Goodbye to the good guy

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It is strange that the European reaction to be abandoned by Donald Trump was a buffalize. After all, Trump has long indicated that he praised Vladimir Putin and felt unexpected to NATO. Yet Plan for “peace” European officials in Ukraine seemed shocked.

This is partial because they expected the best so that they could avoid preparing for the worst. But it is also because they did not think the world has worked this way: an invader attacks a country that thinks of its own business and is rewarded. The West of our generation does not expect bad boys to win, because we became believers in progress. This belief has given us a false conceptual frame for reading the world.

Western belief in progress was a mixture of Judo-Christian morality and enlightened factors. Wick condemns the wicked, people are intelligent and scientific progress improves life. My 90 -year -old aunt may have been injured due to his brother’s death in 1939, but the drug was eliminating the tragedy. Our films and fairy tales have strengthened this optimism. Good guys won the shoot out, and Cinderella later lives happily.

The auspicious folk theory of history seems to be confirmed by real Western history. The story of our central modern morality was a victory against Hitler, then the Histor of the West, on the basis of an international order built by the United States, Good Sheriff.

As Napoleon said, “To understand the guy you need to know what he was on earth when he was 20 years old.” When I was 20 years old, a global progressive moment put me a permanent cognitive bias toward the optimist. Within November 1989 to three months, Eastern European Communism fell and Nelson Mandela went out of jail. Freedom was conquered, because people wanted freedom. It felt like the law of history.

The “progressive” label itself refers to the progress of faith. Barack Obama, the latest progressive politician like Martin Luther King Jr., believed, “The stress of the moral universe is long, but it is leaning towards justice.” His election-winning slogan was, “Yes, we can.”

Faith in progress lasted for years. I wrote in In 2014: “People are getting more educated, rich and internationally connected and are more likely to be in democracy. These factors tend to reduce violence. In fact, according to some definitions, there has been no inter -state war since the 21st. “I wrote soon:” There are probably progress in history. ”

I now suspect that it was mostly western who believed in progress. A disappointing outlook prevails in the world’s unfortunate region and the lower western social class. It spread quickly. Russian and American Children’s Studies under the leadership of Amy Halberstadt at North Carolina State University and Yulia Chantsova.com at Georgitown University have been found “The text of Russian book has often mentioned anger and sorrow than the US book”. Russian images depicted “anger and more frequent fear”.

Some Historical Tihasik disappointments believe that the World Banker, Elite Pedophils, CIA Plotters, At City Conspiracy are governed by the conspiracy. Religious disappointments believe that this world is a valley of tears, rewards in the Hereafter. Another Frusty Conclude on the basis of their countries’ experiences that good guys can be correct in history instead of winning.

Trump became the first successful American politician in the Historical Tihasik disappointment voice. He blamed the elite conspiracy to destroy the US. In geopolitics, he deny the Good-Guy theory and believes in power. Russia is stronger than Ukraine and follows everything else from it.

I’m confusingly warm up to the historical Tihasik disappointment. There are even limited values ​​of scientific progress. We now have a vaccine against Ham, but also a US Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Who spread doubts about the vaccine.

As a technology, this century it has probably made our lives worse. We are now on average about seven hours a day online, alone, growing atoms, snatching privacy, absorbing bad words. And think about other technical “progress”. The truth is, the vaccines have Covid -19, but the CIA has decided that the epidemic probably started with a Chinese lab hanging. Processed foods ignite the global obesity. The United States stops protecting its allies and the nuclear spread can worse. After all, burning carbon technology has caused a type of treatment to be treated.

Raising in Russian kids stories helped us understand all this.

Email at Simon simmon.kuper@ft.com

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