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From a new essay by Pankaj Mishra: "Covid-19 shattered what John Stuart Mill called ‘the deep slumber of a decided opinion’, forcing many to realise that they live in a broken society, with a carefully dismantled state."
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Kinda disappointed. Your well-chosen clippings suggested a better essay than it is. The thing reads as polished tedium to me, rehearsing tired left-liberal critiques with a generous slathering of evocative/affective prose substituting for novel arguments.
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My more indulgent take is that long-form essayists of political economy understandably return to their favorite themes. From J. Gray to ArundhatiR: ‘cause their ambition is different than a tech thinker. They seek to summarize the world, not explicate the details of its workings.
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"The moralising history of the modern world written by its early winners – the many Plato-to-Nato accounts of the global flowering of democracy, liberal capitalism and human rights – has long been in need of drastic revision."
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