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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (421088)	10/18/2019 10:50:38 AM
From: Wharf Rat	1 Recommendation Recommended By Triffin Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541778

"today the idea of one European country invading another is not even a worry." Tell that to the folks in Ukraine.

To: koan who wrote (421088)	10/18/2019 11:19:26 AM
From: JohnM	1 Recommendation Recommended By epicure Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541778

You are equating the "ability" to kill people with the "intent". Those are two different things. Apples and oranges. Yes big wars last century, but today the idea of one European country invading another is not even a worry. That is due to our increased ability to think. Education. You need, in order to make this argument sufficiently concrete to have some persuasive force, to deal with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, India's invasion of Kashmir, etc. Today, the people in every society on earth are hitting misogyny, racism, homophobia and caste systems very hard. All one has to do is watch foreign films to see how hard the writers and directors are addressing those subjects in their films, in every country. In so far as you've wrapped these kinds of assertions within a progressive view of historical change, you will need, once again if you wish to make it persuasive, to deal with the many assertions that the 20th century may well rank as one of the worst--two world wars (unprecedented), the holocaust (fomented within the European country with a long history of a vibrant "high" culture), Stalin's mass slaughters in Russia, ethnic cleansing in southeastern Europe, the same in southeast Asia, and so on. Perhaps there is a case to be made here. But it needs to be made. One of my favorites historians, Eric Hobsbawm, dealt with this conundrum by calling much of the century, "the age of extremes." A German historian, Heinrich Winkler, calls it the "age of catastrophe." Whatever, however, one calls it, any progressive view of historical change has to address these concrete and extremely disturbing manifestations of the dark side of human activity.