by liberal japonicus
I’ve mentioned before that I’m taken with Adam Tooze, and I want to share this speech he made at Simon Fraser University about a month ago. It takes place at a particular moment in time, he mentions that he was flying into Vancouver as Trump was declaring that “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” which added an edge to his comments. The video is below the break, cued up to when he starts speaking.
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Watched this – it was pretty interesting. I’m not sure I fully grasped all of it.
What mostly struck me was how utterly unprepared we here in the US are for what’s coming.
What also struck me, not just from Tooze’s speech but also just from living here at the moment, is that we really don’t have a functional government right now. Some institutions are still hobbling along because the people who work in them actually want to do the right thing if they can. But most of the leadership are just fucking clowns. And not the funny kind.
We – the US – will be occupying a diminished place in the world, mostly through our own bad behavior. And we are not used to thinking of ourselves that way. A lot of folks will simply not be able to accept it.