people who lost power). But if I look at the hybrid regimes in 2012 here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index), I do see a fair percentage that are listed as authoritarian in 2022. By contrast, only three countries (Singapore, Sri Lanka and Albania) have moved to Flawed Democracy. (2012 is, of course, a major outlier for Egypt, Libya and some other Arab Spring countries, but that doesn't affect the general trend much.)
It's worth looking at what happened in Ekrem İmamoğlu's case, which you've linked to. As of today, Ekrem İmamoğlu is the sitting mayor of Istanbul, awaiting pending multiple courts upholding the verdict in his trial. İmamoğlu endorsed the head of his party, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, as a presidential candidate, with İmamoğlu to serve as vice-president (though ultimately there were 7 (!) people set to serve as VP, so I don't know how meaningful this is). Kılıçdaroğlu won 48% of the vote in the presidential election. I haven't seen a detailed postmortem on how Erd...
I don't see support for the key claim of the article.
This post aims to show that, over the next decade, it is quite likely that most democratic Western countries will become fascist dictatorships - this is not a tail risk, but the most likely overall outcome.
How do we get to "most democratic Western countries"? Which ones should I expect to fall? What's a rough timeline for them falling?
I don't even see what parties are supposed to be those fascist dictatorships. The three main examples given of fascism are "Modi in India, Erdogan in Turkey, and Orban in H...
Trump's appointed SCOTUS judges are indeed willing to rule against him and to uphold a coherent legal theory of democracy under the rule of law, which agree or disagree is clearly not equivalent to "whatever my side wants it gets". The same sadly cannot be said of his lower court judges, notably Aileen Cannon, whose presence on the bench in his home district drastically decreases the otherwise high likelihood of his being convicted and imprisoned for having obviously, self-confessedly committed serious crimes. Cannon is exactly the sort of lawless, toadyin...
Thanks for the response! Here are some comments:
- India, Turkey, and Hungary are widely referred to as "hybrid regimes" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_regime), in which opposition still exists and there are still elections, but the state interferes with elections so as to virtually guarantee victory. In Turkey's case, there have been many elections, but Erdogan always wins through a combination of mass arrests, media censorship, and sending his most popular opponent to prison for "insulting public officials" (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-eur...
I feel like Conservative Judaism does this pretty well.
In Reform Judaism, everyone is in on the joke. Which means there's no obstacle to overcome, nothing to learn. Reform Jews win no points on Lies-Told-To-Children storytelling night.
Orthodox Jews play the game too seriously. Like, you get a bunch of people who win the game, and they tend to be interesting people who honed an important skill, but far too many don't get it during their lifetimes. Which means that they have these awful ideas like "we are God's chosen people" and "the world exists so we can ...
Typo, fixed. I believe I got his age right.