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The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr

A densely written, difficult book, but very much worth reading. Predictive (almost prophetic you could say) of many of the struggles the USA faces now, nearly 70 years later. See, for example, the ugly ironies of modern culture wars, the invisible ironies of modern censorship, and saddest of all, the ironic struggle of working and middle classes under our technology overlords and government elites who, under the guise of "helping" us, increasingly control what we see, what we can say, and what we can do.

Niebuhr also points out in powerful ways the irony of "the pursuit of happiness" and how it places the individual in opposition to the collective, and how it leads ultimately to a vapid and vulgar culture.

The more powerful we have become as a nation, the less we are masters of our destiny. Niebuhr points out, again ironically, that we were a far greater master of our nation's destiny in the early decades of our history than we are now. When Niebuhr wrote this book in the early 1950s, we were totally unable to control the spread of international communism, we were unable to do anything about the USSR's complete hegemony over all of Eastern Europe, we stood helplessly by as China fell to Communism, and we were about to begin, with the conflict in Korea, the first of an endless list of "endless wars."

Today, you could argue we are more "powerful" than ever, yet far from controlling our destiny, we can hardly control ourselves at all. We bound from endless war to endless war across the Middle East, accomplishing nothing except adding strength and number to peoples who hate us (with good reason). And learning nothing: we further extended our wars into the domain of international trade, engaging in trade policies that ultimately gutted our own labor market, depressed our own workers' wages, and led to the export of most of our manufacturing base.

With all the power that we supposedly have, we remain nothing more than a "pitiful helpless giant" (to borrow the 1970s phrase from Richard Nixon), "living in an age of anarchy, both abroad and at home."

As individuals we are no less impotent. We allow our childish sociocultural tribalisms and our ill-informed ideological disputes to interfere with family, friendships and living a friendly, healthy life. And we always think we're right and the other guy is wrong! Another painful irony.

Finally, this book brought home to me, indirectly, the utter pointlessness of talking about politics. Keep in mind: Decades ago, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote a profound and deeply insightful book illustrating ironic hypocrisies throughout our political system. Today, no one reads this book (I only discovered it thanks to an obscure footnote in another obscure book that no one has ever read), and no one has even heard of Reinhold Niebuhr. Yet he's one of the 20th Century's most important philosopher-theologians! 

So why would we think there is any merit in offering our own unread, unremembered and ill-informed thoughts on politics in the postmodern era, which at their best take the form of virtue signalling and snarky putdowns on heavily-censored social media sites?

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