by cjbest on 8/13/21, 1:48 PM with 124 comments
by hiddencache on 8/14/21, 1:52 PM
> "We’re the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war, our Great Depression is our lives."
The 90s were a pretty fortunate decade. The threat of nuclear war had passed with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the economy was chugging along fine, and terrorism hadn't yet taken centre stage. Certainly that's the way I remember it - maybe through rose-tinted glasses (?)
But nevertheless, maybe a quiet life without crises isn't such a bad thing?
by h2odragon on 8/14/21, 2:41 PM
So for many, there's always going to be an imminent apocalypse thats more interesting and urgent than any of their actual day to day problems.
by DoreenMichele on 8/14/21, 5:58 PM
We did not dance in the streets about this miracle. We were on to wringing our hands about something else.
Disaster response is generally better than it used to be. We aren't grateful or amazed. We take it for granted and complain about it failing to live up to our expectations.
That doesn't mean we don't have real problems. That's not me being in denial or uninformed.
by gdubs on 8/14/21, 3:13 PM
by oofabz on 8/14/21, 7:04 PM
by SavantIdiot on 8/14/21, 4:38 PM
How could I possibly be "over-exaggerating"? Do I need to be dead? Would that make the author approve of my experience?
OP can stuff his privilege. This is yet another of example of "Well, everything is fine for -ME-, why doesn't everyone else just relax since you're all the same anyway..."
by AlbertCory on 8/14/21, 6:59 PM
"If it bleeds, it leads."
There was always an incentive to lead with disaster. I'm probably mangling this quote, but someone (British?) said about the media:
"They can't tell the difference between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization."
To which the response was "Actually, a veteran newsman knows perfectly well which one is the better story."
That kind of sensationalism seems almost quaint now. Everything is the collapse of civilization.
by Guthur on 8/14/21, 1:48 PM
What fascism used to be was ultra nationalistic, non democratic, centralised control of people's lives and the economy for the greater good of the state. And I means these to the most extreme you can possibly take these ideas, that's fascism.
The word has no meaning when you throw it around against anyone with slightly conservative view points.
by Barrin92 on 8/15/21, 12:53 AM
1. We're not in a 'special' point of history, crises happens all the time
2. this is validation for some sort of liberal technocratic, moderate program, systematic critique is misplaced.
The first one is true. Crises do indeed happen all the time. The entire problem is just that this is not an argument for the second claim. Nations collapse, people go to wars, the WW I trenches were certainly worse than Donald Trump's presidency, what have you.
The big problem is just that the fact that carnage is normal doesn't make the carnage any better. It's not a validation of the system as it is, it's a testament to the constant brutality and chaos and cycle of violence that is normal throughout history, and I don't want to live through anything that's even just a tenth as bad as the second world war. This is what Adam Curtis called hypernormalization, the numbness to complete and utter destruction, rationalized as a sort of ordinary state of affairs. Just look at it this way, this is a blog post warning of crisis mongering, while, in the US as an example where the author is from, over half a million people died of a pandemic. He's right that in two years everyone will have forgotten it. He's wrong in that he doesn't recognize how insane and terrifying that fact is.
Someone made the observation that in the last two thousand years, no empire has lasted more than 300, I'm pretty sure plenty of moderate reformers had the exact same attitude in any of them as the author. It's true that people throughout history have loved doomsday scenarios. The problem is just that most of the time, they were right.
by blagie on 8/14/21, 1:47 PM
We have a crisis every so often. As a society, we ought to be able to survive it. That might be a pandemic, war, climate change (whether man-made, or from a volcano/asteroid/etc.), nukes, or what-not.
Being resilient means:
* Some level of economic isolation. Each region ought to be able to produce the bare necessities for themselves, and supply chains shouldn't be brittle. This has less economic impact than one might predict, since limiting the flow of some goods doesn't limit the flow of information, and the limits can be pretty mild.
* Some level of excess capacity. Free market capitalism wants everything to be just-in-time and as close to 100% capacity as possible. Machines sitting around idle are bad. Resilience demands we can quickly reallocate resources in response to change.
* Having some amount of stuff stockpiled, be that N95 masks or food.
* Having something like FEMA or the military, only competent.
* Proactively addressing potential threats. If something has a 5% chance of wiping out mankind or sending us back to the stone age, we should deal with it. We only get an expected 20 tries.
I don't believe a lot of the climate change predictions. I don't think we have any idea as to what will happen; it's a chaotic system. Academic incentive structures don't support honest publications either. Things may turn out far better, worse, or most likely, just different than predicted, and reasonable people can disagree.
I think if we can agree to aggressively and proactively deal with potential threats, though, exact estimates on odds of all of those outcomes don't matter so much. And if we can deal with those 5%-odds threats, the need for fear-mongering goes away.
by Animats on 8/14/21, 6:07 PM
"There’s a big tradition on the left ... insisting that building a zero-carbon future requires the adoption of radical anti-capitalist politics. But it’s completely absurd." Yes. We're in a good position on energy. As the fossil fuel sources are running out, we now have good alternatives. That wasn't true 20 years ago. 20 years ago, solar panels cost too much, and wind turbines were not big enough.
