Venezuela, Renee Good and Trump’s ‘Assault on Hope’
I have some real problems with Ezra Klein but this interview with Masha Gessen is still worth sharing for its insights imho …
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A descent into barbarism. Toxic masculinity. That’s what Trumpism is. Consuming and grabbing and trampling and not thinking. Giving way to primal and primitive instincts. That’s the opposite of civilisation. Our ability to survive and advnce as a puny species on this earth was based on our ability to co-operate, not to compete cruelly and destroy one another. That’s the end of civilisation.
The style of presentation is irritating- the music distracts and is too loud, leading to his words being muffled and losing impact.
As journalism it’s just not communicating.
I did not look at the interview as a result, the guys just too irritating
This perversely shoehorns in, misrepresents and misapplies the anarchist ‘propaganda of the deed’, which had fallen out of favour in Europe before 1900, not least because of its being abused by bank robbers, attraction to nutters, and easy exploitation by false-flag state operatives. The very ambiguity of sudden, sporadic, secretive, violent spectacle discredited such rogue acts, and anarchists increasingly sought to win the argument by ‘propaganda of the word’. Ezra Klein also confuses debate with spectacle, so not a good start.
Instead of simply throwing a bomb and running away, the successful social movements like the Suffragettes were open, public in their aims and methods, rational in their arguments, collectivist and intended to face consequences like going to prison.
What President Trump is doing is old-fashioned Roman Emperor stuff. Bread and circuses, triumphs and trophies. The fall of the Republic and the bypassing of the Senate. But even that has been the long march of the USAmerican Empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses
As for the homoerotic fascist aesthetic, that’s ancient too. There is an analogue in Sparta, and other cultures. Interestingly, these classical influences, so present in British elite education, are evoked even though those empires fell in ways which might otherwise be educational.
My winter reading has been Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War, Martin Hammond translation. Regardless of the accuracy of the speeches, which may be improvised, the work illustrates the kinds of narrowing choices the belligerent empire-founding Athenian democracy works through against an opposing Greek coalition led by Sparta, and the effects of martial chance and natural disaster (earthquakes and plague) which are unpredictable and expose deep flaws in societies, particularly those who have grown rich on plunder. And ravaged each other’s land as a matter of course. What if they had built nukes?
But of course the political leaders and participatory voters in ancient Athens were expected to don armour, pick up their spears, and face the consequences of their collective decisions on the front line against stiff opposition.
Incidentally, the works on the societies of USSR and PRC I’ve read suggested that the trade-off the majority accepted was that while they may be poor, their children would be better off, and their grandchildren better off yet. This generational social contract works better in totalitarian contexts than the vacillations of democracy, and although it shares the fundamental optimism about the future with capitalism, it may be less monetary and more organic in measurement, and certainly concerned with collective wellbeing over individual success (generally implying a mass of losers). Oligarchs are not a good sign of societal health.