• Tankiedesantski [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Humanity, we may imagine, in the absence of climate collapse, is likely to exist for many thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years to come.

    "I imagine that, in the absence of drinking a lot of alcohol, I am unlikely to die in a car crash tonight."

    • Me, half way through my fourth beer at this bar.
    • vertexarray [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I can't figure out why he chose to write that. Makes him look like an undergrad with a wordcount to inflate.

    • Mardoniush [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      -The Bartender cut me off and my friends took my car keys but I stole 2L of pure ethanol which I'm skulling and I have a spare key in my wallet.

  • Bloobish [comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Jesus christ has Jacobin always been this lib or has it just recently gone mask off?

    "For instance, efforts by populists to undermine judicial independence are often couched in democratic terms, based on claims that judicial activism has resulted in a small elite using its control of the courts to impose its own norms contrary to the will of the majority, and that reining in the courts amounts to “balancing out democratic powers by promoting the popular will.”"

    Also god damn that's one Hell of a straight faced take...

    • AcidSmiley [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      How can an Amerikan who's supposedly a leftist journalist write something like that when their own supreme court is openly planning to wreck the last vestiges of even the flimsy bourgeois pretenses of democracy in the US? How is it "le evil populism" to criticize that 6 unelected ghouls singlehandedly roll civil rights back to the state of 1776 when there's a popular two-thirds majority for things like abortion?

      Edit: nvm this is from a "former" British intelligence officer, ofc he has a different perspective because in his country courts may impair Tories' ability to genocide trans people.

    • Mardoniush [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      It's openly, outwardly true. Every single fucking major US political leader has openly stated that's what the Supreme Court and Senate are for! IT'S THE FUCKING STATED PURPOSE OF THE SYSTEM JACOBIN AREGEFLGHJFjeufhaasddfghhh! falls over

  • vertexarray [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Prior to his graduate studies, he served as a regular officer in the British Army Intelligence Corps from 1989 to 1994

    Little bit of context for you context heads.

    • vertexarray [any]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      That said, I think the article is decent. The headline fucking sucks and vastly oversells how confrontational the article is. This dude IS writing from a place of authority in a field I know nothing about, that is, contemporary Russian political theory, so I'd be interested to see what other people in the same field think of his quick overview.

      However the bit Bloobish highlighted in their comment is an unforgiveable slip of the ideology on the part of the author that makes me think there might be a trace of liberalism in the way he parses those Russian authors.

      What really confuses me is his refusal to take any stance. He doesn't seem to side with anyone at all.

      • Mardoniush [she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        I found it to be a gigantic slice of nothing. Russia may crush liberalism but, did you know, Russia Bad? (Yes, we know, Russia Bad)

        My favourite thing is where he dismisses the admittedly dumb idea of Civilisational theory as dangerous and wrong, only to replace it with an almost indistinguishable variant of the same theory which he then corkscrews from a proto-Fascist call for civilisational renewal into a nice flowery defence of 21st century Liberalism.

        • vertexarray [any]
          ·
          2 years ago

          It really should have been titled "here are some russian political theorists" and just not mentioned the West at all

  • UlyssesT [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Nothing potentially dangerous about "end of history" triumphalism among the techbro ruling class that want to literally rule over us forever. :sus-soviet:

  • AcidSmiley [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Democratic peace theory would suggest that international peace will come through the spread of liberal democracy. A world of different civilizations each marching in their own direction is incompatible with this idea.

    the only people still believing in democratic peace theory are the neocon ghouls who brought us the disasters that where the forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This Kantian rubbish should be as discredited as "end of history", it's the exact same crowd advocating for both, as in fact these are fully compatible.