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Same Old

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Clarissa

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You can’t address post-nation state challenges with nation-state means. The nation-state’s bag of tricks is impotent in the face of new realities. Passports, borders, immigration quotas – these are vestiges of the world that’s in retreat. No amount of shrieking will change this simple fact.

Two presidents ago, there were already people in the White House who knew this very well. Which leads me to conclude that the current refugee – related maneuver in the Congress and in Trump’s interviews is just a distraction tactic for the plebs. People have a vague feeling that something is amiss and are hiding behind fantasies in which the nation-state is as strong as ever. In this, those who say “bring in the Syrians” are no different from those who say “don’t bring in the Syrians” because the authority they are trying to invoke no longer exists.

The best thing we can all collectively do is quit the Outrage Olympics right now and demand that the hired managers of our polity stop buggering around and come up with new ways of responding to new challenges.

3 responses to “Same Old”

  1. NG Avatar
    NG

    “The best thing we can all collectively do is quit the Outrage Olympics right now and demand that the hired managers of our polity stop buggering around and come up with new ways of responding to new challenges.”

    How to deal with ISIS.

    Obama:

    “From the start, our goal has been first to contain them, and we have contained them.”

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/13/obama-forget-about-destroying-isis-we-just-need-to-contain-them.html

    Clinton:

    “The United States has been conducting this fight for more than a year; it’s time to be begin a new phase and intensify and broaden our efforts to smash the would-be caliphate,” Clinton told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/11/hillary-clinton-unveils-her-isis-battle-plan.html#

    Putin:

    To Forgive The Terrorists Is Up To God, But To Send Them To Him Is Up To Me’

    http://nation.foxnews.com/2015/11/17/putin-forgive-terrorists-god-send-them-him-me

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Only the most naive (or the most cynical) can believe that Putin will really inflict any harm to these terrorists. They are a godsend to him. The last weeks terrorists did exactly what Putin’s own terrorists failed to achieve in France less than a year ago.

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  2. Sugs Avatar
    Sugs

    I’d never even heard the idea of a ‘nation state’ before I became a reader of your blog, so thanks Clarissa for defining it for me in many of your passionate and erudite posts. As I now understand it (apologies if I’ve misinterpreted you), a ‘nation state’ is fundamentally a club who love ancient flags and other nationalist symbols, rituals, historic highlights, etc. and want to control the entry of outsiders to their ‘club’- sorry, their tract of land. As you say, an impossibly simplistic and outdated concept.

    And yes, absolutely yes! We should all devote much more time to demanding, “that the hired managers of our polity stop buggering around and come up with new ways of responding to new challenges with new ways of responding to new challenges.”

    I just fear that most of those old buggers (some of whom are much younger than I am) are incapable of coping with new challenges of any kind. A different flavour of ketchup would be too much for most of them.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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