2022 will probably be the year that perception of this turns around in the US. That's when all the good electric work vehicles ship. The electric Ford F-150, the electric Ford Transit, and the big electric Freightliner trucks are all starting volume production. A year from now, most American blue-collar workers will have ridden in an electric vehicle at least once.
by zzyzxxz on 8/14/21, 4:03 PM
by rdiddly on 8/14/21, 8:36 PM
by thewarrior on 8/14/21, 1:46 PM
1. Donald Trumps presidency in no way justifies the claim that the United States is drifting towards fascism
2. BLM protests have stopped happening so this is probably not so much of an issue now.
3. The US and EU economies grew with a small drop in emissions so global warming will be fixed. Have these been adjusted for the fact that a lot of the activities that support a first world lifestyle have emissions outside of it ?
It’s difficult to take any of these claims seriously. The idea of social mobility is now dead for most Americans , the citizens of the richest country to ever exist. People are putting off getting married or having children as a result. Life expectancy for white men in rural areas has been decreasing for the first time ever. Half the country no longer trusts the election results or vaccines.Unless emissions drop to zero by 2050 we are looking at 4 degrees of warming by 2100. Even This relies on the invention of as yet unknown carbon capture technology.
Large parts of the earth will become uninhabitable this century barring some insane technological breakthroughs and feats of international cooperation (given we can’t even give poor countries vaccines) and even if that were fixed social mobility is declining in much of the rich world. This sounds like something written by someone ensconced in a nice little bubble of privilege.
by VictorPath on 8/14/21, 2:57 PM
Also missing is the threat of a full-scale war between nuclear-armed powers. There hasn't been a real non-proxy war between major powers for 75 years, but is there anyone who thinks tensions between NATO and Russia or China have been decreasing or even level? They have obviously been increasing, so the potential of a nuclear crisis walks alongside all of that. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara thought so, as do others.
He says he is in an area with as progressive and pro-climate a local government as you could want, then he says he had to fight for his own initiative to put solar panels on his roof. Every year more carbon pours into the atmosphere. His assertion that amounts to "liberalism is not preventing this, but is capable of understanding it" is not encouraging. Like Covid, major corporations at the center of the economy and hegemony are actively involved in spreading the idea that this is not even happening, which many buy into.
Insofar as fascism and events like Charlottesville, a town voted to remove a statue, a number of people came to protest, many openly calling themselves fascist. One townsperson marching to remove the statue was deliberately run over and killed by the other side. It's a manifestation of a fascist movement and it had a certain size and result. People are not wrong to notice Charlottesville or other things like that and see some level of a fascist threat, the question is how large it is - he is probably right that some reactions to such things are overblown, but they're not reacting to something that doesn't exist. I probably agree with Yglesias on the odds of the country becoming fascist in the next decades, but with Charlottesville, storming the Capitol to stop the election count and such things, it is correct to concern those on the watch for fascism, even if as Yglesias says, this can become overblown.
Also some people just have a historical perspective Yglesias doesn't get. Like an imminent collapse of the middle class would strongly portend an attempted fascist seizure of power.
One sign of a sea shift - liberal is an old word, and speech codes, measures against hate speech, blocking presidents on platforms like Twitter, canceling and the like are departures from liberalism. The groups and institutions which formerly supported freedom of speech are now in favor of different things. There may or may not be good reasons for this but it is a departure from liberalism. That these institutions and groups which formerly embraced liberal ideals with regards to speech have now abandoned them is a sign of changes within the institutions he discusses. Liberalism hasn't changed, the formerly liberal groups and institutions have abandoned aspects of liberalism, for good or ill.
by ttonkytonk on 8/14/21, 6:31 PM
But it’s completely absurd.
As long as capitalism is the guiding light of society, it's probably absurd to think a solution is possible.
The capitalists control the politicians, and the voting populace underestimates the degree to which they can be manipulated.
by disposable1312 on 8/14/21, 1:26 PM
Acting like things happening under his rule were a problem detached from his responsibility. If only every leader could get away with this.
by _ykl9 on 8/14/21, 4:06 PM
Regardless of one's feelings on Trump, it's clear that he wasn't treated entirely fairly by the media from the start. Sure, for a while they would tiptoe around calling him out for outright lies, but I also saw how his words and actions would at times be twisted and presented with with bad faith or the worst possible meaning taken as a presumption.
He may have been extraordinarily corrupt, and a constant embarrassment to the country on Twitter, but in terms of policy he was a relatively vanilla conservative. I've even given him credit for being the first president to enter office supporting same-sex marriage, and more broadly I don't dislike the libertarian-ish element of his base that also supports that in addition to legal weed.
None of the above negates the fact that Trump and his allies spent at least the second half of 2020 attempting to subvert our electoral process, came very close to succeeding, and then attacked the United States with intent to violently usurp control of the government. It doesn't negate that Trump-inspired white nationalist militias are currently the greatest domestic terror threat in America, while Trump continues to stoke their anger with lies. Whether his coup was "fascist" or parallels the actions of 34-year-old Adolf Hitler is irrelevant. I'll criticize the left for crying wolf as loudly as anyone; it doesn't logically follow that wolves don't exist.
by echopurity on 8/14/21, 2:05 PM
Even if we attribute this stuff to "capitalism" (instead of "workers" for example), I'm pretty sure none of it is actually sustainable.
>Now of course we don’t have carbon pricing, and I think we never will because it’s hideously unpopular. But that’s the essence of the climate crisis — not an ideological crisis for liberalism, but tragically a crisis of mass indifference.
So we don't have carbon tax because of mass indifference to the planet being destroyed? Otherwise carbon taxes? Whatever, lib.
by black6 on 8/14/21, 2:36 PM