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Must-read piece from Masha Gessen on Trump, autocracy and fighting for our democracy
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/27/trump-realism-vs-moral-politics-choice-we-face/.
. . Criminal regimes function in part by forcing the maximum number of subjects to participate in the atrocities. For nearly a century, individuals in various parts of the Western world have struggled with the question of how, and how much, we should engage politically and personally with governments that we find morally abhorrent.With the election of Donald Trumpa candidate who has lied his way into power, openly embraced racist discourse and violence, toyed with the idea of jailing his opponents, boasted of his assaults on women and his avoidance of taxes, and denigrated the traditional checks and balances of governmentthis question has confronted us as urgently as ever. After I wrote a piece about surviving autocracy, a great many people have asked me about one of my proposed rules: Do not compromise. What constitutes compromise? How is it possible to avoid it? Why should one not compromise?
. .
My grandmother spent the second half of the twentieth century in Moscow, far away from the Holocaust historiography wars, but she and I spontaneously reproduced a debate about collaboration and resistance that has been playing out for decades: on one side of this debate are those who argue for doing good as long as good can be done, even in constrained circumstances; on the other are those who see any compromise as collaboration. Our current situation has so far brought forth mostly the pro-compromise side of the argument, which sounds seductively like the voice of reason.
. . .
My family supplies other examples of this slippery slope of collaboration. Take my own. In 2012, I was working as the editor-in-chief of a popular science magazine called Vokrug Sveta when Vladimir Putin, who fancies himself an explorer and a nature conservationist, took a liking to the publication. His administration launched a kind of friendly takeover of the magazine, one that the publisher could not refuse. I found myself in meetings with the Russian Geographic Society, of which Putin was the hands-on chairman. They wanted me to publish stories about their activities, most of which, as far as I could tell, were bogus. In exchange, they promised to help the magazine: at one point every school in Russia was ordered to buy a subscription (like many Kremlin orders, this one ended in naught). I felt a slow rot setting in at a magazine I loved, but I kept telling myself that I could still do a good job . . All that happened as a result of the hang-gliding trip (from what I know) was that two or three of the cranes were badly injured for the sake of the presidents publicity stunt, and I lost my job. But I also lost a bit of my soul and the sense of moral agency I had earned over decades of acting like my best journalist self. When Putin offered me my job back after the trip, I hesitated to say no. . . Fortunately for me, my closest friend said, Have you lost your mind?, by which she meant my sense of right and wrong.
. . . We cannot know what political strategy, if any, can be effective in containing, rather than abetting, the threat that a Trump administration now poses to some of our most fundamental democratic principles. But we can know what is right. What separates Americans in 2016 from Europeans in the 1940s and 1950s is a little bit of historical time but a whole lot of historical knowledge. We know what my great-grandfather did not know: that the people who wanted to keep the people fed ended up compiling lists of their neighbors to be killed. That they had a rationale for doing so. And also, that one of the greatest thinkers of their age judged their actions as harshly as they could be judged. Armed with that knowledge, or burdened with that legacy, we have a slight chance of making better choices. As Trump torpedoes into the presidency, we need to shift from realist to moral reasoning. That would mean, at minimum, thinking about the right thing to do, now and in the imaginable future. It is also a good idea to have a trusted friend capable of reminding you when you are about to lose your sense of right and wrong.
. .
My grandmother spent the second half of the twentieth century in Moscow, far away from the Holocaust historiography wars, but she and I spontaneously reproduced a debate about collaboration and resistance that has been playing out for decades: on one side of this debate are those who argue for doing good as long as good can be done, even in constrained circumstances; on the other are those who see any compromise as collaboration. Our current situation has so far brought forth mostly the pro-compromise side of the argument, which sounds seductively like the voice of reason.
. . .
My family supplies other examples of this slippery slope of collaboration. Take my own. In 2012, I was working as the editor-in-chief of a popular science magazine called Vokrug Sveta when Vladimir Putin, who fancies himself an explorer and a nature conservationist, took a liking to the publication. His administration launched a kind of friendly takeover of the magazine, one that the publisher could not refuse. I found myself in meetings with the Russian Geographic Society, of which Putin was the hands-on chairman. They wanted me to publish stories about their activities, most of which, as far as I could tell, were bogus. In exchange, they promised to help the magazine: at one point every school in Russia was ordered to buy a subscription (like many Kremlin orders, this one ended in naught). I felt a slow rot setting in at a magazine I loved, but I kept telling myself that I could still do a good job . . All that happened as a result of the hang-gliding trip (from what I know) was that two or three of the cranes were badly injured for the sake of the presidents publicity stunt, and I lost my job. But I also lost a bit of my soul and the sense of moral agency I had earned over decades of acting like my best journalist self. When Putin offered me my job back after the trip, I hesitated to say no. . . Fortunately for me, my closest friend said, Have you lost your mind?, by which she meant my sense of right and wrong.
. . . We cannot know what political strategy, if any, can be effective in containing, rather than abetting, the threat that a Trump administration now poses to some of our most fundamental democratic principles. But we can know what is right. What separates Americans in 2016 from Europeans in the 1940s and 1950s is a little bit of historical time but a whole lot of historical knowledge. We know what my great-grandfather did not know: that the people who wanted to keep the people fed ended up compiling lists of their neighbors to be killed. That they had a rationale for doing so. And also, that one of the greatest thinkers of their age judged their actions as harshly as they could be judged. Armed with that knowledge, or burdened with that legacy, we have a slight chance of making better choices. As Trump torpedoes into the presidency, we need to shift from realist to moral reasoning. That would mean, at minimum, thinking about the right thing to do, now and in the imaginable future. It is also a good idea to have a trusted friend capable of reminding you when you are about to lose your sense of right and wrong.
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Must-read piece from Masha Gessen on Trump, autocracy and fighting for our democracy (Original Post)
MBS
Dec 2016
OP
Dr. Mullion Blasto
(104 posts)1. Thanks for posting. I admire her so much. n/t
shadowmayor
(1,325 posts)2. The Road to Hell
Is paved with good intentions.