People who are stupid are bad. There isn’t really any such thing as pure evil. Evil is a religious construct without relevance if you’re secular as I am, and I don’t know whether you believe in God Claire, and I’m wary of prejudging your morals, but you come off as secular. Genuine sadists are few and far between, and that’s an understatement. The fact is, if conventional morality has any utility then you should be given to understand that what is good is intelligence, enlightenment, a certain reserve of inner strength that is loth to ask for help from others or to depend on others for a sense of belonging, for example by joining a base political movement like MAGA or “Social Justice.” What is bad is stupidity, ignorance, willfulness, laziness. What is bad is everything that is weak and petty and shameless about humanity. A bad person to me is someone without dignity, without honor, with no self-respect, who depends on the good opinion of others who look like her with whom she shares a shallow “identity” for example. Claire I’m afraid that even though you know this truth about morals, you too often give people a free pass or a license to behave stupidly, because it doesn’t match your definition of knowing, witting evil, which, as I said, is only a religious construct, and an unreliable vector of the virtue or lack of it that counts in the real world. To be sure though a post-Christian egoist like me, perhaps runs the risk of going too far in judging ordinary people for being... ordinary, or themselves. Nevertheless you are too soft because your definition of morality is too contingent on intention. I judge people by assessing the whole character of the individual. Perhaps it strikes you as unusual on the Neoliberal Standard incidentally how I am always making these character judgments. I think character is the best standard for moral evaluation. According to that principle the people who stormed the Capitol or the Gen Z’ers who support Hamas, though they are “stupid” to you, and they are stupid indeed, but they are stupid from my standpoint, because they are: lazy, entitled, selfish, lonely, pathetic etc etc. As an egoist when you realize that there is no such thing as good in the Christian sense, meaning altruistic and charitable behavior, nor is there evil either, meaning someone who inflicts harm just for causing harm, even somebody who enjoys that is only a psychopath with a contemptible personality disorder--and so if everyone is an ego, then the important thing is to judge the characterological type and quality of that ego and weigh its substance. Does it have noble or ignoble traits? How properly human is it? Human as in conscious, rational, free, dignified, modest, perhaps in a narrower sense bourgeois, modern. We determine with our morals--this is whole purpose of morals as a human invention--the kind of world we want to live in. Every moral value judgment is a creative act. This is why you should not let people off easy with a morality that relies too much on intentions, holding people to be innocent who are stupid as opposed to educated or something. We are not blank slates anyway. And if our culture has failed society, enabling what is happening, then the first way of helping it is to restore a less forgiving method of judgment.
I’m glad Claire’s coming around to the obvious. Twitter should be banned, voters of all stripes are idiots, and liberal Western democracy is dying. The United States has had a good run as republics go. 😜
Matt Taibbi disagrees. Also, the special prosecutor came up empty.
I agree that the Russians want generally to influence American elections. I can easily believe that DJT had lackeys eager to talk with them. I don’t think it rises to collusion.
Also, the HRC campaign pretty thoroughly poisoned that well.
I don’t think the “smart set” realizes just how much Russian money was pouring into all the campaigns. It wasn’t just Jill Stein and the usual Libertarian suspects. Russian oligarchs had compromised Leon Panetta through his brother and had donated big bucks to the Clinton Foundation. I’m trying to remember the name of the other big Clinton staffer who was in hock to the Putin regime, but I’m drawing a blank right now. Heck, even Evan McMullin’s campaign inadvertently ended up taking Russian money. Putin’s goal isn’t for any particular person to win an election; it’s to destabilize Western liberalism in general. While he doesn’t particularly like Hillary Clinton, he obviously didn’t mind lackeys laundering money to her camp and working with the Steele Dossier ridiculousness. Putin wins when we lose faith in electoral democracy, and obviously he’s winning regardless of who wins elections these days.
I would not have known about Sudan, had I not read Claire’s article. Tragic. I had been concerned about Sudan perhaps 6 years ago and then it fell off my radar. The tweet by Karen is something I have been concerned about since 2019. For 5 years, Racial Equity Alliance’s “Equity Program” implemented by 100 mayors and 25 governors has instructed gov employees and K-12+ university students; “Identify yourselves not as simply American, but as a race group and don’t forget about the good race vs the bad race and remember to become hysterical over a growing list of grievances.” I visited the far left “Code Pink” website to read about Israel/Palestine. Zero mention of Oct 7 Hamas attack. Only mention of Israeli response. Even though Israelis and Palestinians are both multiracial; leftist story is White vs. non-White. I have been fighting against this propaganda for 5 years. I prefer that USA mot become Croatia of 1995. Then Kamala Harris and her “Islamaphobia” meeting and I anticipate censorship by big-tech as Biden Administration obsesses over a cease-fire(That was in place on Oct 6). My woke “friends” of 30 years refuse to discuss. I suppose Israelis should stop colonizing Israel and go back to where they came from- which would be Israel.
It doesn’t help the public to trust information sources when some of it is in fact false. The narrative of Russian collusion in the 2016 is an example. I too didn’t and don’t want DJT as POTUS. That doesn’t make it right to lie about him. Nothing built on lies can last.
People may be starting to recover from what Michael Crichton called “Murray Gell-Mann amnesia”.
It is if all you read from the States is the NYT, WaPo, and Bulwark. I mean, it’s the essential truthiness of how it feels, isn’t it? C’mon, Claire. Yes, Trump wanted to collude with the Russians, but he was less successful than the Clinton campaign, that at least got the Steele Dossier out of their dealings with Moscow. Jeez.
I'm not sure what your evidential standard is, and "collusion" notoriously has no legal import or definition, but among many other things Mueller really did find that the Trump campaign (Manafort and Gates) were knowingly sharing data with a Russian spy, and were aware of an expectation of a quid pro quo from their coujtnterpart. For me that's enough to stand up a Narrative of Collusion (in addition to a very strong Narrative of Obstruction to try to cover up what they were doing).
There’s no doubt that the Trump campaign wanted to collude with the Russians, but collusion implies some cooperation, and I just don’t see where Russia did anything they weren’t already going to do to benefit Trump. And the few times Trump’s incompetent lackeys did try, they got rebuffed.
Using the standard of Manafort trying to get oppo from Russian intelligence suggests that the Clinton campaign actually did collude with Russian intelligence to obtain the Steele dossier. And this is where the whole “Democrats are saving liberal democracy” narrative falls apart. All five candidates on the ballot in 2016 were awash in Russian money, and both Republicans and Democrats tried to get oppo research from Russian intelligence. It’s bad faith all the way down, including the bipartisan mishandling of two impeachments and Biden’s attempt to pass self-serving electoral “reforms” (one of which would have helped Trump’s auto-coup), from both sides over the last fifteen or twenty years, and independents and alienated former partisans such as myself.
I’m no fan of Trump, and I have never voted for him. But there’s thousands of real reasons to oppose him besides the false partisan myths flogged by the “smart set.” Isn’t wanting to collude with one of our main geopolitical foes bad enough?
I can agree with much of this - no heroes here, plenty of other reasons why Trump is bad for America, and a system awash with bad money,
But do you not see an important asymmetry between hiring a freelance British spy (and mug) to ring round his old Moscow contacts to dig up dirt on Trump, and opening up a channel via a known Russian agent with a Putin-friendly oligarch, through which to share information with *them*.
The first one sets you up to be mugged by disinfo (as indeed they were), but the second creates an open channel for influence - which is Manafort's basic skill in any case (his FARA conviction relates to work before he joined the Trump campaign, which rather underlines his line of business.)
Both are grubby, but it's the second one that seems like collusion to me.
(Also borne out by the failure of the Durham investigation to stand up a serious case for his "Clinton Plan" theory, which could have shown a sort of symmetry between the campaigns...)
I just find it naïve to think that someone who’d spent her time as Secretary of State laundering oligarchs’ bribes through her “charitable foundation” would be surprised that the spy she hired might work with the Russians while in Moscow working with Russians. Especially when she saw the dossier itself. I mean, a famous germaphobe letting prostitutes urinate on him?
And yes, Manafort tried to collude, but all signs show he was rebuffed. And that was the smart move for Putin. Putin’s goal, as I have said elsewhere, isn’t electing particular candidates, but destabilizing the system. Having 50% of Americans at the other 50%’s throats, and vice versa, is much more valuable than having any particular person in office. In 2016, Putin managed to make a mockery of American politics, from the Steele Dossier to the abortive Trumpist meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya. Your argument seems to be that Clinton couldn’t be accused of colluding because she didn’t say she wanted to publicly, but she got what she thought was the goods, while Trump said he wanted to, and didn’t get the goods. I guess I’m just too jaded to think that Clinton wasn’t hoping for help from the Russians.
There are too many thoughtful things to comment on in this piece and I will certainly have to read it again.
I will stick to the stupid vs. evil argument. In general I would agree. I can forgive ignorance and stupidity many times, especially in democratic countries where people really want to just go about their business.
But this is not one of those times. October 7, 2023 was the most morally clear moment we have had in decades. There was no grey there. There are no ands-ifs-or-buts. Someone's sympathy for Gazans can be excused if they understand that Hamas is the cause of this.
Replying to my own comment since I left something out ...
As for Sudan, Syria, etc - ignoring the non-Israeli related tragedies in the Arab world shows us now none in the media elite care at all about people anywhere. They have a narrative and they have click-bait to worry about. Arabs kill Africans or Arabs kill Arabs = Dog bites man. Jews kill Arabs = Man bites dog
I tried to get through this on my morning commute through Paris (!) but can't. I get the general sense and will try to finish later
A lot of great points. At a very base level, people seem not stupid, just not curious. Nobody seems interested in learning anything that in anyway changes their view of the world. I've tried to get folks to be curious. But...
"Morons" needs no adjectives -- "socialist," "progressive," "left-wing," "right-wing," "populist," .. -- to make its effects and applicability more precise:
Amusing that Rosenberg thinks right wing morons threaten democracy- I trust he means Trump voters. It is a joy to see academics mourn the improvidence of the masses who vote a wrong think ticket. What is to be done? Well let’s fire the electorate and appoint a new one - after limiting the franchise to some TBD nomenclature like the DNC super delegates. Clearly this site is called the Cosmopolitan Globalist for a reason.
Everyone should consider that Americans vote most often in local elections about which they may be far better informed than expats or DC stakeholders could ever be troubled to discover. Plus foreign policy is rarely on the federal ballot as a serious issue. The executive branch does the decision making as divergent ME policies of Obama/Biden or Trump administrations clearly demonstrate. Sadly if I was an Israeli or even an American Jew, like my wife, less sleep would lost about hairy palmed populists slouching towards Bethlehem than state department bureaucrats, the academic elite, and editorial boards of MSM, left Dems, etc. Those who wield real power are not your friends. This inconvenient truth has quite suddenly become clear but how it impacts the “narrative” we don’t yet know.
Claire - I almost cried when I saw the images from the slaughter in Sudan. So much to say but will try to condense.
I do not have very many outlets where I can share what is probably an unpopular opinion - and please educate me (anyone!) if I am off base because I want to learn and understand - but I am really questioning the consistent use of the word genocide across many platforms since Israel started their attack. I grew up in the '80's/90's and remember very well the genocide in Rwanda. I wrote a piece about it for a media studies assignment in high school and my family was very news oriented. I remember reading the book Zlata's Diary written by a young girl during the Bosnian conflict. My husband's best friend fought in that war as a high ranking Bosnian with NATO. We have visited him in Mostar and seen where he did street battles and sat with his friends who lost families and livelihoods. I know the genocide that was perpetrated there (as I am sure most people here do). Make no mistake - the current attacks by Israel are NOT going to serve anyone and many innocent people are hurting, But is it genocide? No one is kidnapping Gazans, shooting them randomly on the street, raping women, seeking out specifically to take down with guns and knives. Part of me feels like it is being used in an incendiary manner to provoke more emotionalism (thanks for the new term!).
This article really spoke to me because in the past two weeks I have found myself questioning where all these people are protests, in colleges and universities and online have been even in the last 20 years? Suddenly this is massive important to so many people but yet it has been there all along. And yes, why aren't people talking about Ukraine? About Sudan? About Yemen? My theory has always been that America is just so big it generates it's own news (unlike my native Australia where at least growing up, our news programming was more often than not dominated by international news - which wasn't a bad thing!) and so the domestic/local news is all people have the brain space for. But I found myself nodding along to the education system and the cultural aspects of your thoughts. I have a Japanese friend who spent most of her childhood education at boarding school in Venezuela, then her last two years of high school back in Tokyo, and has attending colleges in Japan and the US. We meet often for coffee and bond over the fact that we're foreigners (ha ha!), but since the Trump election in 2016, she has found herself very disappointed in the lack of teaching of critical thinking in the US education system - something that I don't think was always the case?
Regardless thank you for writing such an honest and informative piece (and also for giving a refresher on Sudan).
Revised view: it would be much easier to dismiss these claims if it weren't for the stupid and outrageous things that Netenyahu, his cabinet and officials say. See paras 10 and following in the pdf. As Nicholas Fry posted, intent is important.
I still don't think it establishes a serious case, but it does reinforce what an absolute disaster the Netenyahu government is for everyone. They can't go soon enough.
There are further reasons why there is a protest movement against Israel in the West.
First, Israel is supported openly and directly by the western powers. The protesters feel that the blood of the Palestinians is on western hands too - that's one way that this is different from what happens in Sudan.
Second, Israel is considered a creation of western imperialism and neocolonialism, and one of the axioms of today's left is that all that should be reversed as much as possible. This is consistent with the first point.
It is also worth remarking on the relation between the internal politics of the West, and the politics of the rest of the world. In American terms, the two big alternatives to liberal centrism are Trump and Woke.
Claire has argued that there is a global phenomenon of "New Caesars" and that Trump is one of these. Autocrats outside the West would find it very agreeable if the West too wsa governed in that way.
On the other hand, Woke is usually viewed as a western creation and western export, and even something used to destabilize the rest of the world. But, there is one element of Woke that fits a global trend, and that is anti-imperialism, end of global white supremacy, and continuing the anti-colonial revolution by rejecting western tutelage in political, economic, and cultural matters.
Insofar as there is still awareness of "Turkey versus the Kurds" on the western left, they are likely to view the Syrian Kurds as the forces supported by the West, and Erdogan as the independent nationalist. It's not like Erdogan is doing this with NATO approval.
In any case, the awareness of "Israel versus the Palestinians" on the western left is obviously an order of magnitude greater. Partly this is about following the priorities of the Arab and Muslim worlds. There's almost no criticism of Turkey, and almost unanimous criticism of Israel. Partly it's because Israel and the West are seen as fatefully entangled in so many ways. Israel as seen as a creation and extension of the West, in ways that Turkey is not.
Somehow "Western" media generally became distracted roughly a year ago, following the publication of comments such as the following in The Washington Post, matched contemporaneously in The New York Times: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/23/turkey-attack-kurds-northern-syria/ Even early this month I recall few comments about the lack of a meeting with Erdogan when Blinken stopped in Turkey on his rather whirlwind visit.
Interesting question. Would you say that Turkey is as much a part of the West as Israel is in popular perception and in fact? (I know they’re both in Eurovision, but still.) Would that explain the different levels of interest in who they are and what they do? And also less interest when there are terrorist atrocities in Turkey, ie in Turkish deaths? My priors on this is I’m from India, so the Western complicity outrage makes sense to me. Perhaps I project?
In perception? I'm not sure: Israel does not seem to me part of the West in perception. Imagine the reaction if ISIS had paraglided into Burning Man and raped, tortured, mutilated, and murdered 1200 rave-goers, killing babies in front of their parents and vice-versa, then spiriting 200 Americans off to Syria. Do you think anyone would protest if in response a Western coalition bombed, say, Mosul to the ground? (We know the answer: The actual leveling of Mosul, in response to far less of a provocation, at least as far as attacks on Westerners is concerned, elicited not a word of protest: https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-only-on-ap-islamic-state-group-bbea7094fb954838a2fdc11278d65460) Turkey was, I think, seen as part of the West before the AKP. I'm not sure if it is now. But it certainly should be, seeing as it's part of NATO--the Turkish military has historically received even more support from the West than Israel.
In the Muslim and Arab world, Israel is indeed seen as a foreign, colonial implant. But why would it be seen this way in the West? Jews have not, historically, been seen as full-fledged Westerners, and part of the impetus to the support for Zionism in the West was a sense that Jews should go back where they belonged, namely, to the Middle East.
I'm genuinely perplexed by the attitudes and beliefs toward Israel we're seeing displayed in Western capitals right now. I have no idea how Arab-nationalist and Muslim-supremicist discourse (itself spoon-fed to that cohort by the USSR) has so completely conquered the Western left. It should be anathema to them by all conceivable ideological logic.
Perhaps I shouldn't discount the effect of the demise of the Israeli left. Was the Western left more sympathetic to Israel when the Labour Party and other movements of various socialist stripes were more prominent? Certainly Netanyahu did Israel no favors by attaching himself to the most reactionary elements of the American right. But I don't sense that Israeli internal politics are all that interesting to most of these protesters, because most of them seem to believe that Israel itself, within any borders, is an illegitimate entity.
> Jews have not, historically, been seen as full-fledged Westerners
I don't know about fifty years ago, but mainstream western conservatives very clearly consider Israel part of the West at this point. It's been that way at least since 9/11, and developed in proportion to the sense that Islam is not western.
Yes, there's a lot of philosemitic sentiment on the American right. It emerges from two currents, though, neither of which are really about viewing Israel as Western, per se. The first is Christian Zionism, which in many forms imagines that the ingathering of the Jews in Israel will play a key role in ushering in the Apocalypse. All the Jews die in this scenario, so it's hard to say that affection for Israel grounded in this premise is really about seeing Israel as "Westerners," per se. But yes, it results in great friendliness toward Israel, for which Israelis tend to be grateful. (They don't have enough friends that they can afford to look a gift horse in the mouth.) Personally, it leaves me a bit weirded out: I see this kind of philosemitism as a mirror image of antisemitism. While obviously it's not as dangerous--give me a philosemite over an antisemite every day--it still reinforces the idea that Jews are completely apart from the rest of humanity, an entirely different breed, in possession of special powers, etc. It's a species of what my friend Adam Garfinkle calls "Jewcentriciity."
The second reason--and this dates to the Six Day War, well before 9/11--is that Israel is seen to be a military and intelligence superpower (a reputation that took a severe hit on October 7). The US attitude toward Israel changed completely after that war: Israel went from being a liability (because American ties with it compromised its relationships in the Arab world) to an asset. Conservatives tend to be more security-minded than liberals--or they used to be, at least, now the people in the US who call themselves "conservatives" are, growingly, isolationists--so a country that was seen as a security asset held more appeal to them than it did liberals. Again, I don't think this was about Israel being "part of the West," it was about the same old ideas, which Israel was very happy to encourage: "Those Jews are exceptionally clever, unusually cunning, they have unique gifts for intelligence work (sort of a repackaging of, "Jews secretly control everything," right?)"
I just don't think very many people, on the right or the left, see Israel as "just another Western country, like Portugal or Canada." If I were in charge of Israeli public diplomacy, I'd run a campaign called, "a normal country." The only healthy attitude toward Israel, in my view, is that it's just a country--one that has lots of problems, like most countries, but also lots of nice people, and really doesn't warrant all this attention.
Re Burning Man - there is no widespread perception in the US that America created and empowered ISIS to achieve political ends. There is that perception to some extent Wrt Israel and Hamas. Is that the difference?
Well, it's a standard narrative that our intervention in Iraq created ISIS. (And in many parts of the Middle East, people believe we did it deliberately to achieve political ends.) I don't think that's the difference, Zaf--I think the difference is mostly about people's attitudes toward Jews. For ordinary people, perhaps, less so: As I argue, they're responding to what they see in the media and particularly social media (which is right to saturated in massive, state-sponsored disinformation). But among the elites who form these opinions and the states that promulgate these tropes and themes, it's chiefly about Jews, and for countries like Russia and China, it's also about Americans, because Israel is a US ally.
Opinions in the West vary. I still hang at Ricochet, and Israel is very much seen as the West, a villa in the jungle, etc. (The Palestinians? Don’t ask.) Perhaps a function of the demographic?
I saw a Pew (?) report about age and ethnicity in the US. The median age in the country was 27, but the median age of white people was over 50. So when polls find that support for Palestinians is higher in younger cohorts than older my instinct is that the ethnic balance is part of the reason. What was obviously the case is no longer so obvious.
They are also the cohorts most influenced by social media - for good and for ill.
There is no significant irredentist movement within Germany itself, and the USSR acquired East Prussia in the course of defeating fascism, so it's not going to be viewed as a historical wrong. The priority for the European left right now, would be how to demilitarize the Baltic region and turn it into a zone of peace.
Keeping up with all that is going on everywhere in the world takes a lot of time. Many people's ignorance is a result of them choosing to spend their time on things other than reading and learning. Having been self-employed most of my working life has allowed me some control of my time and now in retirement I've had even more time to read. For 15 years my work had me on airplanes where I read a lot. Most people have most of their time absorbed by work and family. When they have free time, they often spend it on mindless entertainment.
Hence, a population ignorant about most world events and not motivated to learn.
Then there are the young who appear to believe all the knowledge required to function in this world can be absorbed from 30 second videos. That may be the thing most concerning.
Democracy is indeed a fragile thing. When it comes in contact with human nature, it is, given enough time, doomed to fail, The USA is the first republic of its kind. It is an experiment that will determine if a republic so structured can be a form a government that will endure in spite of an ignorant and ill-informed citizenry. Human nature is a formidable obstacle in the establishment of successful self-government. The verdict on the long-term success of our republic is still out.
Ken, this is a recurring theme I have noticed in conversations with many people in the last couple of years: the inability to read long form articles or even long-ish articles. Things need to be, as you pointed out, in a 30 second video format or not interested. I actually prefer to read than watch videos. And your right - mindless entertainment is an easier choice for many people. The problem it's leading to even more dumbing down not to mention a dramatic increase in mass consumerism particularly since the addition of social media. Not sure how any of this can be changed? On one hand people's lives can be so busy with work and parenting . . .but on the other hand it feels like people are taking the easier way out more often than not. I certainly don't begrudge them that, but having it be the default means less awareness about the world - I just think it's so important to have interested in what's going on outside your own sphere.
Lots of interesting themes here, thankyou. Two non-lit-crit thoughts:
1. "Most of our citizens aren’t sufficiently well-informed to vote. They don’t know enough about anything to choose good leaders..." Then again, *voting* in a democracy mostly isn't about chosing leaders. It's about peacefully removing failing administrations. (Binary binding referenda are a truly terrible idea in part for this reason - luckily no recent examples here to point at...). Popular suffrage, "wisdom of crowds" etc is an *alternative* to individual expertise, not a product which depends on it. So I'm much more bothered by the people who think it's OK to violently hijack the peaceful transfer of power than those who don't understand the law of comparative advantage or how a syphon works.
2. How do we measure the prevalance of stupidity? A side-effect of the internet and social media is dramatically more access to content of all kinds - including what would have been private and local expressions of dullitude. Call it thickness-as-a-service, pick any misunderstanding of any given topic and I'll probably be able to find someone proudly expressing it (in a nice hat) on Youtube (in English at least, German costs more). This definitely shows we're more distractable - and I saw distraction was part of the Doom thesis - but I don't know if it shows more underlying stupidity, just fewer inhibitions.
Winston Churchill wrote a book called “The River War” about the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan in 1896-99, part of which he was present for. It still feels relevant.
Churchill’s book has been widely criticized for being bigoted. Churchill has been excoriated for being anti-Muslim. Obama removed a bust of Churchill from the Oval Office. Trump restored it. Biden removed it again. See,
Quite possibly bigoted, but for those who read the book he was if anything rather more sympathetic to the Sudanese than might be expected. He seemed to feel that the Mahdi’s revolt against the Egyptian government was a quite natural and reasonable thing for the people to do, and didn’t indulge too much in polemics against the brutality of their campaign. To find this attitude in a wealthy scion from an imperial capital visiting the backwards province of a backwards empire is a little surprising.
As for his views on Islam, I’ve heard worse said about my own religion and culture without losing my head and without demanding those who held those beliefs have their memories dishonored.
People who are stupid are bad. There isn’t really any such thing as pure evil. Evil is a religious construct without relevance if you’re secular as I am, and I don’t know whether you believe in God Claire, and I’m wary of prejudging your morals, but you come off as secular. Genuine sadists are few and far between, and that’s an understatement. The fact is, if conventional morality has any utility then you should be given to understand that what is good is intelligence, enlightenment, a certain reserve of inner strength that is loth to ask for help from others or to depend on others for a sense of belonging, for example by joining a base political movement like MAGA or “Social Justice.” What is bad is stupidity, ignorance, willfulness, laziness. What is bad is everything that is weak and petty and shameless about humanity. A bad person to me is someone without dignity, without honor, with no self-respect, who depends on the good opinion of others who look like her with whom she shares a shallow “identity” for example. Claire I’m afraid that even though you know this truth about morals, you too often give people a free pass or a license to behave stupidly, because it doesn’t match your definition of knowing, witting evil, which, as I said, is only a religious construct, and an unreliable vector of the virtue or lack of it that counts in the real world. To be sure though a post-Christian egoist like me, perhaps runs the risk of going too far in judging ordinary people for being... ordinary, or themselves. Nevertheless you are too soft because your definition of morality is too contingent on intention. I judge people by assessing the whole character of the individual. Perhaps it strikes you as unusual on the Neoliberal Standard incidentally how I am always making these character judgments. I think character is the best standard for moral evaluation. According to that principle the people who stormed the Capitol or the Gen Z’ers who support Hamas, though they are “stupid” to you, and they are stupid indeed, but they are stupid from my standpoint, because they are: lazy, entitled, selfish, lonely, pathetic etc etc. As an egoist when you realize that there is no such thing as good in the Christian sense, meaning altruistic and charitable behavior, nor is there evil either, meaning someone who inflicts harm just for causing harm, even somebody who enjoys that is only a psychopath with a contemptible personality disorder--and so if everyone is an ego, then the important thing is to judge the characterological type and quality of that ego and weigh its substance. Does it have noble or ignoble traits? How properly human is it? Human as in conscious, rational, free, dignified, modest, perhaps in a narrower sense bourgeois, modern. We determine with our morals--this is whole purpose of morals as a human invention--the kind of world we want to live in. Every moral value judgment is a creative act. This is why you should not let people off easy with a morality that relies too much on intentions, holding people to be innocent who are stupid as opposed to educated or something. We are not blank slates anyway. And if our culture has failed society, enabling what is happening, then the first way of helping it is to restore a less forgiving method of judgment.
I’m glad Claire’s coming around to the obvious. Twitter should be banned, voters of all stripes are idiots, and liberal Western democracy is dying. The United States has had a good run as republics go. 😜
Matt Taibbi disagrees. Also, the special prosecutor came up empty.
I agree that the Russians want generally to influence American elections. I can easily believe that DJT had lackeys eager to talk with them. I don’t think it rises to collusion.
Also, the HRC campaign pretty thoroughly poisoned that well.
I don’t think the “smart set” realizes just how much Russian money was pouring into all the campaigns. It wasn’t just Jill Stein and the usual Libertarian suspects. Russian oligarchs had compromised Leon Panetta through his brother and had donated big bucks to the Clinton Foundation. I’m trying to remember the name of the other big Clinton staffer who was in hock to the Putin regime, but I’m drawing a blank right now. Heck, even Evan McMullin’s campaign inadvertently ended up taking Russian money. Putin’s goal isn’t for any particular person to win an election; it’s to destabilize Western liberalism in general. While he doesn’t particularly like Hillary Clinton, he obviously didn’t mind lackeys laundering money to her camp and working with the Steele Dossier ridiculousness. Putin wins when we lose faith in electoral democracy, and obviously he’s winning regardless of who wins elections these days.
I would not have known about Sudan, had I not read Claire’s article. Tragic. I had been concerned about Sudan perhaps 6 years ago and then it fell off my radar. The tweet by Karen is something I have been concerned about since 2019. For 5 years, Racial Equity Alliance’s “Equity Program” implemented by 100 mayors and 25 governors has instructed gov employees and K-12+ university students; “Identify yourselves not as simply American, but as a race group and don’t forget about the good race vs the bad race and remember to become hysterical over a growing list of grievances.” I visited the far left “Code Pink” website to read about Israel/Palestine. Zero mention of Oct 7 Hamas attack. Only mention of Israeli response. Even though Israelis and Palestinians are both multiracial; leftist story is White vs. non-White. I have been fighting against this propaganda for 5 years. I prefer that USA mot become Croatia of 1995. Then Kamala Harris and her “Islamaphobia” meeting and I anticipate censorship by big-tech as Biden Administration obsesses over a cease-fire(That was in place on Oct 6). My woke “friends” of 30 years refuse to discuss. I suppose Israelis should stop colonizing Israel and go back to where they came from- which would be Israel.
It doesn’t help the public to trust information sources when some of it is in fact false. The narrative of Russian collusion in the 2016 is an example. I too didn’t and don’t want DJT as POTUS. That doesn’t make it right to lie about him. Nothing built on lies can last.
People may be starting to recover from what Michael Crichton called “Murray Gell-Mann amnesia”.
The narrative of Russian collusion was true, however.
It is if all you read from the States is the NYT, WaPo, and Bulwark. I mean, it’s the essential truthiness of how it feels, isn’t it? C’mon, Claire. Yes, Trump wanted to collude with the Russians, but he was less successful than the Clinton campaign, that at least got the Steele Dossier out of their dealings with Moscow. Jeez.
I'm not sure what your evidential standard is, and "collusion" notoriously has no legal import or definition, but among many other things Mueller really did find that the Trump campaign (Manafort and Gates) were knowingly sharing data with a Russian spy, and were aware of an expectation of a quid pro quo from their coujtnterpart. For me that's enough to stand up a Narrative of Collusion (in addition to a very strong Narrative of Obstruction to try to cover up what they were doing).
There’s no doubt that the Trump campaign wanted to collude with the Russians, but collusion implies some cooperation, and I just don’t see where Russia did anything they weren’t already going to do to benefit Trump. And the few times Trump’s incompetent lackeys did try, they got rebuffed.
Using the standard of Manafort trying to get oppo from Russian intelligence suggests that the Clinton campaign actually did collude with Russian intelligence to obtain the Steele dossier. And this is where the whole “Democrats are saving liberal democracy” narrative falls apart. All five candidates on the ballot in 2016 were awash in Russian money, and both Republicans and Democrats tried to get oppo research from Russian intelligence. It’s bad faith all the way down, including the bipartisan mishandling of two impeachments and Biden’s attempt to pass self-serving electoral “reforms” (one of which would have helped Trump’s auto-coup), from both sides over the last fifteen or twenty years, and independents and alienated former partisans such as myself.
I’m no fan of Trump, and I have never voted for him. But there’s thousands of real reasons to oppose him besides the false partisan myths flogged by the “smart set.” Isn’t wanting to collude with one of our main geopolitical foes bad enough?
I can agree with much of this - no heroes here, plenty of other reasons why Trump is bad for America, and a system awash with bad money,
But do you not see an important asymmetry between hiring a freelance British spy (and mug) to ring round his old Moscow contacts to dig up dirt on Trump, and opening up a channel via a known Russian agent with a Putin-friendly oligarch, through which to share information with *them*.
The first one sets you up to be mugged by disinfo (as indeed they were), but the second creates an open channel for influence - which is Manafort's basic skill in any case (his FARA conviction relates to work before he joined the Trump campaign, which rather underlines his line of business.)
Both are grubby, but it's the second one that seems like collusion to me.
(Also borne out by the failure of the Durham investigation to stand up a serious case for his "Clinton Plan" theory, which could have shown a sort of symmetry between the campaigns...)
I just find it naïve to think that someone who’d spent her time as Secretary of State laundering oligarchs’ bribes through her “charitable foundation” would be surprised that the spy she hired might work with the Russians while in Moscow working with Russians. Especially when she saw the dossier itself. I mean, a famous germaphobe letting prostitutes urinate on him?
And yes, Manafort tried to collude, but all signs show he was rebuffed. And that was the smart move for Putin. Putin’s goal, as I have said elsewhere, isn’t electing particular candidates, but destabilizing the system. Having 50% of Americans at the other 50%’s throats, and vice versa, is much more valuable than having any particular person in office. In 2016, Putin managed to make a mockery of American politics, from the Steele Dossier to the abortive Trumpist meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya. Your argument seems to be that Clinton couldn’t be accused of colluding because she didn’t say she wanted to publicly, but she got what she thought was the goods, while Trump said he wanted to, and didn’t get the goods. I guess I’m just too jaded to think that Clinton wasn’t hoping for help from the Russians.
There are too many thoughtful things to comment on in this piece and I will certainly have to read it again.
I will stick to the stupid vs. evil argument. In general I would agree. I can forgive ignorance and stupidity many times, especially in democratic countries where people really want to just go about their business.
But this is not one of those times. October 7, 2023 was the most morally clear moment we have had in decades. There was no grey there. There are no ands-ifs-or-buts. Someone's sympathy for Gazans can be excused if they understand that Hamas is the cause of this.
In this case, stupid=evil.
Replying to my own comment since I left something out ...
As for Sudan, Syria, etc - ignoring the non-Israeli related tragedies in the Arab world shows us now none in the media elite care at all about people anywhere. They have a narrative and they have click-bait to worry about. Arabs kill Africans or Arabs kill Arabs = Dog bites man. Jews kill Arabs = Man bites dog
Is there a way to get this in front of the pay wall. I am sitting next to a German colleague who would like to read it. No worries if not.
I've removed the paywall.
I'll take the paywall off for you tomorrow.
I tried to get through this on my morning commute through Paris (!) but can't. I get the general sense and will try to finish later
A lot of great points. At a very base level, people seem not stupid, just not curious. Nobody seems interested in learning anything that in anyway changes their view of the world. I've tried to get folks to be curious. But...
"Morons" needs no adjectives -- "socialist," "progressive," "left-wing," "right-wing," "populist," .. -- to make its effects and applicability more precise:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51233/51233-h/51233-h.htm
Amusing that Rosenberg thinks right wing morons threaten democracy- I trust he means Trump voters. It is a joy to see academics mourn the improvidence of the masses who vote a wrong think ticket. What is to be done? Well let’s fire the electorate and appoint a new one - after limiting the franchise to some TBD nomenclature like the DNC super delegates. Clearly this site is called the Cosmopolitan Globalist for a reason.
Everyone should consider that Americans vote most often in local elections about which they may be far better informed than expats or DC stakeholders could ever be troubled to discover. Plus foreign policy is rarely on the federal ballot as a serious issue. The executive branch does the decision making as divergent ME policies of Obama/Biden or Trump administrations clearly demonstrate. Sadly if I was an Israeli or even an American Jew, like my wife, less sleep would lost about hairy palmed populists slouching towards Bethlehem than state department bureaucrats, the academic elite, and editorial boards of MSM, left Dems, etc. Those who wield real power are not your friends. This inconvenient truth has quite suddenly become clear but how it impacts the “narrative” we don’t yet know.
Claire - I almost cried when I saw the images from the slaughter in Sudan. So much to say but will try to condense.
I do not have very many outlets where I can share what is probably an unpopular opinion - and please educate me (anyone!) if I am off base because I want to learn and understand - but I am really questioning the consistent use of the word genocide across many platforms since Israel started their attack. I grew up in the '80's/90's and remember very well the genocide in Rwanda. I wrote a piece about it for a media studies assignment in high school and my family was very news oriented. I remember reading the book Zlata's Diary written by a young girl during the Bosnian conflict. My husband's best friend fought in that war as a high ranking Bosnian with NATO. We have visited him in Mostar and seen where he did street battles and sat with his friends who lost families and livelihoods. I know the genocide that was perpetrated there (as I am sure most people here do). Make no mistake - the current attacks by Israel are NOT going to serve anyone and many innocent people are hurting, But is it genocide? No one is kidnapping Gazans, shooting them randomly on the street, raping women, seeking out specifically to take down with guns and knives. Part of me feels like it is being used in an incendiary manner to provoke more emotionalism (thanks for the new term!).
This article really spoke to me because in the past two weeks I have found myself questioning where all these people are protests, in colleges and universities and online have been even in the last 20 years? Suddenly this is massive important to so many people but yet it has been there all along. And yes, why aren't people talking about Ukraine? About Sudan? About Yemen? My theory has always been that America is just so big it generates it's own news (unlike my native Australia where at least growing up, our news programming was more often than not dominated by international news - which wasn't a bad thing!) and so the domestic/local news is all people have the brain space for. But I found myself nodding along to the education system and the cultural aspects of your thoughts. I have a Japanese friend who spent most of her childhood education at boarding school in Venezuela, then her last two years of high school back in Tokyo, and has attending colleges in Japan and the US. We meet often for coffee and bond over the fact that we're foreigners (ha ha!), but since the Trump election in 2016, she has found herself very disappointed in the lack of teaching of critical thinking in the US education system - something that I don't think was always the case?
Regardless thank you for writing such an honest and informative piece (and also for giving a refresher on Sudan).
I saw a few articles about Sudan on CNN today, it is getting into headlines.
It’s getting into headlines for racial massacres and now slavery, but not being ignored.
Oh and this article which I am sure you saw in the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/07/opinion/ukraine-russia-war.html
My own instincts were: horrible things are going on in Gaza however you look at it, but claims of genocide just aren't supportable.
I thought I'd at least try to understand the opposing view, so I took a look at a properly put together legal challenge by the US CCR here: https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2023/11/Complaint_DCI-Pal-v-Biden_w.pdf
Revised view: it would be much easier to dismiss these claims if it weren't for the stupid and outrageous things that Netenyahu, his cabinet and officials say. See paras 10 and following in the pdf. As Nicholas Fry posted, intent is important.
I still don't think it establishes a serious case, but it does reinforce what an absolute disaster the Netenyahu government is for everyone. They can't go soon enough.
The fact that he was returned power just boggles the mind. Thanks for the additional information.
I don’t think the current combat operations could effect a genocide, but cutting off food and water for long enough could.
Genocide is partly a matter of intent. Also there is this curious notion that slaughtering people face to face is somehow worse than disintegrating them from a distance with high explosive. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/10/israel-dahiya-doctrine-disproportionate-strategy-military-gaza-idf/
Yes - this is the distinction that I am unsure about.
There are further reasons why there is a protest movement against Israel in the West.
First, Israel is supported openly and directly by the western powers. The protesters feel that the blood of the Palestinians is on western hands too - that's one way that this is different from what happens in Sudan.
Second, Israel is considered a creation of western imperialism and neocolonialism, and one of the axioms of today's left is that all that should be reversed as much as possible. This is consistent with the first point.
It is also worth remarking on the relation between the internal politics of the West, and the politics of the rest of the world. In American terms, the two big alternatives to liberal centrism are Trump and Woke.
Claire has argued that there is a global phenomenon of "New Caesars" and that Trump is one of these. Autocrats outside the West would find it very agreeable if the West too wsa governed in that way.
On the other hand, Woke is usually viewed as a western creation and western export, and even something used to destabilize the rest of the world. But, there is one element of Woke that fits a global trend, and that is anti-imperialism, end of global white supremacy, and continuing the anti-colonial revolution by rejecting western tutelage in political, economic, and cultural matters.
I don't buy the idea that the outrage is owed to Israel being supported by the West. If that were the case, we'd see protests against this: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/10/syrian-kurds-accuse-turkey-war-crimes-erdogan-vows-escalation. I can't find *any* reporting of the past week's air strikes in English: I'm getting the news from Turkish and Kurdish sources. But they've clearly been obliterating the place.
Insofar as there is still awareness of "Turkey versus the Kurds" on the western left, they are likely to view the Syrian Kurds as the forces supported by the West, and Erdogan as the independent nationalist. It's not like Erdogan is doing this with NATO approval.
In any case, the awareness of "Israel versus the Palestinians" on the western left is obviously an order of magnitude greater. Partly this is about following the priorities of the Arab and Muslim worlds. There's almost no criticism of Turkey, and almost unanimous criticism of Israel. Partly it's because Israel and the West are seen as fatefully entangled in so many ways. Israel as seen as a creation and extension of the West, in ways that Turkey is not.
Somehow "Western" media generally became distracted roughly a year ago, following the publication of comments such as the following in The Washington Post, matched contemporaneously in The New York Times: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/23/turkey-attack-kurds-northern-syria/ Even early this month I recall few comments about the lack of a meeting with Erdogan when Blinken stopped in Turkey on his rather whirlwind visit.
I think there is a sense that since the West (the US, but the rest of us by default) funds Israel it’s complicit in a way that it isn’t with Sudan.
And Turkey?
Interesting question. Would you say that Turkey is as much a part of the West as Israel is in popular perception and in fact? (I know they’re both in Eurovision, but still.) Would that explain the different levels of interest in who they are and what they do? And also less interest when there are terrorist atrocities in Turkey, ie in Turkish deaths? My priors on this is I’m from India, so the Western complicity outrage makes sense to me. Perhaps I project?
In perception? I'm not sure: Israel does not seem to me part of the West in perception. Imagine the reaction if ISIS had paraglided into Burning Man and raped, tortured, mutilated, and murdered 1200 rave-goers, killing babies in front of their parents and vice-versa, then spiriting 200 Americans off to Syria. Do you think anyone would protest if in response a Western coalition bombed, say, Mosul to the ground? (We know the answer: The actual leveling of Mosul, in response to far less of a provocation, at least as far as attacks on Westerners is concerned, elicited not a word of protest: https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-only-on-ap-islamic-state-group-bbea7094fb954838a2fdc11278d65460) Turkey was, I think, seen as part of the West before the AKP. I'm not sure if it is now. But it certainly should be, seeing as it's part of NATO--the Turkish military has historically received even more support from the West than Israel.
In the Muslim and Arab world, Israel is indeed seen as a foreign, colonial implant. But why would it be seen this way in the West? Jews have not, historically, been seen as full-fledged Westerners, and part of the impetus to the support for Zionism in the West was a sense that Jews should go back where they belonged, namely, to the Middle East.
I'm genuinely perplexed by the attitudes and beliefs toward Israel we're seeing displayed in Western capitals right now. I have no idea how Arab-nationalist and Muslim-supremicist discourse (itself spoon-fed to that cohort by the USSR) has so completely conquered the Western left. It should be anathema to them by all conceivable ideological logic.
Perhaps I shouldn't discount the effect of the demise of the Israeli left. Was the Western left more sympathetic to Israel when the Labour Party and other movements of various socialist stripes were more prominent? Certainly Netanyahu did Israel no favors by attaching himself to the most reactionary elements of the American right. But I don't sense that Israeli internal politics are all that interesting to most of these protesters, because most of them seem to believe that Israel itself, within any borders, is an illegitimate entity.
> Jews have not, historically, been seen as full-fledged Westerners
I don't know about fifty years ago, but mainstream western conservatives very clearly consider Israel part of the West at this point. It's been that way at least since 9/11, and developed in proportion to the sense that Islam is not western.
Yes, there's a lot of philosemitic sentiment on the American right. It emerges from two currents, though, neither of which are really about viewing Israel as Western, per se. The first is Christian Zionism, which in many forms imagines that the ingathering of the Jews in Israel will play a key role in ushering in the Apocalypse. All the Jews die in this scenario, so it's hard to say that affection for Israel grounded in this premise is really about seeing Israel as "Westerners," per se. But yes, it results in great friendliness toward Israel, for which Israelis tend to be grateful. (They don't have enough friends that they can afford to look a gift horse in the mouth.) Personally, it leaves me a bit weirded out: I see this kind of philosemitism as a mirror image of antisemitism. While obviously it's not as dangerous--give me a philosemite over an antisemite every day--it still reinforces the idea that Jews are completely apart from the rest of humanity, an entirely different breed, in possession of special powers, etc. It's a species of what my friend Adam Garfinkle calls "Jewcentriciity."
