Matt Yglesias deliver some great snark with a point, taking on the voice of an Iranian Richard Perle:
[I]t's not clear that a policy of appeasement would be wise. True, we've seen rational leadership even from vicious dictators like Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong, but the contemporary United States is led by religious fanatics, which introduces a new element into the equation. What's more, the USA is the only country on earth to have ever actually deployed nuclear weapons. Indeed, current political elites are so war-crazed and bloodthirsty that they not only engineered the 2003 attack on Iraq — a country that tried to appease the Americans by eliminating its nuclear program and allowing IAEA inspectors to certify that it had done so — but they continue to deny regretting it to this day. And that includes not only radicals like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, but so-called “moderates” like Hillary Clinton as well.
Well played by Matt.
3 comments
it’s name is neoliberalism, aka the “Washington Consensus,” and its article of faith is that the collision between capitalism and planetary carrying capacity must be pursued to the bitter end, when billions will die as the planet becomes a dust bowl.
I thought it was snark, most comments took him seriously, now I’m not so sure he was being facetious.