unraveling.................

 

     Our unraveling continues, even accelerates.  Political institutions and geopolitical norms are fracturing.  Far-right and nationalist movements are ascendant.  Democracies around the world look vulnerable; the sturdy-seeming institutional bulwarks that loomed solemnly around them now sag under pressure like rotten wood.  There is no more staggering an indicator of the profound misoperation of American society that its decision in 2024 to return Donald Trump to the office of the presidency.  It is madness to have put him there, and is our madness that keeps us from perceiving—collectively—the absurdity and destructiveness of our choice.   But the world as a whole is sheathed in confusion.  In all likelihood, the postwar era of liberal hegemony is ending, and it is honestly difficult to say why.  In America and around the world, we look at each other bewildered, unable to comprehend the reality that others perceive or to fathom their motivations.

-Ryan Avent, In Good Faith: How the Nature of Belief Shapes the Fate of Societies

Somewhere on my journeys through the Intertunnel I found a recommendation for this book, so I bought it.  Enjoyed the first three pages, then came to the above paragraph.  All I can say is that Avent needs to get out more.   A few stray thoughts:  first, one of the problems with our elections is that the choice is binary.  Donald Trump or Kamala Harris was our choice in 2024.  Reasonable people may disagree, but it was certainly not madness, or far-right, to prefer Trump over Harris.  A majority of the country made that choice.  Second, Avent finds it difficult to understand why the "postwar era of liberal hegemony is ending".  Maybe, in good faith, he should take a closer look at the quality and character of those people passing as "elites" in government, media, and in our world-at-large these days.  Open your eyes, Ryan.  Anyway, if the quality of thinking does not improve, I will not be finishing this book.