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Bryan Alexander's avatar

Excellent analysis, even including a Russian literary joke.

One open question is who's driving the Biden administration. The man himself is largely invisible. There's got to be a furious battle of factions, but this hasn't leaked enough to understand yet.

I do admire this overall synthesis:

"Centrist ideology is associated with at least four other positions under threat from Trumpism: a) the very notion of an international order which has been largely shattered by the processes of intervention since the Iraq War, leading to the West tolerating Israeli ‘national security’ incursions while condemning Russia in Ukraine (which is intellectually absurd); b) the commitment to Net Zero and state support for policies to manage climate change where ‘forced savings’ to effect a new phase of industrialisation are borne entirely by the lower economic echelons of society; c) the ideal of global collaboration on financial stability and against tariffs (in essence, the core of ‘globalist’ neo-liberalism) which enriches the large global middle class but sees national working classes increasingly disadvantaged and d) cultural politics that emphasise identities and lifestyle freedoms at the expense of traditional values which bind otherwise local, class and kin communities. The agents of the international community (such as the UN) are confused – they oppose the US on a) but believe in b) and have a qualified acceptance of c) while not wanting to get involved in too many squabbles about d)."

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