Timothy Snyder: Can History Save Us from Ourselves?
"I'm not going to start by saying that Trump has never said anything positive about democracy or saying that he never speaks about rights or by pointing out that everyone that he admires is either an authoritarian, or I've noticed that he has disobeyed the law his entire life or that he has no experience in democratic politics or by noting that he summons his followers to violence or that he has called upon people to assassinate his rival or that we don't even know the things that we need to know which is probably the darkest thing. I'm not going to start with that."
"We've built up an appetite for shock and that appetite for shock is one of the things that leads us to authoritarianism, that desire to be surprised and to have each surprise to be greater than the previous surprise is something that leads us away from a liberal order into something else. The only people who can lead us to ever greater shocks are the strongmen who blow things up in their own country or start wars for no particular reason."
We've built up an appetite for shock and that appetite for shock is one of the things that leads us to authoritarianism...
Remember when we were looking forward to a "boring" Biden administration?
0 Replies
edgarblythe
1
Reply
Tue 14 Dec, 2021 02:27 pm
There are things Biden can do to enhance himself at the polls but simply does nothing. Cancel student debt. Instant thousands of grateful voters. Kick out the Postmaster General. More grateful voters. Other issues. He doesn't have to go into the midterms struggling for affection.
He passed a massive infrastructure bill that will impact the lives of every American, the biggest such bill ever and the first real attempt at infrastructure in over twenty years, but I guess he hasn't kicked out the Postmaster General so the hell with him.
A whole year to pass the one bill while everything else is in shambles. That infrastructure bill is only a beginning to what infrastructure work we need anyway. Giving Biden a pass on everything else is not doing him or anybody else any favors.
I once took a course on time management and the instructor made a point that really stuck with me. It is more important to work on your A priorities than to accomplish a bunch of C's. It didn't take one year to get an infrastructure bill through, it took 20 years. Biden somehow drove through a bill that eluded Bush and Obama and Trump and all their minions, a bill that had bipartisan support even and included a lot of his personal attention. That one accomplishment is definitely worth a year and will impact the nation for decades to come. That should be worth some praise to you even if it isn't sexy.
History will never save us from ourselves because we always refuse to see the historical parallels between what we are experiencing now and what has gone before. "Well, this is different" is the common refrain when future historians will look back and say it wasn't different at all.
0 Replies
edgarblythe
1
Reply
Tue 14 Dec, 2021 03:34 pm
@engineer,
Voting rights ought to be an A also. Where is the urgency with time slipping away?
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace