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Notes -
FWIW, the left also used to be constantly looking for excuses to start the revolution, where if not here when if not now. This has admittedly faded in the last decades as the left attained mainstream cultural dominance and seemed to no longer need drastic revolution to achieve its goals, but I suppose with their recent setbacks and the general heating-up of the world and the Right growing louder, we're getting back there. Polarization leading to political violence is, as far as a quick look at history tells me, the rather natural course of things. It will either continue to simmer until the underlying causes are obviated by the changing times, or escalate until one side destroys the other. But nobody will turn back the clock. We won't - neither the Americans nor us Europeans - find our way back to some more cooperative state of affairs in which we sudddenly realize that the guys on the other side want the same thing and the whole conflict is just an unfortunate mistake. The 20th century has taught us enough, I think, about ideological conflict resolution. The nazis didn't give up after realizing that actually, there was a reasonable compromise to be made with their neighbors. The soviets didn't release their vassal states because of successful arguments in favor of national independence. China didn't moderate its communism until several generations after eradicating all opposition.
I am, as usual, not saying that this is a good or a desirable thing. Instead, doomsaying. Things will either remain bad for a long time until civilization itself changes, or get worse until dramatic and destructive things happen. I don't think the threshold for the latter has been passed by now, or that it will be soon - there's still a lot of endurable bad times between now and then. And maybe if we manage to endure for long enough, we'lll all be dead of old age and hitherto unborn generations can open up entirely new lines of conflict that make them forget about ours.
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