Having faced ‘the impossible to imagine,’ I see how the Western left is doing what it has been doing the best: analysing the American neo-imperialism, the expansion of NATO. It is not enough anymore as it does not explain the world that is emerging from the ruins of Donbas and Kharkiv’s main square. The world is not exhaustively described as shaped by or reacting upon the actions of the US. It has gained dynamics of its own, and the US and Europe is in reactive mode in many areas. You explain the distant causes instead of noticing the emergent trends.

Thus, it strikes me how, talking about the dramatic processes in our corner of the world, you reduce them to reaction to the activity of your own government and business elites. [...]
I have been reading everything written and said on the left about last year's escalating conflict between the US, Russia, and Ukraine. Most of it was terribly off, much worse than many mainstream explanations. Its predictive power was nil.

To the Western left, on your and our mistakes

And for Eastern European scholars like us, it’s galling to watch the unending stream of Western scholars and pundits condescend to explain the situation in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, often in ways that either ignore voices from the region, treating it as an object rather than a subject of history, or claiming to perfectly understand Russian logic and motives. Eastern European online circles have started using a new term to describe this phenomenon of people from the Anglosphere loudly foisting their analytical schema and political prescriptions onto the region: westsplaining.

The American Pundits Who Can’t Resist “Westsplaining” Ukraine


The Western left does not appear to ever have taken the time to understand Eastern Europe or post-Soviet Russia - to consider the meaning of 1989 for the peoples of those regions, the perspective of having lived through communism. The outlooks and practices of dissidents recieve but the slightest attention. Of course communism as a whole remains a repressed memory in the west. Whether the liberal for whom it never really existed, just a temporary snag in the road, a peripheral accident; or the socialist who had gotten so used to explaining away all disturbing facts as "mistakes", so as to keep his own dream going, that he didn't find it difficult to continue on the same road; both reveal their wish to distance themselves from this part of their history and their existence, their incapacity at getting close to it, their inability to accept it.

In any case, every form of "third-worldism" has dragged this kind of arrogance along with it. It might be that these leftists were simply devoid of answers or credible explanatory models and didn't want to admit this, but still needing to keep their oppositional identities proceeded to latch onto any event or leader that appeared to offer resistance - with ever more embarrassing results.

In this Ukrainian situation, you see people again and again presenting themselves as opposing the (perceived) narrative of their own nation, while instinctively following the colonialist mindset of bearing the right to adjudicate the fate of any and all people, out of some pretense to objectivity - peace should be maintained, or whatever.
I remember a fair bit of this from the Iraq war too - Saddam at least provides stability, right? And honestly - what does Cuba mean for most western radicals other than a repository for personal fantasies? Disturbingly often, a pathos for the downtrodden of some other place turns out to be a rhetorical prop for someone to fight their own petty, private battles at home.

These tendencies seem to be recurrent in different forms of allyship, as discussed by the two guys in this video (22:21-23:30).

Life sentence for Burkinabe ex-leader Compaoré for Sankara murder

The long-awaited verdict brings to close a six-month trial for the assassination of Thomas Sankara on October 15, 1987.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... el/629369/

Pretty good article about political polarization today and what may have contributed it: social media (algorithms, specifically).

There is a pay wall but you get a certain number of Atlantic articles free.

Statements along the lines of "the polarization that has happened during the past years..." always strike me as incredibly insular.

kokorodoko wrote: Statements along the lines of "the polarization that has happened during the past years..." always strike me as incredibly insular.

^This. I think some of the infighting within the left has deepened in recent years, but Republicans have been about "..anyone but a Democrat" campaigns for longer than I've been alive.

OK, so the Twitter users have opined. Anyone else?

The transition from people sharing on social media to people performing is a widely understood but important observation. It's definitely weird, and alienating, and sad.

More new to me in the article was the study of what makes a strong democracy. It's astute where the writer observes how around 2010 the total democratization of media seemed like it could only be a wonderful thing, yet a decade later it erased our culture's sense of a shared experience and fueled a breakdown in the confidence of our institutions.

I can see where the FMs above are coming from with the idea that American political polarization was a thing when Reagan was in office, as it was under LBJ. But, this article gets at how enhanced that polarization is in the era of social media.

There is no shared conversation anymore, we're infinitely fragmented as that's our prerogative.

enframed wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 9:58 pm OK, so the Twitter users have opined. Anyone else?

Touché. Yeah I regretted my post after making it. It was insubstantial and lazy even if true about some part of the text. Anyway.

losthighway wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 10:23 pm The transition from people sharing on social media to people performing is a widely understood but important observation. It's definitely weird, and alienating, and sad.

More new to me in the article was the study of what makes a strong democracy. It's astute where the writer observes how around 2010 the total democratization of media seemed like it could only be a wonderful thing, yet a decade later it erased our culture's sense of a shared experience and fueled a breakdown in the confidence of our institutions.

I can see where the FMs above are coming from with the idea that American political polarization was a thing when Reagan was in office, as it was under LBJ. But, this article gets at how enhanced that polarization is in the era of social media.

There is no shared conversation anymore, we're infinitely fragmented as that's our prerogative.

One of the more interesting findings is the following:

"The “Hidden Tribes” study, by the pro-democracy group More in Common, surveyed 8,000 Americans in 2017 and 2018 and identified seven groups that shared beliefs and behaviors. The one furthest to the right, known as the “devoted conservatives,” comprised 6 percent of the U.S. population. The group furthest to the left, the “progressive activists,” comprised 8 percent of the population. The progressive activists were by far the most prolific group on social media: 70 percent had shared political content over the previous year. The devoted conservatives followed, at 56 percent.

These two extreme groups are similar in surprising ways. They are the whitest and richest of the seven groups, which suggests that America is being torn apart by a battle between two subsets of the elite who are not representative of the broader society. "

enframed wrote: Thu Jul 07, 2022 10:15 am One of the more interesting findings is the following:

"The “Hidden Tribes” study, by the pro-democracy group More in Common, surveyed 8,000 Americans in 2017 and 2018 and identified seven groups that shared beliefs and behaviors. The one furthest to the right, known as the “devoted conservatives,” comprised 6 percent of the U.S. population. The group furthest to the left, the “progressive activists,” comprised 8 percent of the population. The progressive activists were by far the most prolific group on social media: 70 percent had shared political content over the previous year. The devoted conservatives followed, at 56 percent.

These two extreme groups are similar in surprising ways. They are the whitest and richest of the seven groups, which suggests that America is being torn apart by a battle between two subsets of the elite who are not representative of the broader society. "

Ooh, this leaves me conflicted. In the context of this study I'd say: oh there's a reasonable center that's not being represented in our online discourse. If we can empower those voices we can steady the ship, avoid events like January 6, or worse some kind of civil war.

On the other hand I don't think of myself as a centrist. I would like to ban semi automatic weapons, make abortion a constitutional right, force businesses to reduce emissions faster and strengthen the social safety net.

Might I be contributing to polarization?