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Claire Berlinski @ClaireBerlinski
, 5 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
It was all very reassuring until you concluded that in fact our fate is "a slow, irrevocable politico-economic decline inflamed by angry identity politics. In other words, the fate of Yugoslavia."
I'm afraid I didn't. There's no "if" before, "None of this bodes well for our democracy, and the fate America faces isn’t Fort Sumter again, rather a slow, irrevocable politico-economic decline inflamed by angry identity politics ... " The "if" comes afterwards ...
But it follows the word "fate." So it just sort of falls off the page as, "I know no one wants to read such a bummer of a diagnosis, so fate be damned." You needed the word "risk," or to be more academic "the concern it makes sense to have."
"Fate" is just too loaded a word. Weird sisters; the Parcae; the Moirai; the Norns
God's will, nemesis, kismet, Predestination. "The oracle's prediction fated Oedipus to kill his father; not all his striving could change what would occur."
You follow "fate" with, "But, maybe not!" -- well, it's just the history and literary of the word: the reader screams "Don't do it, Caesar, don't!" -- but knows how this ends up: Caesar's toast and we're Yugoslavia.
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