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What Did You Learn in 2015?
Tomorrow’s the day for New Year’s predictions and resolutions. But before making them impulsively, join me in reflecting a bit on 2015.
What was the most important thing you learned in 2015? Specifically,
- What was the most important new insight you had about American politics?
- What trend or event surprised you most?
- What was the most important new insight you had about global politics?
- What trend or event surprised you most?
If you were surprised, what underlying assumptions led you astray?
Published in General
Well, I’m not sure that’s a new thing – half of America has deeply hated and distrusted the other half (politically) since W. beat Gore in the Electoral College in 2000.
Yep.
But I’m asking what you and I missed. Why were we so surprised by 2015?
Because I am old and cynical, I haven’t been surprised since Bush v Gore.
Nothing from Europe has surprised me because I am a devotee of Steyn’s “America Alone.”
Nothing from America has surprised me because I have watched the fractionalization of society from the media front row. A handful of voices have become a cacophony and every other person is singing their own tune. There are no facts, no truth, only opinions.
But I’m asking what you and I missed. Why were we so surprised by 2015?
–Hope. The answer is hope. Despite being a pair of hard bound cynics who see the world for what it is, we always hope that things will be different. We are surprised by the fact it never changes. We are also surprised by how much of this cycle just is the endless cycle and that despite it all things do seem to get better.
–I find myself buoyed by Kevin Williamsons ‘The End is Near and its going to be Awesome”.
Yes. But another word for that is “denial.”
I’m surprised that so many people both in the US and in Europe are surprised. I didn’t expect Trump to last this long, but that someone would fill his role wasn’t a shock. I didn’t expect France to get a Mumbai-style attack before we did, but I’ve been expecting one here since before Mumbai.
Yes. But another word for that is “denial.”
–I prefer my word :). Why do you think ‘we’ missed it?
1. I didn’t have any significant new insights on domestic politics in 2015. My prior impressions were confirmed in many ways.
2. I was surprised by the apparent wholesale success of the pro-SSM movement. I suffer from overoptimism, but I thought that Kennedy would stop short of mandating SSM nationwide. Also, the fallout from the Indiana RFRA statute, and the wholesale GOP retreat on the issue, surprised me.
3. My most significant foreign insight came from Claire herself, in her discussion of the Turkish elections. The insight is that there really are no “good guys” in the Middle East, as we define “good guys.” Support for what is commonly called “liberal democracy” appears to be virtually non-existent in the region.
I put “liberal democracy” in quotes because the system it describes is neither “liberal,” as that term is commonly used, nor democratic. I mean a system like America’s, i.e. a representative republic with respect for individual rights and commitment to the rule of law.
4. The thing that surprised me most in international geopolitics was France’s solid effort in fighting Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Vive la France! I think that this praiseworthy effort predated 2015, but I became aware of it during the current year.
I was not surprised by the many geopolitical setbacks apparent in 2015. Failure of US leadership = bad guys running rampant. No surprise there.
This is incomplete.
It is not that we are too serious. It is that we are serious with regards to the trivial and trivial with regards to what is truly serious.
I think the word(s) you are looking for is: normalcy bias.
We become comfortable in the status quo and the subconscious belief that the current trend will continue to infinity.
This year I’ve felt like I was watching a reenactment of the film, The Bridge Over The River Kwai, where Alec Guinness goes into a surreal trance and thinks he’s doing good by sacrificing his men and culture to their enemies. From Angela Merkel to Claire I can’t for the life of me understand how the elites of Europe have participated in this binge of cultural suicide, and can’t imagine their response when they “come to.” I foresee dark times ahead, perhaps forced population transfers will come back into vogue before this is over.
I can’t help thinking of a post I wrote back in mid-2014. The worst events of 2015 had earlier roots. The year was horrible, yes, but it’s not obvious that “we” were so surprised.
No, that’s incorrect. We are much too serious about everything, trivial and otherwise.
Our political discussions at all levels resemble Who’s on first? which is a serious discussion. That’s why it is funny. We on the outside who are not taking it seriously can see the whole discussion. The serious participants, Bud and Lou, cannot break free of their own seriousness and see what is so obvious.
Seriousness is our great national problem.
Some of the sentiments here see a “*(^*(% Hits The Fan” situation(s) coming – when it comes down to it, our country will unite politically and every other way if there is any kind of external foe – this is what non-Americans do not realize – you see it when there is any kind of man-made disaster – like the current flooding, and after 9/11.
But I am asking Claire specifically, since she is in a different position than the rest of, who is emerging on the European scene or elsewhere that is the biggest threat to world peace – there is always someone who pops up and takes full advantage of chaos – Putin is obvious – but maybe someone who is not obvious to the rest of us.
What I learned in 2015 is that the Right in our country is losing it’s collective mind. Donald Bleepin’ Trump! You must be kidding me.
I’m not sure what you mean, but if you mean accepting refugees from the Syrian conflict, are you aware that Lebanon — tiny, politically fragile Lebanon — has accepted more refugees than the entire European Union? That the EU has in total accepted fewer refugees than Turkey, Pakistan, and Iran have individually?
Why do many Americans feel that Europe should accept more responsibility for its share of the collective defense budget, but take no share of responsibility for what’s unquestionably the world’s worst humanitarian crisis?
