Check out Tuesday’s newsletter!
|
|
From The Reporter’s Notebook
Agree or Disagree?
Josh Marshall: Despite the relative insignificance of the Oregon wildlife refuge that a militia has chosen to occupy, their effort “really amounts to white privilege performance art…This is a mix of violent outlawry and domestic insurrection. And I think, if we think about it, we all know that it doesn’t get a very tough response because the country just takes it for granted that white people in the interior West just act weird and do stuff like this.”
BUZZING: Today in the Hive
From a TPM Prime member: “Well — that’s the rub, isn’t it. Do you believe in realpolitik or do you believe in “democracy will always win” (or is it possible to believe in both?). That said, if I recall correctly, Iran had a somewhat democratic institution before we got conned by the Brits to screw it all up. I tend to fall into the camp of realpolitk — because I think that’s how you can make incremental gains that eventually make the world better and our recent experience with “democracy will make it all better,” especially in the Middle East, have been somewhat fraught with peril. Iraq, nominally a democratic society now, is definitely not a beacon of light in the region. I think the ideology of ‘democracy wins’ forgets that democracy wins only with appropriate traditions and institutions in place that enable democracy to win — otherwise, democracy becomes a tattered cape worn by a despot as a mechanism to shroud himself in credibility. I give you Putin. To provide my own devil’s advocate, you could easily argue that realpolitik in the Middle East is what helped get us here in the first place. We gainfully looked the other way when Saudi Arabia did something we didn’t like because we needed them.”
Related: Saudi Arabia announced it is severing ties with Iran.
Have something to add? Become a Prime member and join the discussion here.
|
|
