Wojtek, my shiny new fantasy is that you refrain from using yet another thread as a hobby horse for your obsessive compulsive fixation on bashing people for doing simple things such as driving (which isn't a moral failing) and devising ways of making their lives more difficult. Gar's ideas should be critiqued on their technical merits: this isn't at all what you're doing.
Really, these insertions of yours are a form of hijacking. I didn't understand this before but now see it clearly.
Very tiresome.
[WS:] Let me remind you that this thread started with hijacking the issue of climate change for attacks on "northern elites" and kindred demons erected by populist demagogues in developing countries. What is good for the goose is good for the gander, no? Or is that if "we" do it, it is righteous and justified, but if "them" do it, it is evil and reprehensible?
As a point of clarification, I do not argue that people doing simple things like driving is moral failing. In fact, I am trying to understand the mechanisms why they do it (I may get it wrong, but that is a different story.) What irks me is populist demagoguery, and this is the object of my scorn. In other words, I am not criticizing people who do simple things like driving (I do it myself when I need to,) I am scornful of intellectual demagogues who shed crocodile tears over the "little men" of their choice. It is not about the people in real life - it is about the stories that turn people into moral characters.
Much attention on this list has been devoted to Christopher Hitchen's "betrayal" of the left. I do not know Mr. Hitchens, but I strongly suspect it was not a betrayal but a defection similar to that of East Germans jumping the wall when they become sick and tired of the bullshit spoon-fed to them in the "socialist paradise." Or perhaps I am projecting my own feelings on Mr. Hitchen's motives.
While we are at that, a personal comment. The imperialism, capitalism, poor people, working class and kindred stories that I hear from the left give me a profound sense of déjà vu. Unlike most of you, I was spoon-fed those stories in my previous life on the other side of the 'iron curtain.' And unlike most of you, I learned to regard these stories as shameless propaganda attempts and scape-goating of the outsiders to divert attention from the domestic problems and the ineptitude and corruption of local political elites. We Eastern European intellectuals used to laugh at star-eyed American lefties visiting our countries and earnestly (although inadvertently) repeating the same propaganda and party lines that we were spoon-fed by our own media. We knew better than that from our own experiences. Chris can probably attest the same about Russia as well.
That is why there are not that many Eastern European intellectuals on the left anymore. I am definitely in a small minority, subjected to the same derision when I talk to my former country men. But I am pretty much tired of the same old tropes repeated ad nauseam by the idealistic leftist intellectuals with little regard for what is actually going on the ground. So before you get tiresome of my objection, rants, and 'hijacking,' think how you would react if you emigrated to another country and were lectured by the natives about the virtues of the American enterprise and life style.
Wojtek