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Werken van Jennifer Welsh

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A very good overview of (primer on?) the state of "History' in 2016. Putin's Russia figures prominently in three of the five chapters: The Return of Barbarism, The Return of Mass Flight, and The Return of Cold War. The invasion of Ukraine seems now, in hindsight, to have been inevitable. Could more have been done? Who knows? We are here now and the world's liberal democracies have so far risen to the challenge. China doesn't come up much in her analysis. A blind spot or just not as alarming in 2016? Regardless, a good read at this time. My feeling? 'History' never left.… (meer)
½
 
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heggiep | 1 andere bespreking | Apr 13, 2022 |
If the moral arc of the universe is long, and bends towards justice, it is only because many hands that care grab it, and pull. Hard.

~~~~~

I don't know about you, GR friend, but I have a terrible habit of buying non-fiction books I don't get around to reading, mostly because it takes longer for me to read a non-fiction book than a novel or book of poetry, so while my *buying* habits are fairly equal, my *reading* habits see the non-fiction books stacking up beside the armchair while the novels get polished off lickety-split.

Accordingly, this year, I am making a point to get through 3 or 4 non-fiction books before cracking open a novel, and pulling the non-fiction from farther down the to-read stack so I can get to some of the ones that have been hopefully waiting for some friendly hands and eyes for lo these many years now. (The poor trees! They gave their lives to collect dust in my bedroom.)

So, this weekend, I pulled The Return of History from near the bottom of the stack, where it's been waiting since I bought it in 2016.

It was an interesting read, as much for the context of reading it now and comparing the last 4 years to where we were when this book was published, after Trump was declared the Republican presidential nominee and before he was elected.

It's true that Fukuyama's claim that we've reached the "end of history" and that western liberal democracies had won the ideological war for all time looks dingier and sounds tinnier by the year, and Welsh lays out plenty of evidence for why this was so even in 2016 (though people keep giving the man book contracts so he can keep trying to salvage his reputation-making argument, which is just bizarre). (I saw a reviewer below claim that this is because Fukuyama's claim was "original," which is also hilarious. Come on. Every ideology that was dominant in its own day thinks its dominance will continue forever! Rome believed in the Empire! The monarchs of Europe believed that monarchies would always rule! This isn't "original," it's myopia.)

Some of her arguments and information were familiar to me; some were not, and I appreciated learning about them; and some are, in retrospect, even more painful. For example, her description of Russia's ambitions and its dedication to cyber-warfare and associated meddling in the affairs of other countries, with what we know now about Trump's presidential campaign ... OUCH. Her championing of Bernie Sanders towards the end, also now knowing that the Russians essentially created the Bernie Bros ... double ouch. The shakiness of the foundations of modern liberal democracies, particularly given income inequality but also given the lack of participation from their citizens ... please pass me a tourniquet. Oh god, the hatred and anti-immigrant sentiment stirred by the smallest stirrings of climate refugees, and what that portends for the rest of our century, I do not want even to contemplate.

There are a few trends that should have been considered in here, and weren't. First among them for me is of course climate change. She refers to "environmental change" a few times in passing as a 21st century cause of mass flight, but that's a pretty shallow and affectless euphemism for the climate collapse we are already seeing unfold in real-time, only four years later. My guess is she paid enough attention to know this was A Thing, but not enough to know the scale and impact of it. In this, she was too gentle by far.

She takes a few well-aimed shots at the complacency of the citizens of modern liberal democracies. Some philosophers and thinkers predicted that the ultimate outcome of liberal democracies would be shallow, complacent people, obsessed by consumerism and allergic to communal work, and she suspects they may have been right. Trump/Brexit/climate collapse/yellow vests/etc. seem to have shaken that complacency enough to begin to build the movements we all need to avoid what's coming, but not enough, and there are still plenty of people who soothe themselves with bad TV and worse gadgets rather than directly engage with the problems we're facing. In my own life, I often see people mis-quoting MLK (in a thousand ways to suit the situation, but in this particular case): "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice." This is endlessly used to justify the laziness and complacency of mostly privileged citizens in liberal democracies, who cry about their powerlessness while being the most powerful citizens in the history of the world, and then comfort themselves with MLK's quote and the thought that it doesn't matter if they personally don't do anything because the "universe's" inherent "moral arc" will just "bend" the right way all on its own. It won't. It takes effort and sacrifice by regular, everyday people; this is a point she makes often, and I wish it had been taken more to heart by more people when she published it four years ago.

~~~~~

Next up for my non-fiction reads are [b:Teardown: Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up|43658685|Teardown Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up|Dave Meslin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1549295076l/43658685._SX50_.jpg|67927909] (from the library) and [b:Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life|683195|Avoiding Politics How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life|Nina Eliasoph|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348710071l/683195._SX50_.jpg|669583] (from the to-read pile). As they're both coming at Welsh's point about the non-engagement of citizens in democracy from different places and with different analyses, the three of them should make for a nice package review.
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
andrea_mcd | 1 andere bespreking | Mar 10, 2020 |

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4
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88
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#209,356
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3.9
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2
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13

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