Cold war? I've thought for some time that WW3 started sometime in the last 5-10 years, perhaps The seizure of Crimea is probably the spot historians will pick. It's a highly asymmetric often fought with proxies or in hybrid forms, very hot if you are in the wrong spot and pretty cold if you are afar and not thinking clearly. Like many wars the enemy of my enemy is my friend principle makes for odd combinations which disguise what is going on and, who is the good or bad guy. But broadly speaking Totalitarian states vs Western rule of law states. The most striking feature for me is how much of the war has been internalised in the West - we are quite literally tearing ourselves apart (pick your cause - culture wars of one form or another seems to capture it). And most amazingly the way we allow our rules based order to be use against us. Countries that have no respect for the concept use it in the UN or other bodies to attack us and we acquiesce. Iran appointed to the UN human rights committee was one of the moments that lead me to realise we were in an asymmetric war and were probably losing if we didn't wake up. It is the internalisation of this war which leaded to us become a gerontocracy I think - frankly many of our 'elites" are terrified by the deluge they suspect will come when our already woke - and I hate this word but it's a good shorthand - generation X are fully in control and beginning to be replaced by the even more conflicted next generation. I guess the old Soviet system went through a similar generational change and failed. I have my hopes though, I get to meet a lot of 20 something friends of my sons and they seem to be quietly rather more conservative than myself (boomer who was late starting a family).
western countries are outnumbered in the UN. & the right has shown time and time again to be disinterested in making these things work for them & us. Hence why stuff like Iran getting appointed to UN human rights committee. The rights arrogance & lack of will to work with non-western countries isn't going to end well. We ought to be winning them over, not letting them coalesce around china & russia.
Iran on Human Rights commission is nothing compared to American support for genocide in Palestine. Imperialism doesn't mix with rule of law, it's violent by nature.
Niall puts too much emphasis on "Wokeism." The fundamental problem of our elite is not the bizarre ideologies coming out of the university, but the fact that they see the American people as fungible economic units. They do not see the difference between someone whose family goes back generations and someone who just crossed the border because both contribute in some capacity to GDP growth. They do not see the difference between men and women because both show up the same on a labor force participation spreadsheet. Culture, nationality, and tradition don't matter to them other than as political weapons against the historic American nation--if anything, Culture is an obstacle to economic growth and the displacement such growth necessitates. America, like the Soviet Union, is Materialist to the core, where everything is subordinate to economic determinations pursuant to the dream of global hegemony.
His analysis is that the deaths of despair come from a devaluation of labor compared to capital (most prominently through free trade, China into WTO, globalisation) and the realisation of the working class that working for a living does not create a nice life when everything you buy or rent goes up faster than your income and the difference between income and cost of goods, services, housing etc gets pocketed by a small percentage of ever wealthier people. Why then does he think that the abolition of EDI is the solution which is the mother of all red herrings? The solution is go increase the power of labor over capital. His analysis is the symptom of a class of academics that has lost any consciousness of class. Like the EDI people themselves he has completely lost the capacity so solve the problem. If he thinks everyhing will be finde once EDI is abolished - which isn't the cause of any of this - makes me seriously question his judgement. I have never heard anyone mention EDI outside of the academic class, all I hear ae people complaining about how their labor gets them less every year and how if you are not invested or tied your labor to capital like being a real estate agent and leverage capital to get ahead you are losing quality of life every second. If you don't own a house you get left behind. If you have children and both can't work you get left behind. If you can't afford healthcare you get left behind. As soon as you get paid actual money for your labor it gets moved to Vietnam or China. Or you get replaced by automation. Nothing of these have ANYTHING TO DO WITH EDI. Or maybe I am missing something, how do any of these problems get solved once you get rid of EDI?
Conservative universities to teach how to think, but not what to think. But if it's conservative you are teaching what to think. By the way some of those activities know how to think. Debate them, you'll see, and learn of varieties of thinking.
Thank you for this discussion. At the 12-minute mark, I want to voice an expectation, as I am fully engaged in this conversation. What I want to articulate, perhaps somewhat egocentrically-please forgive me for this-is that despite having worked to crucify my ego, my conscience compels me to ask: Will this similarity between modern US/Europe/"all" and the Soviets be acknowledged as a delayed death of the last of the Enlightenment Ideologies? Is it the final end of the "End of History"? Are we allowed to move forward from worshipping pagan gods, of which our collective humanistic egos are the worst? I am eager to see if this is the direction the article will take. I have not read the article yet, but I am excited to find out. Thank you for this discussion.
