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If We Don’t Quit Oil, We’ll Get More War and Climate Change
Timothy Snyder: Political ideas matter
Ezra Klein interviewed Tim Snyder (author of The Road to Unfreedom) on this episode of the Ezra Klein Show podcast: “Timothy Snyder on the Myths That Blinded the West to Putin’s Plans” (March 15, 2022).
They discussed Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine as a clear illustration of why political ideas matter.
If Ideas Don’t Matter, How Would That Affect Our Behavior?
“The politics of inevitability,” Snyder says,
“assures you that whatever the good things are, they’re being brought about automatically by some invisible hand, right? The market is like Mom. You know, it’s going to take care of you with that invisible hand. And you don’t have to think about what the values might be, what you actually desire. You lose the habit, right? You never perform the mental gymnastics of stretching to figure out what a better world might actually be because you think you’re on track to that better world no matter what happens.”
Political ideas that once felt “thrilling” eventually devolve into a “tedium of implementation, conflict, regulation, et cetera” because we are no longer creating but merely maintaining the nations and…
