With regard to Ukraine, it's amazing how much the post-left wields the rhetoric of reaction so astutely identified by Albert Hirschman. It's not so much left-wing as it is simply deeply pessimistic and defeatist.
Moyn’s argument seems like a kind of teleology by selective contextualization. He arbitrarily assigns motive to the western coalition supporting Ukraine (“defend our flawed democracies as they are”) then selectively contextualizes it as yet another instance of Cold War liberal hypocrisies (as opposed to something probably more apt, like a popular front against imperialist aggression) to make his case. But he’s rigged the game from the start by working backward from possible outcome (defending flawed democracies) to manufacturing prior motive and purpose.
Of course there’s nothing new in any of this. As long as there has been authoritarian aggression, there have been big picture system thinkers who come up with clever reasons to dismiss or minimize the aggression as tangential to the “real” system-level struggle. Fortunately, they are outnumbered by people who do take immediate problems of existential aggression seriously. Endless and superfluous reminders of western hypocrisy and neoliberal failures does not constitute a moral position on the justness of a war of self-defence - at best it’s just a banal and obvious analytical exercise, and at worst it’s just a mirror image of the sanctimonious grandstanding that Moyn is denouncing. Either way, it’s a pretty sure bet that the Ukrainians are utterly indifferent to it.
Dead right, John. The pattern of war quashing progressive domestic policy begins with the quashing of the historical Progressives in WW1, or even with the Populists in 1898.
I don't think it's Twitter per se that's to blame. I think there's more demand for pieces written the way Moyn's is because they demand less of the reader.
I think Moyn speaks eloquently for a portion of the left for whom owning the libs is nearly as much a motivation as it is for the right. Not horseshoe theory. More, I think, like just, "man, boomers are so annoying."
Sounds like someone courting criticism with contrarian views, so that they can later claim to be a martyr to cancellation. "I'm so persecuted and oppressed!" says the Henry Luce Professor at Yale.
I'm afraid Moyn sounds to me like someone who feels very sure that he will be fine, and that—likely unconsciously—is for him dispositive.
—and perhaps has such faith in American people and institutions and saner eminences that he is sure that we and such 'could never let it come to that'. Not to trigger the Godwin Alarms, but I think I've heard that one before….
With regard to Ukraine, it's amazing how much the post-left wields the rhetoric of reaction so astutely identified by Albert Hirschman. It's not so much left-wing as it is simply deeply pessimistic and defeatist.
Moyn’s argument seems like a kind of teleology by selective contextualization. He arbitrarily assigns motive to the western coalition supporting Ukraine (“defend our flawed democracies as they are”) then selectively contextualizes it as yet another instance of Cold War liberal hypocrisies (as opposed to something probably more apt, like a popular front against imperialist aggression) to make his case. But he’s rigged the game from the start by working backward from possible outcome (defending flawed democracies) to manufacturing prior motive and purpose.
Of course there’s nothing new in any of this. As long as there has been authoritarian aggression, there have been big picture system thinkers who come up with clever reasons to dismiss or minimize the aggression as tangential to the “real” system-level struggle. Fortunately, they are outnumbered by people who do take immediate problems of existential aggression seriously. Endless and superfluous reminders of western hypocrisy and neoliberal failures does not constitute a moral position on the justness of a war of self-defence - at best it’s just a banal and obvious analytical exercise, and at worst it’s just a mirror image of the sanctimonious grandstanding that Moyn is denouncing. Either way, it’s a pretty sure bet that the Ukrainians are utterly indifferent to it.
Dead right, John. The pattern of war quashing progressive domestic policy begins with the quashing of the historical Progressives in WW1, or even with the Populists in 1898.
I don't think it's Twitter per se that's to blame. I think there's more demand for pieces written the way Moyn's is because they demand less of the reader.
I think Moyn speaks eloquently for a portion of the left for whom owning the libs is nearly as much a motivation as it is for the right. Not horseshoe theory. More, I think, like just, "man, boomers are so annoying."
"So what’s really the point being made here?"
Sounds like someone courting criticism with contrarian views, so that they can later claim to be a martyr to cancellation. "I'm so persecuted and oppressed!" says the Henry Luce Professor at Yale.
I'm afraid Moyn sounds to me like someone who feels very sure that he will be fine, and that—likely unconsciously—is for him dispositive.
—and perhaps has such faith in American people and institutions and saner eminences that he is sure that we and such 'could never let it come to that'. Not to trigger the Godwin Alarms, but I think I've heard that one before….
Well, I can not deny a frisson of pleasure at the theoretical prospect of finally getting to yell 'Go back to Russia!' at a bunch of reactionaries.