Thank you, somehow your texts make me feel less alone in my fears of what could be. Do you have any thoughts on the risk of USA choosing to deal with it's internal problem by launching another war? My mind goes to France war with Austria during the French revolution and how a "quick" and "easy" war can be a uniting force. USA have been taking some very jarring jabs at Venezuela and Iran lately. Instability of a country with this many nukes is what really scares me though.
I don't think it's impossible but my read on Trump all along has been that he'd much rather try to rattle the saber and look tough as a way of intimidating his opposition than actually commit to full-scale conflict. He's a bully - I mean that as a literal description, not a value judgement per se - and bullies tend to like to hit without getting hit back.
Why are you assuming it's Trump that really brings the authoritarianism? The total system of 'social justice' (or rather the Successor Ideology) takes multiple generations of actions and piles them onto one generation on the basis of shared ancestral appearance (as, e.g. late-coming Polish immigrants aren't excluded) and rejects individualism, allowing justification of very extreme actions as "equalization" - simply take every crime committed back until 1500, claim that current outcomes are the result of this, claims that the benefits are shared regardless of actual individual ancestry (e.g. no excuses for Northerners), then "remove undeserved benefits" ("privilege") on that basis, which can include all assets up to the entire continent.
Further, like Communism, there is no potential correction mechanism if they are wrong about the causes, and because it's quite collective, no liberal firewall of "individual rights" to stem the worst abuses.
By comparison, most complaints about Trump and the COVID situation is that he didn't use *enough* government power, and many of the people who are opposed to Trump seem uninterested in reforms to reduce the power of the Presidency.
There's a huge difference between nationalizing a supply chain and putting the 82nd Airborne on ready alert to move into the nation's capital. If you're really concerned about Social Justice Warriors and not paratroopers at this point, I don't know what to tell you.
(This is your one serious response from me. Any more unserious nonsense like this and I'll simply delete the comment and ban you from commenting.)
Hi Patrick great piece with some dire possible outcomes to the present situation. Very admirable of you to write about all the scary things going on! Love your podcasts.
I bought the audiobook of The Republic for Which It Stands based on your interview with the author (which I listened to while driving through the Idaho panhandle, a place where a right-wing revolt is not so difficult to imagine) and that book was brilliant. A little hard to take at times. Would have been easier if it hadn't all seemed so familiar. So onward to the Keynes audiobook based on your recommendation.
Did I hear about The Commanche Empire from you too? That book was amazing. Changed my understanding of horse-mounted non-urban empires everywhere.
A question that offers some diversion from current dreariness: At first glance, Indian and Chinese history seem quite different, almost the opposite. Yet in the second millennium AD, both India and China were economic powerhouses with rising populations and both spent much of that period under often brutal foreign domination and even their domestic rules (Marathas, Ming) ruled more like the brutal foreigners than like earlier local dynasties. Why the connection between flourishing economy and vulnerable politics and why in both cases?
I was born in Chile and Raised in the US, enculturated to believe in the inferiority of Latin America compared to the United States. Yet the modern United States has seemingly become the Chile of my childhood, where Augusto Pinochet used appeals to order to crush the lower class, murder dissenters, and build a fascist/nationalist/militarist dictatorship. Looking around, I see few reasons to suggest things will go any differently; Trump has no reason to step down once he determines which generals are pliant to his desires as he "dominates the streets," and electoral opposition seems blind to the structural failures that spawned Trumpism in the first place, and in fact is more likely to broker a deal with an indefinite Trump government to retain their own social and economic positions (much like Augustus' neutered senate). It is dark, but true to human nature.
Thanks for writing this; it is really helpful to read a realistic, non-optimistic voice. Being of a pessimistic mind is a challenge because in trying to talk to friends about what is going on, and what they think could happen next, they look back to a past that's gone (even if it was only 3 months ago). It is one of the strangest aspects of this moment that there is still such widespread optimism that we will go back to how everything was on March 1st, both in terms of being rid of the pandemic as quickly as it came and in terms of our politics as rapidly as it veered into insanity and racism. The rush to reopen restaurants, the buoyancy of the stock market, the centrist appeal of Biden's "back to good ole bipartisanship" message all signal a widespread inability to process that our path has forked off and we are heading toward something else.
I appreciate how you lay this out so clearly, showing the possible paths we can head down. This kind of sober analysis is extremely important. Too many people are looking down at their feet, not seeing what the long term consequences of their actions will play out into.
Thank you for talking about these things. I think It’s so important that we do not avoid things, but talk about them. So thank you for being a leader in that.
