"The
Atlantic" and "Harper's" are both iconic magazines that are responsible
for promoting the careers of many prominent writers. I have been reading
them for years. They also both have a profile of John Kerry in their
December issue. David Rohde did a individualist profile of Kerry,
lauding him as an "activist" diplomat shaking up the stuffy old foreign
policy establishment in "The Atlantic." In "Harper's,"
Andrew Cockburn rejects this sort on analysis completely and challenges
the idea that there is such a thing as foreign policy at all. Kerry
comes off as a power hungry but powerless hack who owes his position to
back room politics much more than shrewd determination. Cockburn was
actually communicating original thoughts and I turned each page with a
new morsel of knowledge. Rohde's fluff would have fit nicely after a top
ten vacation spot list on Delta's in-flight magazine. Reading the whole
thing felt like choking down sugarless oatmeal. With a few notable
exceptions, this is a good representation of the current trajectory of
each magazine.
It seems like no one outside of the “American Conservative” is thinking about the US as a declining empire. Contrary to what some thought, Trump has no interest in scaling back the US to a “normal” country. That wasn’t what MAGA meant. Quite the opposite, Trump and his goons think the post war international order isn’t US-centric enough. This is where Trump and the neoconservatives find common ground.
What’s more interesting to me is the Democratic Party, and the liberal/left in general. The Dems are historically the war party, and they have renewed that patriotic passion in the Trump era. The shameful treatment of Ilhan Omar is a good example. This charge of her being “anti-Semitic” for questioning Israel’s influence in US foreign policy is disingenuous and disgraceful. (People are acting like we didn’t already go through this silly “debate” when Walt and Mearsheimer’s book came out over a decade ago. It’s infuriating. These are also the same people who can’t go a half an hour witho…
What’s more interesting to me is the Democratic Party, and the liberal/left in general. The Dems are historically the war party, and they have renewed that patriotic passion in the Trump era. The shameful treatment of Ilhan Omar is a good example. This charge of her being “anti-Semitic” for questioning Israel’s influence in US foreign policy is disingenuous and disgraceful. (People are acting like we didn’t already go through this silly “debate” when Walt and Mearsheimer’s book came out over a decade ago. It’s infuriating. These are also the same people who can’t go a half an hour witho…
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