I also wonder if there disgust is tied up in it all. Like, a desire for purity that makes people lose their Brooklin accents or protest something morally repugnant over something more fundamentally problematic close-to-home. A thing I face in my community is a ton of (admittedly youthful) energy over Israel-Palestine while there are large numbers of homeless all around. Perhaps this is another facet of extremety: youth.
This piece really made me think. It’s so true how we often look for ideal solutions when the reality is about navigating very real, imperfect choices. I often feel this when I'm practicing Pilates; even if a pose isnt perfect, you still strive for that core stability. It's about pragmatic strength, I guess, choosing the best path among the difficult ones.
I wonder: in terms of oikophobia is a fear of unfulfilled potential partially to blame as well? Were the Vietnam War protests by the Boomer youth bulge both about taking the good fortune of their generation for granted while feeling the population pressure and the draft and so on and so forth? For instance, how many young, blue collar Americans protested the war on “Main Street” vs on college campuses?
I'm not deeply familiar with the sociopolitical dynamics of the Vietnam protests, but my understanding is that the broader public did not look favorably on them despite the public later accepting some of the talking points of the anti-war movement (though some of this could be one generation of elite replacing another). Given that blue collar or "working class" Americans vastly outnumbered those with a college education, anti-war sentiment was almost certainly enriched among the latter.
Hamid just identifies and describes what he believes is the phenomenon of oikophobia among the American left and provides a counterargument to this received position. There isn't a deep investigation of its origins, which would be pretty interesting. He does to some extent assert that it is a curdling of the healthy tendency towards self-criticism that is prevalent in Western thought, which would align with your point.
I'm somewhat inclined to believe that explicit rejection of American greatness/specialness is a core part of hard left political thought in America. To some extent, this is simply taking some dimension of the individualist and universalist principles of liberalism to an extreme. This is why there is a substantial degree of agreement on foreign policy between anti-imperial/war lefties and libertarians. Paleocons jump on board with many of these arguments too but for different reasons.
I also wonder if there disgust is tied up in it all. Like, a desire for purity that makes people lose their Brooklin accents or protest something morally repugnant over something more fundamentally problematic close-to-home. A thing I face in my community is a ton of (admittedly youthful) energy over Israel-Palestine while there are large numbers of homeless all around. Perhaps this is another facet of extremety: youth.
Love this!
This piece really made me think. It’s so true how we often look for ideal solutions when the reality is about navigating very real, imperfect choices. I often feel this when I'm practicing Pilates; even if a pose isnt perfect, you still strive for that core stability. It's about pragmatic strength, I guess, choosing the best path among the difficult ones.
It's funny, I kept reading "oikophobia" as "oinkophobia" - fear of oligarch pigs I guess?
Certainly how Chomsky would have read it haha
I wonder: in terms of oikophobia is a fear of unfulfilled potential partially to blame as well? Were the Vietnam War protests by the Boomer youth bulge both about taking the good fortune of their generation for granted while feeling the population pressure and the draft and so on and so forth? For instance, how many young, blue collar Americans protested the war on “Main Street” vs on college campuses?
I'm not deeply familiar with the sociopolitical dynamics of the Vietnam protests, but my understanding is that the broader public did not look favorably on them despite the public later accepting some of the talking points of the anti-war movement (though some of this could be one generation of elite replacing another). Given that blue collar or "working class" Americans vastly outnumbered those with a college education, anti-war sentiment was almost certainly enriched among the latter.
Hamid just identifies and describes what he believes is the phenomenon of oikophobia among the American left and provides a counterargument to this received position. There isn't a deep investigation of its origins, which would be pretty interesting. He does to some extent assert that it is a curdling of the healthy tendency towards self-criticism that is prevalent in Western thought, which would align with your point.
I'm somewhat inclined to believe that explicit rejection of American greatness/specialness is a core part of hard left political thought in America. To some extent, this is simply taking some dimension of the individualist and universalist principles of liberalism to an extreme. This is why there is a substantial degree of agreement on foreign policy between anti-imperial/war lefties and libertarians. Paleocons jump on board with many of these arguments too but for different reasons.