Thank you, somehow your texts make me feel less alone in my fears of what could be. Do you have any thoughts on the risk of USA choosing to deal with it's internal problem by launching another war? My mind goes to France war with Austria during the French revolution and how a "quick" and "easy" war can be a uniting force. USA have been taking some very jarring jabs at Venezuela and Iran lately. Instability of a country with this many nukes is what really scares me though.
I don't think it's impossible but my read on Trump all along has been that he'd much rather try to rattle the saber and look tough as a way of intimidating his opposition than actually commit to full-scale conflict. He's a bully - I mean that as a literal description, not a value judgement per se - and bullies tend to like to hit without getting hit back.
Great piece. Thanks for writing it, as well as the previous one. It's important for historians to speak out at times like these.
Why are you assuming it's Trump that really brings the authoritarianism? The total system of 'social justice' (or rather the Successor Ideology) takes multiple generations of actions and piles them onto one generation on the basis of shared ancestral appearance (as, e.g. late-coming Polish immigrants aren't excluded) and rejects individualism, allowing justification of very extreme actions as "equalization" - simply take every crime committed back until 1500, claim that current outcomes are the result of this, claims that the benefits are shared regardless of actual individual ancestry (e.g. no excuses for Northerners), then "remove undeserved benefits" ("privilege") on that basis, which can include all assets up to the entire continent.
Further, like Communism, there is no potential correction mechanism if they are wrong about the causes, and because it's quite collective, no liberal firewall of "individual rights" to stem the worst abuses.
By comparison, most complaints about Trump and the COVID situation is that he didn't use *enough* government power, and many of the people who are opposed to Trump seem uninterested in reforms to reduce the power of the Presidency.
There's a huge difference between nationalizing a supply chain and putting the 82nd Airborne on ready alert to move into the nation's capital. If you're really concerned about Social Justice Warriors and not paratroopers at this point, I don't know what to tell you.
(This is your one serious response from me. Any more unserious nonsense like this and I'll simply delete the comment and ban you from commenting.)
I don't know what to tell you, either. I don't mean that as an insult; everyone feels like you do just each from their own ideological perspective.
Hi Patrick great piece with some dire possible outcomes to the present situation. Very admirable of you to write about all the scary things going on! Love your podcasts.
I bought the audiobook of The Republic for Which It Stands based on your interview with the author (which I listened to while driving through the Idaho panhandle, a place where a right-wing revolt is not so difficult to imagine) and that book was brilliant. A little hard to take at times. Would have been easier if it hadn't all seemed so familiar. So onward to the Keynes audiobook based on your recommendation.
Did I hear about The Commanche Empire from you too? That book was amazing. Changed my understanding of horse-mounted non-urban empires everywhere.
A question that offers some diversion from current dreariness: At first glance, Indian and Chinese history seem quite different, almost the opposite. Yet in the second millennium AD, both India and China were economic powerhouses with rising populations and both spent much of that period under often brutal foreign domination and even their domestic rules (Marathas, Ming) ruled more like the brutal foreigners than like earlier local dynasties. Why the connection between flourishing economy and vulnerable politics and why in both cases?
Good piece. Where is covid in this? In terms of how protests play out, social distancing being ignored etc
I was born in Chile and Raised in the US, enculturated to believe in the inferiority of Latin America compared to the United States. Yet the modern United States has seemingly become the Chile of my childhood, where Augusto Pinochet used appeals to order to crush the lower class, murder dissenters, and build a fascist/nationalist/militarist dictatorship. Looking around, I see few reasons to suggest things will go any differently; Trump has no reason to step down once he determines which generals are pliant to his desires as he "dominates the streets," and electoral opposition seems blind to the structural failures that spawned Trumpism in the first place, and in fact is more likely to broker a deal with an indefinite Trump government to retain their own social and economic positions (much like Augustus' neutered senate). It is dark, but true to human nature.
Thanks for writing this; it is really helpful to read a realistic, non-optimistic voice. Being of a pessimistic mind is a challenge because in trying to talk to friends about what is going on, and what they think could happen next, they look back to a past that's gone (even if it was only 3 months ago). It is one of the strangest aspects of this moment that there is still such widespread optimism that we will go back to how everything was on March 1st, both in terms of being rid of the pandemic as quickly as it came and in terms of our politics as rapidly as it veered into insanity and racism. The rush to reopen restaurants, the buoyancy of the stock market, the centrist appeal of Biden's "back to good ole bipartisanship" message all signal a widespread inability to process that our path has forked off and we are heading toward something else.
I appreciate how you lay this out so clearly, showing the possible paths we can head down. This kind of sober analysis is extremely important. Too many people are looking down at their feet, not seeing what the long term consequences of their actions will play out into.
Thank you for talking about these things. I think It’s so important that we do not avoid things, but talk about them. So thank you for being a leader in that.