The second reason--and this dates to the Six Day War, well before 9/11--is that Israel is seen to be a military and intelligence superpower (a reputation that took a severe hit on October 7). The US attitude toward Israel changed completely after that war: Israel went from being a liability (because American ties with it compromised its relationships in the Arab world) to an asset. Conservatives tend to be more security-minded than liberals--or they used to be, at least, now the people in the US who call themselves "conservatives" are, growingly, isolationists--so a country that was seen as a security asset held more appeal to them than it did liberals. Again, I don't think this was about Israel being "part of the West," it was about the same old ideas, which Israel was very happy to encourage: "Those Jews are exceptionally clever, unusually cunning, they have unique gifts for intelligence work (sort of a repackaging of, "Jews secretly control everything," right?)"
I just don't think very many people, on the right or the left, see Israel as "just another Western country, like Portugal or Canada." If I were in charge of Israeli public diplomacy, I'd run a campaign called, "a normal country." The only healthy attitude toward Israel, in my view, is that it's just a country--one that has lots of problems, like most countries, but also lots of nice people, and really doesn't warrant all this attention.
Re Burning Man - there is no widespread perception in the US that America created and empowered ISIS to achieve political ends. There is that perception to some extent Wrt Israel and Hamas. Is that the difference?
Well, it's a standard narrative that our intervention in Iraq created ISIS. (And in many parts of the Middle East, people believe we did it deliberately to achieve political ends.) I don't think that's the difference, Zaf--I think the difference is mostly about people's attitudes toward Jews. For ordinary people, perhaps, less so: As I argue, they're responding to what they see in the media and particularly social media (which is right to saturated in massive, state-sponsored disinformation). But among the elites who form these opinions and the states that promulgate these tropes and themes, it's chiefly about Jews, and for countries like Russia and China, it's also about Americans, because Israel is a US ally.
Opinions in the West vary. I still hang at Ricochet, and Israel is very much seen as the West, a villa in the jungle, etc. (The Palestinians? Don’t ask.) Perhaps a function of the demographic?
I saw a Pew (?) report about age and ethnicity in the US. The median age in the country was 27, but the median age of white people was over 50. So when polls find that support for Palestinians is higher in younger cohorts than older my instinct is that the ethnic balance is part of the reason. What was obviously the case is no longer so obvious.
They are also the cohorts most influenced by social media - for good and for ill.
So would the Western left say support Kaliningrad being returned to Germany and if not why not?
There is no significant irredentist movement within Germany itself, and the USSR acquired East Prussia in the course of defeating fascism, so it's not going to be viewed as a historical wrong. The priority for the European left right now, would be how to demilitarize the Baltic region and turn it into a zone of peace.
Keeping up with all that is going on everywhere in the world takes a lot of time. Many people's ignorance is a result of them choosing to spend their time on things other than reading and learning. Having been self-employed most of my working life has allowed me some control of my time and now in retirement I've had even more time to read. For 15 years my work had me on airplanes where I read a lot. Most people have most of their time absorbed by work and family. When they have free time, they often spend it on mindless entertainment.
Hence, a population ignorant about most world events and not motivated to learn.
Then there are the young who appear to believe all the knowledge required to function in this world can be absorbed from 30 second videos. That may be the thing most concerning.
Democracy is indeed a fragile thing. When it comes in contact with human nature, it is, given enough time, doomed to fail, The USA is the first republic of its kind. It is an experiment that will determine if a republic so structured can be a form a government that will endure in spite of an ignorant and ill-informed citizenry. Human nature is a formidable obstacle in the establishment of successful self-government. The verdict on the long-term success of our republic is still out.
Ken, this is a recurring theme I have noticed in conversations with many people in the last couple of years: the inability to read long form articles or even long-ish articles. Things need to be, as you pointed out, in a 30 second video format or not interested. I actually prefer to read than watch videos. And your right - mindless entertainment is an easier choice for many people. The problem it's leading to even more dumbing down not to mention a dramatic increase in mass consumerism particularly since the addition of social media. Not sure how any of this can be changed? On one hand people's lives can be so busy with work and parenting . . .but on the other hand it feels like people are taking the easier way out more often than not. I certainly don't begrudge them that, but having it be the default means less awareness about the world - I just think it's so important to have interested in what's going on outside your own sphere.
Lots of interesting themes here, thankyou. Two non-lit-crit thoughts:
1. "Most of our citizens aren’t sufficiently well-informed to vote. They don’t know enough about anything to choose good leaders..." Then again, *voting* in a democracy mostly isn't about chosing leaders. It's about peacefully removing failing administrations. (Binary binding referenda are a truly terrible idea in part for this reason - luckily no recent examples here to point at...). Popular suffrage, "wisdom of crowds" etc is an *alternative* to individual expertise, not a product which depends on it. So I'm much more bothered by the people who think it's OK to violently hijack the peaceful transfer of power than those who don't understand the law of comparative advantage or how a syphon works.
2. How do we measure the prevalance of stupidity? A side-effect of the internet and social media is dramatically more access to content of all kinds - including what would have been private and local expressions of dullitude. Call it thickness-as-a-service, pick any misunderstanding of any given topic and I'll probably be able to find someone proudly expressing it (in a nice hat) on Youtube (in English at least, German costs more). This definitely shows we're more distractable - and I saw distraction was part of the Doom thesis - but I don't know if it shows more underlying stupidity, just fewer inhibitions.
Winston Churchill wrote a book called “The River War” about the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan in 1896-99, part of which he was present for. It still feels relevant.
Churchill’s book has been widely criticized for being bigoted. Churchill has been excoriated for being anti-Muslim. Obama removed a bust of Churchill from the Oval Office. Trump restored it. Biden removed it again. See,
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/01/21/politics/winston-churchill-bust-oval-office/index.html
Quite possibly bigoted, but for those who read the book he was if anything rather more sympathetic to the Sudanese than might be expected. He seemed to feel that the Mahdi’s revolt against the Egyptian government was a quite natural and reasonable thing for the people to do, and didn’t indulge too much in polemics against the brutality of their campaign. To find this attitude in a wealthy scion from an imperial capital visiting the backwards province of a backwards empire is a little surprising.
As for his views on Islam, I’ve heard worse said about my own religion and culture without losing my head and without demanding those who held those beliefs have their memories dishonored.
I haven't finished reading this yet, because I vanished down a carefully curated rabbit-hole in the middle that ended in... "Oxford on Acid?!"
But yes, I hear people like newsletters.