Tag: united states
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The comparison that gets made is the wrong comparison, and it gets made for the wrong reason. The United States under its current administration is compared to interwar Germany because the aesthetic rhymes: the rallies, the rhetoric, the contempt for institutions, the paramilitary cosplay. Aesthetic rhyme is not structural equivalence, and the structural differences are…
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The morality code is not a code of morals. It is a code of resolution. A stratified society ranks types, not persons. Its categories are the units of advantage, and the units of advantage must be reproduced. Reproduction runs through desire, and desire is where the category is either confirmed or dissolved. The morality code…
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The colonial regime that could not be discontinued, and the category that became the constitution The first argument described a lag. The second described an export. This one describes a continuity. Europe’s colonial regimes were, for the most part, discontinued. Decolonization was an event—sometimes negotiated, sometimes violent, always a rupture. The metropole withdrew, the colonial…
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By an observer of the long cycle There is a story the commentariat keeps telling itself, and it is wrong. The story is that the transatlantic alliance is enduring a “rough patch” — a temporary spat between allies who will, once the current occupant of the White House leaves, return to business as usual. That…
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The language of power is shifting—not by decree, but by structural necessity Let’s start with a number: 3.7%. Between 1999 and 2019, the proportion of European Commission documents drafted in French as the source language fell from 34% to just 3.7%. In 85% of cases, English was used. The Lequesne report, which tracks language use…
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Or: How a 17th-century labor dispute created the culture war you’re losing your mind over You ever notice how the loudest people on Twitter have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about? Two hundred forty characters of pure, distilled confidence, and not a single fact to back it up. Especially when it comes to race.…