I think progressives should be optimistic. Why not. people like optimists. progression means things are getting better.
Not following Burke's position that Leftists who were against the CIA's shenanigans now somehow have no standing to complain about the Iraq war and torture. I am optimistic. We can end stupid wars and stupid CIA interventions alike.
I liked the article, and noticed some of the traps that he explicitly calls out having weakened arguments and calls for action.
It's nicely written, and your excerpts here do a good job of summarizing key elements, but encouraging us to go read the article. (Other than, of course, the traditional practice of never reading linked articles.)
Things have always been precisely this bad.
4: That this is the worst of all possible worlds means there is nowhere to go but up.
Last quoted paragraph:"We can't keep saying..."
The hell I can't! Who in hell do you think I am?
5: You're right -- Burke definitely did not take you into consideration when he wrote this article.
Aw shucks, I'm just a guy like other guys
"Ore wo dare da to omotte yagaru" is a catchphrase in Gurren Lagaan and an existential refutation in Katanagatari.
The first has to do with acting now to make the impossible dream a reality despite the overwhelming odds.
The second is essentially you killed my friend, offering me Asia to save your life is a mortal insult. And something more.
Stop and smell the roses when you are old and arthritic.
Always been something about that Burke fella...
I liked the Burke post, and reading it led me to his Harry Potter posts, which are also good. I don't care about Harry Potter at all, but I have been reading a lot of African history/archaeology lately and it's fascinating stuff.
10: Anything in particular you recommend?
King Solomon's Mines is good, and realistic.
It's a good post. I feel like Tim Burke and Adam Kostko have been debating things since blogs were invented, or at least since Burke had a blog without an RSS feed.
11: Not really. Most of the stuff I've been reading is very narrow and technical. There are several popular histories of Africa, but I haven't read any of them. The extremely prolific archaeological popularizer Brian Fagan actually started out as an Africanist, but I don't know of any popular books he's done on Africa specifically. (I'm sure there must be some; he's written tons of books, not all of them good.)
Good article. It's very difficult to resist the powers that be without being able to articulate an alternative. Unless you can do that you're essentially playing whack-a-mole, only it's not moles, it's tyrannosaurs with nukes.
What Burke correctly identifies, although he avoids calling it by its right name, is the counsel of despair. Malki is more explicit. But unless you can firstly describe an alternative that you would prefer, and secondly propose a course of action which, if it doesn't lead from Here to There, at least leads from Here to a point from which There might be more accessible, you are not, as an intellectual, helping.
But this is hard and people have jobs and rent to make and children to feed and clothe, which is the part that I think Burke and Kotsko both miss out in this argument. The contribution of individuals to the process is likely to be very small, but when such a contribution is offered it behoves the rest of us not to be crabs in the bucket.
But this is hard and people have jobs and rent to make and children to feed and clothe, which is the part that I think Burke and Kotsko both miss out in this argument. The contribution of individuals to the process is likely to be very small, but when such a contribution is offered it behoves the rest of us not to be crabs in the bucket.
Thank you for putting this so clearly! I do feel sad at times that I don't have the energy to allocate to doing more politically, partly out of despair and partly exhaustion and partly regular selfishness. I've always told myself that doing a little bit of something at the margins helps and it probably does or at least doesn't hurt.
It's an excellent point. I do think it's become less pervasive in the last few years. The Jacobin usually steers clear of it.
"Not following Burke's position that Leftists who were against the CIA's shenanigans now somehow have no standing to complain about the Iraq war and torture."
He said nothing of the sort.
Thank you for putting this so clearly! I do feel sad at times that I don't have the energy to allocate to doing more politically, partly out of despair and partly exhaustion and partly regular selfishness. I've always told myself that doing a little bit of something at the margins helps and it probably does or at least doesn't hurt.
I agree. Part of why the article grabbed me is that, speaking for myself, temperamentally I tend towards being passive, and for me hearing people tell me that the sky is falling doesn't make me more inclined to act, it makes me more inclined to sit back, observe, and try to figure out which portions of the sky look more stable and go stand over there.
I'm joking somewhat but I definitely react more positively to, "here is a thing you can do which will be helpful" whereas, "here is a giant problem" may engage me intellectually, but it's also exhausting.
I don't think that's a good reading of Burke's essay -- it turns it into a cliche. I think about the bit at the end of An Inconvenient Truth about things that people can do ("change your lightbulbs") which seem completely inadequate to the scale of the problem and which are included just as a way to pander to the reaction that I'm talking about.
But, if that's the psychological reason, I think it is useful to ask, as Burke does, what the habits of argumentation that open or close off the possibility space. How do we both look at the big picture and have reason to be interested/care about delving into the details and being open to surprises.
Incidentally, the story behind the title of the post is that when I was thinking about phrases to summarize the subject of Burke's argument I thought of, "where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?" But then I thought that Burke would argue against the assumption that we're in a handbasket, and so I needed to change it.
I like gradualism. Sudden comes with death.
Why not view political action--voting, GOTV efforts, organizing, protesting, contributing $--as intrinsically Sisyphean? It's absurd but satisfying. It might not have much of an effect, and maybe not one you'll be able to detect in your own life at all, but you should still do it.
Why? Common decency; political or moral duty; utilitarian considerations of The Many or The Future; expression of personal virtue; fidelity to one's politically active ancestors; spite for the other side; bragging rights; fun; Deus vult. There are no bad reasons for doing good things.
There's an optimistic flip-side of "things are terrible, and have always been terrible" which is: Things have been this bad before, and we came out of it OK. Not perfect, could be better, but the country did not descend into anarchy, and life mostly continued. We do not live in uniquely terrible times, and we will get through the hard part of our own times just like our predecessors got through the hard parts of their times.
For me, a reminder that many of Goldwater's supporters were just as crazy as today's Trump supporters (Birchers, anyone?) helps keeps me from despair that so many Americans are voting for Trump at the moment. Our country has always had politically popular racist conspiracy mongers, but the nation has always survived them. This time will be OK too.