The USA's current condition of extreme political polarization and divided government does not bode well for the implementation of "intelligent long-range policies" for the immediate future. I've never been more pessimistic, or more disgusted, in my life.
Aug 25, 2022·edited Aug 25, 2022Liked by Claire Berlinski
I know I must seem like an irredeemable fanboy, Claire, but I just want to thank you again for such lucid and insightful writing. One simply can't find analysis like this anywhere else.
Will this interview be uploaded to the Cosmopolicast podcast feed? And Monique, will the Kremlin File podcast mentioned last week in your Eurofile newsletter be released to Kremlin File subscribers? I haven’t seen any updates on Olga Lautman’s Substack or podcast feed in almost two months.
I bump into the narrative that post-Soviet Russia is "pleasingly “conservative” and a natural ally against China and gay parades" with alarming regularity. There is no doubt in my mind that a portion of anti-LGBT rage on social media is produced by Kremlin agents for their usual reasons for mischief. The signal to noise ratio is unbearable.
Scary and thoughtful article - a strong but chilling combination. It's always seemed odd to me that the Soviet Union (and the PRC, for that matter) were so often characterised primarily as "Communist", when even a cursory reading of history suggests that communism was only ever a part of the puzzle. And here we are - China is a brutal and repressive totalitarian state, and still nominally communist. Russia is still a brutal and repressive totalitarian state, and no longer communist. I guess we're always building models to try and understand and explain the world, but the "communism is the only problem" model turns out to have been particularly misleading and dangerous.
There are a lot of ways that this could all go from here, but few of them look very appetising. I'm afraid that whatever happens, a lot of lives will be lost and a lot of misery endured - mostly by people with little or no say in it.
The USA's current condition of extreme political polarization and divided government does not bode well for the implementation of "intelligent long-range policies" for the immediate future. I've never been more pessimistic, or more disgusted, in my life.
I know I must seem like an irredeemable fanboy, Claire, but I just want to thank you again for such lucid and insightful writing. One simply can't find analysis like this anywhere else.
Will this interview be uploaded to the Cosmopolicast podcast feed? And Monique, will the Kremlin File podcast mentioned last week in your Eurofile newsletter be released to Kremlin File subscribers? I haven’t seen any updates on Olga Lautman’s Substack or podcast feed in almost two months.
I bump into the narrative that post-Soviet Russia is "pleasingly “conservative” and a natural ally against China and gay parades" with alarming regularity. There is no doubt in my mind that a portion of anti-LGBT rage on social media is produced by Kremlin agents for their usual reasons for mischief. The signal to noise ratio is unbearable.
Scary and thoughtful article - a strong but chilling combination. It's always seemed odd to me that the Soviet Union (and the PRC, for that matter) were so often characterised primarily as "Communist", when even a cursory reading of history suggests that communism was only ever a part of the puzzle. And here we are - China is a brutal and repressive totalitarian state, and still nominally communist. Russia is still a brutal and repressive totalitarian state, and no longer communist. I guess we're always building models to try and understand and explain the world, but the "communism is the only problem" model turns out to have been particularly misleading and dangerous.
There are a lot of ways that this could all go from here, but few of them look very appetising. I'm afraid that whatever happens, a lot of lives will be lost and a lot of misery endured - mostly by people with little or no say in it.