In mixed company, I expressed concern that young people had no interest in political activism.
“No, we are very politically active!” a bright young creature interrupted me. “I literally don’t know a single person my age who doesn’t use hashtags! I have participated in a hashtag campaign last week, for example.”
Slavoj Žižek writing today on the current situation in Greece.
“The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben said in an interview that “thought is the courage of hopelessness” – an insight which is especially pertinent for our historical moment when even the most pessimist diagnostics as a rule finishes with an uplifting hint at some version of the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. The true courage is not to imagine an alternative, but to accept the consequences of the fact that there is no clearly discernible alternative: the dream of an alternative is a sign of theoretical cowardice, it functions as a fetish which prevents us thinking to the end the deadlock of our predicament. In short, the true courage is to admit that the light at the end of the tunnel is most likely the headlight of another train approaching us from the opposite direction. There is no better example of the need for such courage than Greece today.”
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/07/21/greece-courage-hopelessness
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Yes, the enormous courage of accepting that nobody will pay you to wash your hands any longer.
I’m sorry to be so cynical but everybody who knows my origins can appreciate why this Greece-related moaning sounds so unconvincing to me.
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The most interesting thing about Greece is that it’s ground zero in the post nation state reality.
The election in July was a clear choice for a grexit and it was completely ignored by everbody (including the government that called the election).
This is a new model of government which is about electing people to interact with other governments about affairs that the people that voted are told don’t concern them. There’s no longer even a pretense of providing government services. Taxes are to be collected and then distributed away from the country (contrary to people who are stuck back in 2008 tax collection in Greece has increased by huge amounts and almost none of it remains in Greece).
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With respect to Greek debt, you might find this article interesting. Clientelism is a technical term for patronage. Quebec under Premier Maurice Duplessis a.k.a “Le Chef” (= “The Boss”) used to be run this way.
“As numerous Greek MEPs opposed the Eurozone summit deal, implementation will require a broad coalition of political parties. This column argues that corruption in Greek politics will prevent the formation of such a coalition. The heavy debt service leads parties to invent extreme ways of responding to super-austerity and to strongly oppose direct reforms that challenge existing clientelism. The way out is to sign a new agreement that combines debt restructuring and radical transparency reforms, including naming-and-shaming practices, to block clientelism in the medium and long run.”
http://www.voxeu.org/article/why-debt-sustains-corruption-greece-and-vice-versa
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Wow, this is a really good article. Thank you! It’s rare that one reads something this reasonable on Greece.
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Hashtag campaign? #Doomed #smh
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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