Posted Thursday morning, April 25, 2019.
“AMERICA HAS BEEN INVADED”: A reminder that Trump was an effect before he was a cause. Photo from an anti-immigrant protest in 2012. Chris Pizzello via Salon.
Following from last night’s post, also a quote from “The Road to Unfreedom”: Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Of course it does. But notice Snyder doesn’t mention Trump by name. That’s because he’s not writing about Trump. Not just Trump, anyway. Trump is an effect before he’s a cause. He’s the American embodiment of the politics of eternity but not the only embodiment in the world:
The collapse of the politics of inevitability ushers in another experience of time: the politics of eternity. Whereas inevitability promises a better future for everyone, eternity places one nation at the center of a cyclical story of victimhood. Time is no longer a line into the future, but a circle that endlessly returns the same threats from the past. Within inevitability, no one is responsible because we all know that the details will sort themselves out for the better; within eternity no one is responsible because we all know that the enemy is coming no matter what we do. Eternity politicians spread the conviction that government cannot aid society as a whole, but only guard against threats. Progress gives way to doom.
“In power, eternity politicians manufacture crisis and manipulate the resultant emotion. To distract from their inability or unwillingness to reform, eternity politicians instruct their citizens to experience elation and outrage at short intervals, drowning the future in the present. In foreign policy, eternity politicians belittle and undo the achievements of countries that might seem like models to their own citizens. Using technology to transmit political fiction, both at home and abroad, eternity politicians deny truth and seek to reduce life to spectacle and feeling.
---from “The Road to Unfreedom” by Timothy Snyder.
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