I Iike captain Picard's saying: "You can do everything right and still lose."
We all have one giant blindspot that is almost unavoidable: we believe we are the good guys, we know what is right and good, and we can predict the future.
None of these statements are objectively true. We have a perspective, an opinion, and a side.
It just so happens to be that there will always be plenty of people who will have the exact opposite opinion and perspective than us.
They will also have a competing interest and the win of your side will be a loss for theirs and vice versa.
To your point, historically speaking we, the winners, now judge the past as good or bad. In the moment, we tend to do the best we know but cannot know where that path will lead.
For example:
Trump seems bad for about half the population, while the other half is relieved beyond measure that he won. Whether the end result will indeed be be negative or positive will depend on the observer making that judgements and for historians to look back at.
Germans wanted a return of prosperity and dignity. They voted out of desperation amid impossible living conditions. Hitler promised them a better life, and gave them an imaginary enemy that is the cause of all their problems. As all politicians do. It turned out to be a horrible turn of events but they didn't know that before hand. They just wanted a better life.
The same is true for all communist, socialist, religious... ideologies. They sound good to those who believe they are being exploited and share those values and ides.
Equality for all, take from the rich and give to the poor, do as the Lord commands, etc. - what could possibly go wrong?
Plenty, it turns out.
Evil, good, bad, right and wrong tend to be judged in the aftermath. The intentions, believe it or not, are usually good in most cases from that specific perspective.
The communist and capitalist, poor and rich, religious and on-religious (or differently religious), left and right,... Can never see things the same way.
Sometimes one side wins, another the other. And the pandelum, well its swings from one side to the other into infinity.
I enjoyed reading your article and only wanted to share a different perspective. Sorry for the long comment. Have a good one!
The enemies pointed out to the German people by Hitler were not imaginary. Inevitably, in pursuing said enemies, he trampled a great number of good, innocent people.
Pursuing enemies tends to be like that. His (victorious) opponents did, too - in spades. As they continue to do today.
I think you are committing a pretty obvious category error in comparing your expectations for Trump 2.0 against the known facts of the Iran-Iraq war.
You might think the "elite" perspective is miscalibrated, but it's hardly baseless. In the first 60 days of his second term, Trump has cut off vital support to Ukranians (and announced the fact to their enemies), launched air strikes into Yemen, ended the distribution of lifesaving medicine in several countries, and deported people without due process. Not to mention the current EPA and Education rollbacks, and promised cuts to Medicaid. Ill effects on the order of half a million deaths seem pretty conceivable.
I think you're underestimating these problems. Considered as individual incidents, the badness of these results is (at least for now) lower than other bad things. However, America has long stood as an example of the value of freedom and autonomy. Trump's victory risks deeply undermining those values. Even the acts libertarians might have wished for are being carried out in ways that are fundamentally incompatible with American values.
The overall effect of tarnishing, or worse, destroying those values is possibly the greatest threat to human progress in history. American democracy is far from ideal, but it's also vastly better than the mindset opposing it throughout the world.
Brexit and Trump are indicative of a disease that threatens to destroy the basis of the advantages of the past 150 years. The fact that the cancer doesn't yet manifest in symptoms worse than other illnesses isn't comforting when it's ready to metastasice and kill what has created modern progress.
A larger conversation (a better meme) needs to take hold regarding the gambit Bryan touches on here: To be “on the right side of history” verses placing bets without any skin in the game. Countless politicians and bad employees spin a story about what they’ve worked on over the past comparable period to match the current outcome.
Maybe Trump and Brexit weren't wrong? In History, hindsight is always 20/20 and one should look at the big picture instead of what is considered the final outcome.
And that the mass immigration into the UK which the vast majority of "Leave" supporters desperately wanted to see severely curtailed in fact, post-Brexit, continued unabated then vastly increased under both Labour and Tory governments. So in the end, none of the Brits got what they wanted, or expected.
Read your history. Taxation has nothing to do with family formation. Cultural pride, willingness to sacrifice in the present for future rewards, and a firm foundation of common national purpose, language, and values do.
I Iike captain Picard's saying: "You can do everything right and still lose."
We all have one giant blindspot that is almost unavoidable: we believe we are the good guys, we know what is right and good, and we can predict the future.
