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Comment by _aleph2c_ | Hacker News Reader

Mike Solana calls this Trudeau's rainbow-colored iron fist: https://www.piratewires.com/p/shock-and-awe?utm_source=url

I wonder if the chaotic noise dominates social awareness because people are simply unaware of the macro trends influencing them, or the more charitable explanation that they are aware they exist but accept they are helpless to change them. Either way, this entire ordeal has basically solidified my position that as a society we are woefully unequipped to solve any of the major problems that threaten us.

People are so preoccupied with the audacity of x doing y that dominates the news cycle, but nobody seems to actually care why x is doing y. They just slap some shallow explanation like they are white supremacists, or they are mad George Floyd was killed because of police brutality and consider that level of understanding to be satisfactory while simultaneously being concerned about how increasingly divided, populist and radicalized western society is becoming.

I think that there are answers out there, many coming from Stephen Kotkin, a man who destroyed his eye sight studying Stalin, who is an expert on the collapse of the Soviet Union, and who is trying to reboot the American diplomatic service. He talks about how we in the west must stop demonizing each other. We have the ability to solve our problems, but our political parties make it impossible to get the right people on our ballots. (In Canada I just join all the parties and vote within them, since a vote within is worth 50 votes without).

Kotkin is non-partisan, and we should all take notice of what he says. video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul1gsIdlJFs transcripts: https://www.hoover.org/research/5-questions-stephen-kotkin-1

Thanks for Kotkin recommendation, looks very interesting

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