Anne Applebaum’s statement to Congress about the need for a global strategy to deal with autocracy is a must-read.
Something to remember: It’s entirely possible that we are all completely wrong about this war — whether it’s “Cold War II”, “World War III”, or whatever.
It’s nice to hear certainty from various voices, even ones we respect and whose judgment we trust, at a time like this, but they also don’t know the future any better than we do.
And even though we may try to apply discipline in assessing the future — by examining fundamentals without bias, looking back into history for broader trends and deeper roots than just what’s in front of us, being intellectually cautious — we’re still ultimately going to be victim to our biases. History does not repeat itself! Like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the very act of calling this conflict “Cold War II”, let alone a war, inherently shades our judgment, no matter how hard we search for any new dynamics that make this one different from the first Cold War.
It’s okay to embrace uncertainty. Only a Sith deals in absolutes.Just want to call out Pantsuit Politics for the wonderful work they’re doing. Their homespun-ness rarely comes across as fake, or gets too jarring to tolerate, but they do their best to honestly bring across a leftist Midwestern perspective, something I appreciate as a Midwesterner myself.
But most importantly, they have refused to self-ghettoize into always talking about things as “women’s issues”. The curative to this problem, which in the mainstream liberal media has been mostly a talking point for other liberals to fix while hardcore 3rd-wave feminists bang on about the same culture warrior shit they were 30 years ago, is to talk about issues that affect women without branding them as “women’s issues”. It means not treating abortion like the centerpiece of women’s political fortunes. It means talking about things like the Ukraine war, or the December tornadoes, or democracy reform, and its impacts on families and communities; and not because women are most often mothers, but because they are members of families and communities.
Progressivism without tokenism. It’s a beautiful thing.
They’ve been permanently added to my podcast roundup. Cheers, ladies!
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