The Fire Next Time?

I've written a lot more essays in the past few years. I've always used my blog as a way to think, but I've enjoyed the stricter version of the essay as a way to think out loud. Itscomplicated, a site dedicated to veterans and their relationship with civilians has been great in publishing many of these. 
 And though I think that these essays are important and necessary for my growth as a citizen, as a human, as a writer... well they really haven't started conversations as I thought they would. Certainly some people have responded, but it adds to my sense of trying to change the direction of conversations as I see them today (much too shrill, even the best intentions). 

I'm not trying to be melodramatic or overly self-important (well, perhaps that last part can never be truly false for me) but it does strike me when what I think is somewhat insightful loses out to the chatter out there in the world. In fact it would seem that sometimes being too insightful is far too much for most echo chambers and it's better to speak the tribal language of a group and get some resounding "here here"s than provoke thought. 
I suppose I am being a little melodramatic.
So it goes, as that great modern day bard said. Hate the game not the player, as the other great bard said...
Still, it's good to read articles by others that provide something like insight on a subject I've been trying to wrestle with. Here Krugman looks at what's happening here in America and wonders if we'll become the next Poland or Hungary. This isn't exactly new territory. My article above on the curtain of ignorance from DC to Szczecin speaks to a similar animus.
But it's with his opening comment that provided a spark for some thought:

Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a friend of mine — an expert on international relations — made a joke: “Now that Eastern Europe is free from the alien ideology of Communism, it can return to its true historical path — fascism.” Even at the time, his quip had a real edge.

It reminds me of the argument I had with a woman from Bulgaria. There she proclaimed her love for Reagan for speaking up and defeating communism and went on to proclaim her love for Trump, call the Democrats socialists, and also claim that she wanted to bomb brown people in Syria out of existence (she walked it back after I pushed her on this Nazi-like desire).

I didn't get into a good argument and I think that's my own fault.

But when it's combined with what has happened in Eastern Europe as well as Krugman's story above, one wonders if indeed that had always been the trajectory of Eastern Europe?

I then got to thinking about the streams of discussion of beliefs, that tend to live in societies and clash and mix with other ideas. For example the above person thought Reagan freed her people then was perfectly okay with killing off large swaths of brown people for god-knows what reason.

So the prism that I had always seen the cold war, and the part about Eastern Europe was through the prism of Stalinism, a dark foreboding Warsaw Pact versus freedom. Even in my most woke moments (lately) this hadn't been revised as much as it should have.

But nowadays it has indeed been revised to take in the racism inherent in many of our leaders and reps as well as those in Eastern Europe. IOW this isn't to revise Stalinism but to point out the moral issues on our side. Looking at the cold war through a racial lens helps to explain a few things, though not everything (for example that Russia itself was racist, as was the USSR).

One does have to wonder about these trends today. Mishra has an article in the Times about White Supremacy in the Anglosphere and I have to wonder if perhaps it's only part of the issue. After all, it doesn't include places like Myanmar and India where similar forces are at play. And even if those are explained away as some sort of power structure similar to White supremacy (trying to mimic the major powers of the day etc) it falls short in some other ways, if you ask me.

How do we explain this craziness all around. This easy nightmare of history which we cannot awake from? I'm not sure I have the answers, but I will keep trying to break this down.





 

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