If you ever find yourself genuinely unable to understand the views of large groups of people, that's usually a good sign to take a step back and try to approach the subject more dispassionately. People are usually pretty rational on close inspection. They just operate under different premises and experiences.
This article is pretty typical of the genre "unhappy leftists ask why people inexplicably reject their utopia". As per usual no real political analysis is provided, just the cleverly worded implication that people who disagree with the preferred direction don't really have political views, just atavistic destructive tendencies. That they want to "watch it all burn". It's flattering to the ego to believe that other people are just vastly intellectually inferior, of course, but not very intellectually interesting for observers.
To wit, the core of the author's thesis is that with the threat of nuclear war receding, "Capitalism and liberal democracy had won, and nothing would ever really challenge this staus quo again. That thesis has now unraveled so obviously that nobody claims we are at the “end of history” anymore, and this book is remarkable only for the hubris it embodied. Brexit, Trump, and the social and economic decline, perceived or real, that led to them are the most obvious events that signaled our latest attempts to kick apart Eden."
This sounds clever but is devoid of any meaning or detail. It's a New York Times cliché, not actual analysis of the world you could learn anything from. And because it's so thin we can easily spin it around.
Consider Trump. "A Canticle for Leibowitz" is about a world post-nuclear apocalypse. Trump is cast as somehow equivalent or similar to this. But let us recall the alternative voters were given! I remember the original presidential debates, and it was Trump's opponent who wanted to create a no-fly zone over Syria i.e. start a hot war with the nuclear armed Russians! And it was Trump who stood against that and said no way, we're not doing that, we're not starting a hot war with Russia over Syria. So you could argue that the voters stood up for Eden in that moment by saying: no, getting the first woman president is not enough to offset the risk of nuclear war. A serious analysis that linked A Canticle with modern political events should really consider that sort of thing, but this article isn't such an analysis. It's instead the usual cry of pain of those committed to unaccountable managerial technocratism, wondering why the savages inexplicably reject their benevolent rule.
If as you say, that Trump did not want to confront Russia in order to prevent nuclear war (I don't think that was his motivation, but let's roll with your argument for a sec) then Trump was an appeaser in the mold of Neville Chamberlain.
As for his actual motivations, I think it had a lot more to do with wanting to make money in Russia as well as his admiration of autocrats.
> People are usually pretty rational on close inspection.
Large groups of people can be agitated and manipulated into being very irrational. Plenty of examples from history.
"Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Hillary Clinton’s plan for Syria would “lead to world war three” because of the potential for conflict with military forces from nuclear-armed Russia."
This article is pretty typical of the genre "unhappy leftists ask why people inexplicably reject their utopia". As per usual no real political analysis is provided, just the cleverly worded implication that people who disagree with the preferred direction don't really have political views, just atavistic destructive tendencies. That they want to "watch it all burn". It's flattering to the ego to believe that other people are just vastly intellectually inferior, of course, but not very intellectually interesting for observers.
To wit, the core of the author's thesis is that with the threat of nuclear war receding, "Capitalism and liberal democracy had won, and nothing would ever really challenge this staus quo again. That thesis has now unraveled so obviously that nobody claims we are at the “end of history” anymore, and this book is remarkable only for the hubris it embodied. Brexit, Trump, and the social and economic decline, perceived or real, that led to them are the most obvious events that signaled our latest attempts to kick apart Eden."
This sounds clever but is devoid of any meaning or detail. It's a New York Times cliché, not actual analysis of the world you could learn anything from. And because it's so thin we can easily spin it around.
Consider Trump. "A Canticle for Leibowitz" is about a world post-nuclear apocalypse. Trump is cast as somehow equivalent or similar to this. But let us recall the alternative voters were given! I remember the original presidential debates, and it was Trump's opponent who wanted to create a no-fly zone over Syria i.e. start a hot war with the nuclear armed Russians! And it was Trump who stood against that and said no way, we're not doing that, we're not starting a hot war with Russia over Syria. So you could argue that the voters stood up for Eden in that moment by saying: no, getting the first woman president is not enough to offset the risk of nuclear war. A serious analysis that linked A Canticle with modern political events should really consider that sort of thing, but this article isn't such an analysis. It's instead the usual cry of pain of those committed to unaccountable managerial technocratism, wondering why the savages inexplicably reject their benevolent rule.