Katha Pollitt and Andrew Sullivan
Dear Andrew,
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StumbleUponYou didn't just accuse me of complicity in murder, did you? If we want to get into evil empires and who supports them, conservatives have a great deal to answer for: South African apartheid and other anti-democratic regimes around the globe--and don't forget the genocidal Khmer Rouge, supported, not by Russia, but by the US govt! Things are not so simple as us-good, them-bad. And there are more than two positions. I didn't defend the Soviet Union while it existed, so why should I do so now? Soviet-style Communism is not my idea of "the left."
I agree with you about Tony Blair's Thatcherite propensities. Although I suppose British voters don't see it that way, or they wouldn't have delivered the Tories (your guys, as I remember) such a smashing defeat. It strikes me, by the way, that you have given yourself the heads-I-win-tails-you-lose position. If the Tories had defeated Blair, you would have taken it as their vindication and the final trouncing of the Left. Faced with the fact that your side in fact lost the election, you simply declare Blair an honorary Tory. But what about the real Tories?
I may be wrong, of course, but I don't think Russia is on its way to solid prosperity, more like third-world extremes of rich and poor. I think what's going on now is basically the looting of the country's resources by an elite of ex-communists, speculators and mafiosi. Although maybe, when things get bad enough, Nike can come in and built some sweatshops there!
You know, for generations Communists told themselves the sufferings imposed by their system were temporary, necessary sacrifices--usually to be made by someone else--on the way to a better world. It seems to me you are making the same argument on behalf of unbridled market capitalism, and with the same self-exception: it's always easy to be stoical on other people's behalf! Do you have a time limit in mind for your experiment?
Talk to you soon,
Katha
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