HELL IN A HANDCART PART 71
There’s a direct link between Trump’s juvenile posturing for a trade war with whoever will take him on, and the undermining of European security. And who knew the German armed forces were in such a shambolic state?
Elsewhere, the triumph of the Netanyahu government in courting Trump, and the consequences for the Middle East of the US, Israeli and Gulf hostility to Iran, are the basis of this long, disturbing New Yorker piece. And an expert on Turkish political history explores the victory of the autocrat Erdogan in the nation’s most recent elections.
After all that, it may be more cheering to read a detailed assessment of Bernie Sanders’ ’60s activism.
SELF AND PERSPECTIVE
Last weekend Jane Cadzow delivered an excellent profile of former Australian cricket captain Steve Smith and the culture that drove the collapse of the Australian team earlier this year. Even if you neither know nor care about sport, her portrait of a cricketing genius caught amidst a grotesque kind of insularity is compelling.
On a different but not totally unrelated note, the scary condition of depersonalisation, or self-detachment, in which people feel detached from their own lives, as if they are automata living by remote control, is attracting growing interest.
NEW(ISH) RELEASES
Two books on post-war European history, here for different reasons. John Foot (yes, related to Michael — his grand-nephew) has written an history of post-war Italy. Eminent historian Donald Sassoon gives it a qualified thumbs up here; I’ve started it myself and will report back.
Also, London-based French journalist Agnès Poirier has written a history of Paris from 1940-1950. US historian Robert Zaretsky was, it’s fair to say, unimpressed, and delivers one of the more scathing critiques you’ll read for a while.
AGREE TO DISAGREE
In the spirit of avoiding an echo chamber and remaining open to new ideas — something easier committed to than actually done — I’m going to occasionally offer arguments I may not agree with (or stridently disagree with) but which at least provoked thought.
Here are three: tolerance isn’t a healthy basis for any society, instead we should embrace “reciprocity”; the US is being too provocative toward China; and (eyeroll) why we need to stop italicising non-English words.
COME UP TO THE LAB/AND SEE WHAT’S ON THE SLAB
From the world of science: thinking about bringing dinosaurs back to life? Not a good idea, paleontologists say, as if we hadn’t worked that out from the Jurassic Park franchise. And Albert Einstein remains undefeated as the heavyweight champion of modern physics after the latest and largest-scale effort to validate general validity. Galactic-scale gravitational lensing (the way the gravity of a large object bends light) matches observational data about the rotation of stars around the same galaxy, and thus the presence of dark matter.
STAT OF THE WEEK
“So, this is a very significant improvement, and it’s far better than many people expected, and it’s far better than anything that Japan has ever been prepared to offer any other country.” — Tony Abbott, April 2014, on the Australia-Japan Free Trade Agreement, which came into force in January 2015.
Yeah, not so much.
INTERNET OF SHIT
Yes, it’s back! That fetid combination of idiot consumer gimmickry and the surveillance state! First, the run-of-the-mill stuff: a whole range of internet-enabled home cameras have security so poor that hacking them would barely test the kind of small children being watched with them. Now, the totalitarian stuff: China is planting an RFID in every car in the country to enable tracking. But then again anyone with a sat-nav or a mobile phone, is providing similar information here in our paradise of freedom.
And now for the sickening: IoT devices give domestic abusers a rich new area of power dynamics within which they can abuse and harass their partners — and one still poorly understood.
PODCAST OF THE WEEK
You’ve all seen Narcos. But what happened to Medellin after Escobar’s reign of terror was brought to an end? Turns out it’s become a model for effective urban planning. The 99percentinvisible podcast has the story.
Bernard, I think there are two good arguments contesting tolerance: 1) it’s not enough; and 2) it’s too much when it extends to tolerating antisecularism.
Here’s some support for those views.
Tolerance is adequate if you want to maintain the rule of law and a vibrant economy. But tolerance doesn’t ensure respect, and you need respect whenever there’s threat, or you need to coordinate big social change. Here’s my take the difference.
Tolerance: I have no idea what you’re about, and may not much like it, but I’ll for bear to confront and attack you as long as you leave me alone.
Respect: I know something of what you’re about, what it values, commits to and has accomplished. I may not entirely support it, but I’ll defend your right to advance it because on the whole, I know you to be good.
Tolerance can subsist just fine on ignorance, but respect requires knowledge and commitment.
I’d argue that one can’t confront Pauline Hanson’s xenophoboic, reactionary fearmongering with mere cries for tolerance. You need knowledge and respect. Even without the likes of Hanson, social inclusion needs more than tolerance anyway: tolerating gay kids induces suicide; respecting them builds empowered, vibrant adults. And justice and equity need respect and not simply tolerance: it was tolerance that made Jews and Romany second-class citizens throughout Europe, and we know what came of that.
On the other hand, there are plenty of belief systems that neither tolerate nor respect the diversity needed in secular society. These include some mainstream religions who benefit from tolerance and frequently demand respect, yet refrain from giving either. (It’s not just religious belief systems that do this; hard political ideologies, New Age beliefs and conspiracy theories often do too.)
Many have argued before that freedom of worship is not sanctity of dogma: dumb ideas of any kind can be criticised; and dumb religious ideas no less than others.
However, I also think it’s fair to argue that any system of thought which deliberately undermines respect for things that can be shown to be socially and personally good, has lost any claim to sanctity.
Can a respectful multicultural society survive robust ideological criticism?
Absent forming ghettos I’m unclear that it can survive without.