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So a summary of this essay: 1. Donald Trumps presidency in no way justifies the claim that the United States is drifting towards fascism 2. BLM protests have

So a summary of this essay: 1. Donald Trumps presidency in no way justifies the claim that the United States is drifting towards fascism 2. BLM protests have stopped happening so this is probably not so much of an issue now. 3. The US and EU economies grew with a small drop in emissions so global warming will be fixed. Have these been adjusted for the fact that a lot of the activities that support a first world lifestyle have emissions outside of it ? It’s difficult to take any of these claims seriously. The idea of social mobility is now dead for most Americans , the citizens of the richest country to ever exist. People are putting off getting married or having children as a result. Life expectancy for white men in rural areas has been decreasing for the first time ever. Half the country no longer trusts the election results or vaccines.Unless emissions drop to zero by 2050 we are looking at 4 degrees of warming by 2100. Even This relies on the invention of as yet unknown carbon capture technology. Large parts of the earth will become uninhabitable this century barring some insane technological breakthroughs and feats of international cooperation (given we can’t even give poor countries vaccines) and even if that were fixed social mobility is declining in much of the rich world. This sounds like something written by someone ensconced in a nice little bubble of privilege.

zzzeek 5y ago
If it helps the inevitable greying of your post on HN, I mostly agree with your assessment of this article. The argument and particularly graphics showing how GWB was compared to nazism were trying to make a comparison that I feel is not apt at all, I protested the GWB iraq war and I remember the comparisons made of GWB's presidency to facism. My personal experience is that era, while scary for what the future held, was nothing like what the Trump presidency was and what in many ways continues to be as we are no way out of the woods on this one yet. Not the least of which was the quite widespread semi-concerted effort by both non-elected and elected members of local, state, and national government to overturn the actual election, culminating in an attempted violent overthrow of the government. There was not a word of that in this article's attempt to compare today to the GWOT era. I follow Yglesias because I think he is interesting and he doesn't infuriate me the way a complete troll like Taibbi would and I do appreciate his cold, tactical look at politics. But his brand really seems to be that "hey this is OK, we can relax and this is just the same old same old", and as you mention, if you are living in a bubble of privilege, you can totally go with that and have a nice day. The kind of argument that works just great until the moment a few states decide to nullify the 2024 electoral college results, the house that was lost in 2022 due to gerrymandering goes along with it gleefully, and then that argument kind of didn't work at all. But until then, it's a super appealing message to those whose lifestyle can accommodate for it, he is trying to build up his new blog and his new name as a totally independent writer, and it's pretty interesting that he's on the front page of HN of all places.
- noahtallen 5y ago
  > hey this is OK, we can relax and this is just the same old same old Another important point is that the “same old same old” wasn’t actually that good for plenty of people. The point of understanding history like the world wars is to understand the ideas that led to them and hopefully learn a few lessons. Well, extreme economic distress along with xenophobic nationalist rhetoric led to the rise of Nazism. It’s hard to avoid comparisons when similar rhetoric gets used in the modern day. It led to wars in the past, so it is hugely fair to at least be cautious about it today. While climate change is a new one, if we indeed can’t reverse the effects (even if we keep it stable from now on), we’d still be looking at big changes wrt food and water sources. It’s completely fair to be concerned that could lead to resource scarcity. We know from history that when that happens, you get total revolution (see France and Russia). So if that’s a possible outcome, it’s fair to think “ok, how do we avoid that?” Sure, scaremongering is wrong, and media does it all the time by over-emphasizing the amount of murders compared to, say, the amount of cancer cases. But there are still loads of things that should hopefully make us concerned for our future and try to do better in the present.

zzzeek 5y ago

If it helps the inevitable greying of your post on HN, I mostly agree with your assessment of this article. The argument and particularly graphics showing how GWB was compared to nazism were trying to make a comparison that I feel is not apt at all, I protested the GWB iraq war and I remember the comparisons made of GWB's presidency to facism. My personal experience is that era, while scary for what the future held, was nothing like what the Trump presidency was and what in many ways continues to be as we are no way out of the woods on this one yet. Not the least of which was the quite widespread semi-concerted effort by both non-elected and elected members of local, state, and national government to overturn the actual election, culminating in an attempted violent overthrow of the government. There was not a word of that in this article's attempt to compare today to the GWOT era. I follow Yglesias because I think he is interesting and he doesn't infuriate me the way a complete troll like Taibbi would and I do appreciate his cold, tactical look at politics. But his brand really seems to be that "hey this is OK, we can relax and this is just the same old same old", and as you mention, if you are living in a bubble of privilege, you can totally go with that and have a nice day. The kind of argument that works just great until the moment a few states decide to nullify the 2024 electoral college results, the house that was lost in 2022 due to gerrymandering goes along with it gleefully, and then that argument kind of didn't work at all. But until then, it's a super appealing message to those whose lifestyle can accommodate for it, he is trying to build up his new blog and his new name as a totally independent writer, and it's pretty interesting that he's on the front page of HN of all places.

noahtallen 5y ago
> hey this is OK, we can relax and this is just the same old same old Another important point is that the “same old same old” wasn’t actually that good for plenty of people. The point of understanding history like the world wars is to understand the ideas that led to them and hopefully learn a few lessons. Well, extreme economic distress along with xenophobic nationalist rhetoric led to the rise of Nazism. It’s hard to avoid comparisons when similar rhetoric gets used in the modern day. It led to wars in the past, so it is hugely fair to at least be cautious about it today. While climate change is a new one, if we indeed can’t reverse the effects (even if we keep it stable from now on), we’d still be looking at big changes wrt food and water sources. It’s completely fair to be concerned that could lead to resource scarcity. We know from history that when that happens, you get total revolution (see France and Russia). So if that’s a possible outcome, it’s fair to think “ok, how do we avoid that?” Sure, scaremongering is wrong, and media does it all the time by over-emphasizing the amount of murders compared to, say, the amount of cancer cases. But there are still loads of things that should hopefully make us concerned for our future and try to do better in the present.