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Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Jun 28

Some thoughts on Zohran Mamdani’s victory

Many are trying to explain his success with some accidental factors such as his “personal charisma”, Cuomo's weakness etc

Still, I think there may be some fundamental factors here. A longue durée shift, and a very profound one

1. Public outrage does not work anymore

If you look at Zohran, he is calm, constructive, and rarely raises his voice. I think one thing that Mamdani - but almost no one else in the American political space is getting - is that the public is getting tired of the outrage

Outrage, anger, righteous indignation have all been the primary drivers of American politics for quite a while

For a while, this tactics worked

Indeed, when everyone around is polite, and soft (and insincere), freaking out was a smart thing to do. It could help you get noticed

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Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Jun 28

https://twitter.com/nonregemesse/status/1937971530765635644

People don’t really understand causal links. We pretend we do (“X results in Y”). But we actually don’t. Most explanations (= descriptions of causal structures) are fake.

https://twitter.com/nonregemesse/status/1937971530765635644

Theory: X -> Y

Reality:

There may be no connection between X and Y at all. The cause is just misattributed.

Or, perhaps, X does indeed result in Y. but only under a certain (and unknown!) set of conditions that remains totally and utterly opaque to us. So, X->Y is only a part of the equation

And so on

I like to think of a hypothetical Stone Age farmer who started farming, and it worked amazingly, and his entire community adopted his lifestyle, and many generations followed it and prospered and multiplied, until all suddenly wiped out in a new ice age

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Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Jun 26

Some thoughts on Zohran Mamdani's victory:

1. Normative Islamophobia that used to define the public discourse being the most acceptable form of racial & ethnic bigotry in the West, is receding. It is not so much dying as rather - failing to replicate. It is not that the old people change their views as that the young do not absorb their prejudice any longer.

In fact, I incline to think it has been failing to replicate for a while, it is just that we have not been paying attention

Again, the change of vibe does not happen at once. The Muslim scare may still find (some) audience among the more rigid elderly, who are not going to change their views. But for the youth, it is starting to sound as archaic as the Catholic scare of know nothings

Out of date

2. What is particularly interesting regarding Mamdani's victory, is his support base. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that its core is comprised of the young (and predominantly white) middle classes, with a nearly equal representation of men and women

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Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Jun 21

What does Musk vs Trump affair teach us about the general patterns of human history? Well, first of all it shows that the ancient historians were right. They grasped something about nature of politics that our contemporaries simply can’t.

Let me give you an example. The Arab conquest of Spain

According to a popular medieval/early modern interpretation, its primary cause was the lust of Visigoth king Roderic. Aroused by the beautiful daughter of his vassal and ally, count Julian, he took advantage of her

Disgruntled, humiliated Julian allied himself with the Arabs and opens them the gates of Spain.

Entire kingdom lost, all because the head of state caused a personal injury to someone important.

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Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Jun 19

On the impending war with Iran

One thing you need to understand about wars is that very few engage into the long, protracted warfare on purpose. Almost every war of attrition was planned and designed as a short victorious blitzkrieg

And then everything went wrong

Consider the Russian war in Ukraine. It was not planned as a war. It was not thought of as a war. It was planned as a (swift!) regime change allowing to score a few points in the Russian domestic politics. And then everything went wrong

It would not be an exaggeration to say that planning a short victorious war optimised for the purposes of domestic politics is how you *usually* end up in a deadlock. That is the most common scenario of how it happens, practically speaking

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Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Jun 18

Hard to swallow pill

Global politics are usually framed in terms of kindergarten discourse (“good guys” vs “bad guys”) with an implication that you must provide “good guys” with boundless and unconditional support

BUT

Unconditional support is extremely corrupting, and turns the best of the best into the really nasty guys, and relatively fast

Part of the reason is that neither “bad” nor “good” guys are in fact homogenous, and present a spectrum of opinions and personalities. Which means that all of your designated “good guys” include a fair share of really, really nasty guys, almost by definition.

Purely good movements do not really exist

That is a major reason why limitless, unconditional, unquestioning support causes such a profound corrupting effect upon the very best movement. First, because that movement is not all
that purely good as you imagine (neither movement is),

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