The Diplomat is fascinating because it's a microcosm of how unprepared liberals are for this particular political moment. And I say this with a degree of affection, because I used to believe. Liberals get a bad rap on this website for being willing to compromise, for being useless...

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...for being conservative enablers, and all that. And look, 90s liberalism was solipsistic and selfish, but it was also fundamentally *optimistic.* Like, look, human are basically good and we're gonna figure this all out eventually and meet everyone's needs and save the world with Niceness.

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That requires a lot of head-in-the-sand-ness and not really listening and all that, and it enabled Republicans to play Lucy-with-the-football and make fools of Democrats over and over and over again, and we're still getting screwed over by it.

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But also: 90s liberals got roundly mocked for a lot of things they were kinda right about. Conservatives loved to mock "bleeding heart liberals" about "you think that criminals are just people who didn't get hugged enough as kids" is something I heard 900 variants of.

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but, like, on a population level they were kinda right about that? they were not even kinda, but fully absolutely right about the need for "entitlement" programs (that is, social safety nets)?

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