I don't think it's an "or" question. In some ways, we've progressed. Individual liberty, for example—ten years ago, gay marriage was inconceivable in the U.S., and no one anywhere was talking about ending the drug war.
In other ways, I feel that the discourse is shutting out all sorts of possibilities. Say what you will about the excesses of the Soviet Union and the terror of the Cold War, but having a visible alternative to capitalism, however flawed, kept a strange sort of balance. Now there's an economic consensus even in the midst of handwringing about poverty, and it's a fundamentally flawed and evil consensus.
I don't know if you can say one kind of death is worse than another. I'd personally choose a bullet in the head over starvation, and the thing with outright mass horror is that it is much easier to condemn and overcome than systemic, slow-moving horror. Line 21,000 up against the wall and shoot them, and there will be widespread outcry. Allow 21,000 children a day to die for the sake of a fucked-up economic theory and it's business as usual, out of our hands and unpreventable. Is economic apartheid worse than political apartheid? I don't know, but the worst massacre of black South Africans since the end of political apartheid happened in 2012.
no subject
In other ways, I feel that the discourse is shutting out all sorts of possibilities. Say what you will about the excesses of the Soviet Union and the terror of the Cold War, but having a visible alternative to capitalism, however flawed, kept a strange sort of balance. Now there's an economic consensus even in the midst of handwringing about poverty, and it's a fundamentally flawed and evil consensus.
I don't know if you can say one kind of death is worse than another. I'd personally choose a bullet in the head over starvation, and the thing with outright mass horror is that it is much easier to condemn and overcome than systemic, slow-moving horror. Line 21,000 up against the wall and shoot them, and there will be widespread outcry. Allow 21,000 children a day to die for the sake of a fucked-up economic theory and it's business as usual, out of our hands and unpreventable. Is economic apartheid worse than political apartheid? I don't know, but the worst massacre of black South Africans since the end of political apartheid happened in 2012.