Re: The Ontological Incoherence of American Imperial Exceptionalism Archived Message
Posted by John Monro on February 25, 2023, 12:39 am, in reply to "The Ontological Incoherence of American Imperial Exceptionalism"
When articles are titled "The Ontological Incoherence of American Imperial Exceptionalism" I know I'm going to have trouble reading it. When I find that it is 5,375 words long, it confirms that impression. I have glanced through it. There's an unnecessary prolixity and refuge in high blown language (which I acknowledge may be a response to the article he's critiquing) that is a hostage to possible irrelevance in the public sphere. When I write an opinion to my local newspaper, I am restricted to 200 words. It can at times be a frustrating limit, but by goodness, it is a valuable exercise in brevity and cogency. So to try to digest an article 25 times as long, is a task a bit beyond me, when I have other things to do, such attempting the Guardian crossword. There is real worth in this article, however deconstructing in detail the Moeini article in UnHeard ( https://unherd.com/2023/02/is-the-west-escalating-the-ukraine-war/ ) might be an enjoyable academic distraction, but William Schryver might have done much better to have condensed his own opinion in simpler language in an article of 1,000 words or less. Perhaps all you really need to read are the last three paragraphs (along with the opening summary in the original UnHeard article referred to above) Moeini concludes his treatise by musing that “unless Moscow is provided with a reasonable off-ramp that recognises Russia’s status as a regional power with its own existential imperatives of strategic and ontological security”, the world stands on the brink of a nuclear holocaust. He correctly fears a nuclear calamity, but misattributes the source of the risk. It is the empire that desperately needs an off-ramp at this point. The imperial potentates imagined up for themselves a world in which they commanded the sole “great power” on the planet. In casually dismissing the relative strength of the civilizational powers whom they have converted into mortal foes — Russia, China, and Persia — they have now consigned western civilization to an ontological and existential crisis of their own creation. In this regard, I cannot fault the logic.
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