As an in-person veteran of a few MSCs, including Putin's 2007 warning and McCain's "rebuttal" (?), this was very fun to read. You make great points for AOC to consider. I think advising Europe to focus on Europe is the best advice of all; lots of good stuff would come from that.
Assuming someone with a progressive vision for foreign policy is elected, where are all the do-ers going to come from—the technocrats that share this worldview?
There aren’t enough! This is something I’ve been noodling on for years with a few others. Social Democrats have no policy cadre. Progressive think tanks and NGOs are the places where the wonks will come from but there just aren’t that many. I was just telling a friend of mine in DC like two days ago that a progressive presidency would need a strategy just for dealing with the blob in addition to all the others
Well, how do we build the cadre? This project seems doomed if we find ourselves relying on ad hoc solutions after finally winning an election. I imagine the blob would resist even harder than they did back with MAGA 1.0. Seems like a crisis is the only thing capable of opening a path to this alternative world, but that only opens up possibilities. We’d still need to find enough likeminded people to do the unglamorous, bureaucratic work necessary to implement it all. Which I guess takes me full circle to my opening question.
I believe that electing a true progressive will never happen in the rather huge USA (a continental empire of many disparate parts) until there is a deep progressive democratic infrastructure in every locality, thousands of experienced political operatives, and thousands of policy people (what you call “technocrats”). They are the horses that pull the cart.
As an in-person veteran of a few MSCs, including Putin's 2007 warning and McCain's "rebuttal" (?), this was very fun to read. You make great points for AOC to consider. I think advising Europe to focus on Europe is the best advice of all; lots of good stuff would come from that.
Assuming someone with a progressive vision for foreign policy is elected, where are all the do-ers going to come from—the technocrats that share this worldview?
There aren’t enough! This is something I’ve been noodling on for years with a few others. Social Democrats have no policy cadre. Progressive think tanks and NGOs are the places where the wonks will come from but there just aren’t that many. I was just telling a friend of mine in DC like two days ago that a progressive presidency would need a strategy just for dealing with the blob in addition to all the others
Well, how do we build the cadre? This project seems doomed if we find ourselves relying on ad hoc solutions after finally winning an election. I imagine the blob would resist even harder than they did back with MAGA 1.0. Seems like a crisis is the only thing capable of opening a path to this alternative world, but that only opens up possibilities. We’d still need to find enough likeminded people to do the unglamorous, bureaucratic work necessary to implement it all. Which I guess takes me full circle to my opening question.
Working on it! But unlikely to be ready for ’28, which is probably the last last last chance to right the ship
I believe that electing a true progressive will never happen in the rather huge USA (a continental empire of many disparate parts) until there is a deep progressive democratic infrastructure in every locality, thousands of experienced political operatives, and thousands of policy people (what you call “technocrats”). They are the horses that pull the cart.
I wonder if she’ll be reading Mark Fisher too :)