caitri | A Book a Day: Twilight of Democracy

Every day I'm sharing an image of a book I like. To be honest I'm not sure if I actually like this book, but I enjoyed reading it and I just finished it, so it's on my brain. As I said to a friend recently, it's kind of the contemporary flip-side to Milosz's The Captive Mind; rather than being about writers who live under authoritarianism, this study is about the ones who live in democracies but advocate for authoritarianism. It's a three-part essay that looks at the Poland, Britain, and America of the last twenty years and the journalists and "intellectuals"* that have been working to create the ladder of chaos, the better to climb off it. (Also I think it's a GD shame she never actually references "ladder of chaos" and thank GRRM, but at least she didn't do a Bolton and knock-off LMM you know.) She also uses some conservative dog-whistles regarding "identity politics" and "cancel culture" that were a useful reminder to the reader that the enemy of my enemy is not my friend. It's a hyper-specific study that was finished as covid was starting to settle in over the world, but given the massive protest movements that have erupted since May it already feels outdated. Still, it is some food for thought.

*This is the term that Applebaum consistently uses beyond her preferred term of clercs, but I just don't think the term really works in our modern mediascape.