The majority of Syrian refugees will have to be settled, permanently, in third countries. The war in Syria won’t end anytime soon. When it does, there will be nothing for them to go back to. Syria has been destroyed — not only physically, but socially. The refugees’ cities, livelihoods, and extended families are gone. They can’t all sit in refugee camps in Lebanon for the next twenty years. They need to be able to work, feed their families, educate their kids, and rebuild their lives.
The moral and security arguments for resettling them and giving them the very best possible chance at rebuilding a civilized life is overwhelming.
Why shouldn’t Europe bear its fair share of this cost?
Europe had nothing to do with causing the crisis; why is it their responsibility to put their people and their culture in danger in order to ameliorate it?
Even if the dangerous ones amount to less than 1 in 1000, it only took two brothers to blow up the Boston Marathon. It took fewer than 20 people to pull of 9/11. I usually value your intelligence, Claire, but that you insist on completely ignoring the risks involved with giving thousands of people essentially free run of Europe leaves me scratching my head.
I think it’s less a “who” than a “what.” My greatest worry is rapid nuclear proliferation coupled with a miscalculation or a mistake. I have the sense that because we survived the Cold War, we’ve forgotten how very nearly we didn’t. Global chaos combined with the rapid loss of American hegemony combined with an increasingly deranged Russia combined with Chinese expansionism combined with the spread of Apocalyptic jihadism combined with a larger and larger class of highly educated people who are capable of mastering the fuel cycle — and all this combined with a global loss of trust in democratic institutions, a shaky global economy, the rise everywhere of neo-authoritarianism, managed democracy and hybrid warfare? The odds seem very much arrayed against a stable 21st century.
And when I say that my biggest concern is the polarization of the American electorate, I mean that I’m very concerned that no matter who’s elected, he or she won’t be accepted as legitimate by half the American population — and that the US will be effectively ungovernable, leaving it unable to address these problems as the world-threatening emergencies they really are.
What you’re saying is that Francis Fukuyama was an idiot… And Mark Steyn is a genius. The world did not accept the Western way of life as default. And empires never fall to more civilized empires, they always fall to the barbarians.
Wouldn’t you say this is true of any NATO responsibility? They had nothing to do with September 11, but we certainly expected their support with a global security problem. Europe has “more to do” with Syria than most countries, inasmuch as France greatly shaped its political destiny when it was under the French mandate, and it is unquestionably in the West’s long term (or even short-term) security interests to make sure that the Syrians don’t become a permanent class of stateless people in hopeless refugee camps: Imagine the Palestinian refugee problem, but at least ten times larger. It’s in no one’s interest that the already fragile states surrounding Syria be further destabilized, which they will be unless other countries help ease the burden of integrating these refugees and helping them to create new lives.
No one wanted the Syrian war. No one could have imagined its horror and its brutality. No one but Assad is responsible for Assad’s crimes. But it has happened. It will continue to happen, unless someone stops it, and we won’t, and no one else could. So short of condemning them to death or life in refugee camps, there’s no alternative. They have to be resettled.
I’m not ignoring the risks. I’m saying that the risks of not doing it are greater. And I’m also saying that sometimes, the moral imperative of saving a life — or in this case, millions of them — is so great that the risk has to be taken.
The moral and security arguments for resettling them and giving them the very best possible chance at rebuilding a civilized life is overwhelming.
Why shouldn’t Europe bear its fair share of this cost?
Because 50 years of experience from Rothenham to Minneapolis has shown that Islamic culture is allergic to assimilation into western society. Ask the average Belgian if his culture has been improved by the cancelling of the holiday festivities. My first exposure to this issue was back in the late ’90’s in SW Florida with the way Sami al Arian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Al-Arian played the googoos like a violin before 9/11. You have admitted yourself in other posts that 9 out of 10 louts that harrass you on the streets of Paris are North Africans. Why do you think Europe should commit suicide to prove how enlightened they are?
Edited for a subconscious misuse of a word.
Two people killing an average of seven each?
I find it pretty underwhelming.
Right up until the moment you’re one of the 14…
I am uncertain as to whether I agree or disagree. You need to flesh this thought out into an entire post.
I posted ‘Seriously?’ back in November. I should have linked to it in my comment.
Not new, just reconfirming: No matter how smart the media chattering class think of themselves, they always seem to be wrong (Trumps supposed demise).
John Roberts Obamacare contortions.
Israel especially, but the world in general, is less safe due to the capitulated Iran Deal. America is a fundamentally good country but lead by weaklings in politics, media and academia. We should be thankful these milksops were not in charge during the early 40’s.
How colleges mollycoddled the vacuous student ‘protests’.
I realize I’m a bit of a bore on the matter, but Jihadists working in tandem should be able to outperform certifiably crazy loners like Adam Lanza and Seung-Hui Cho (who killed 59 people among them, working separately). Heck, you take the Bataclan out of the Paris attacks and you end up with some really pathetic numbers as well. Nidal Hasan was more effective, but still not as good as Lanza or Cho who — again — were actually crazy.
That doesn’t mean that we should ignore Islamism, or forget that they were able to find a (since closed) hole that allowed them to kill 3,000 of us. But sheesh, killing 14 people with the kind of firepower and that motivation the Farooks had is pathetic.
Also this post back in October.
Celebrity Trumps ideology.
Rush Limbaugh reporting the political facts while the Journal Editorial Board and the Special Report panelists wallow in emotionalized denial.
75 years later, the Germans still want the wrong people around.
How America’s poor border policing would let Pakistan impact San Bernadino.