None of these statements are objectively true. We have a perspective, an opinion, and a side.
It just so happens to be that there will always be plenty of people who will have the exact opposite opinion and perspective than us.
They will also have a competing interest and the win of your side will be a loss for theirs and vice versa.
To your point, historically speaking we, the winners, now judge the past as good or bad. In the moment, we tend to do the best we know but cannot know where that path will lead.
For example:
Trump seems bad for about half the population, while the other half is relieved beyond measure that he won. Whether the end result will indeed be be negative or positive will depend on the observer making that judgements and for historians to look back at.
Germans wanted a return of prosperity and dignity. They voted out of desperation amid impossible living conditions. Hitler promised them a better life, and gave them an imaginary enemy that is the cause of all their problems. As all politicians do. It turned out to be a horrible turn of events but they didn't know that before hand. They just wanted a better life.
The same is true for all communist, socialist, religious... ideologies. They sound good to those who believe they are being exploited and share those values and ides.
Equality for all, take from the rich and give to the poor, do as the Lord commands, etc. - what could possibly go wrong?
Plenty, it turns out.
Evil, good, bad, right and wrong tend to be judged in the aftermath. The intentions, believe it or not, are usually good in most cases from that specific perspective.
The communist and capitalist, poor and rich, religious and on-religious (or differently religious), left and right,... Can never see things the same way.
Sometimes one side wins, another the other. And the pandelum, well its swings from one side to the other into infinity.
I enjoyed reading your article and only wanted to share a different perspective. Sorry for the long comment. Have a good one!
The enemies pointed out to the German people by Hitler were not imaginary. Inevitably, in pursuing said enemies, he trampled a great number of good, innocent people.
Pursuing enemies tends to be like that. His (victorious) opponents did, too - in spades. As they continue to do today.
I think you are committing a pretty obvious category error in comparing your expectations for Trump 2.0 against the known facts of the Iran-Iraq war.
You might think the "elite" perspective is miscalibrated, but it's hardly baseless. In the first 60 days of his second term, Trump has cut off vital support to Ukranians (and announced the fact to their enemies), launched air strikes into Yemen, ended the distribution of lifesaving medicine in several countries, and deported people without due process. Not to mention the current EPA and Education rollbacks, and promised cuts to Medicaid. Ill effects on the order of half a million deaths seem pretty conceivable.
I think you're underestimating these problems. Considered as individual incidents, the badness of these results is (at least for now) lower than other bad things. However, America has long stood as an example of the value of freedom and autonomy. Trump's victory risks deeply undermining those values. Even the acts libertarians might have wished for are being carried out in ways that are fundamentally incompatible with American values.
The overall effect of tarnishing, or worse, destroying those values is possibly the greatest threat to human progress in history. American democracy is far from ideal, but it's also vastly better than the mindset opposing it throughout the world.
Brexit and Trump are indicative of a disease that threatens to destroy the basis of the advantages of the past 150 years. The fact that the cancer doesn't yet manifest in symptoms worse than other illnesses isn't comforting when it's ready to metastasice and kill what has created modern progress.
Brexit and Trump are what you get when the uniparty supports open borders. See also AfD, Giorgia Meloni, and Viktor Orban.
A larger conversation (a better meme) needs to take hold regarding the gambit Bryan touches on here: To be “on the right side of history” verses placing bets without any skin in the game. Countless politicians and bad employees spin a story about what they’ve worked on over the past comparable period to match the current outcome.
Maybe Trump and Brexit weren't wrong? In History, hindsight is always 20/20 and one should look at the big picture instead of what is considered the final outcome.
The South did rise again.
Hindsight is only SAID to be 20/20. In reality, it's about 500/<garbage>.
MY understanding of the past is, of course, 20/20. Every time.
And that the mass immigration into the UK which the vast majority of "Leave" supporters desperately wanted to see severely curtailed in fact, post-Brexit, continued unabated then vastly increased under both Labour and Tory governments. So in the end, none of the Brits got what they wanted, or expected.
Read your history. Taxation has nothing to do with family formation. Cultural pride, willingness to sacrifice in the present for future rewards, and a firm foundation of common national purpose, language, and values do.