Albert Kim
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Albert Kim
@albertkim314.bsky.social
300 followers 1.8K following 3 posts
Science & Philosophy Enthusiast
History of Economic Development
Democratic Socialist-Market Socialist Planning
Critic of U.S. Foreign Policy & Epistemic Internationalism
Unabashed fan of Manga & Anime
SC BW, SSBM, Rivals 2, GG R+
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Reposted by Albert Kim
nickkodama.bsky.social
One of the interesting arguments from the book is that in Japan, apologies triggered a domestic backlash from the right that overshadowed any attempts at reconciliation and ended up making things worse.
August 28, 2025 at 8:13 PM
Reposted by Albert Kim
ryanlcooper.com
this is why Britain hates Kier Starmer
"Popularism" as a project can be understood narrowly as a very instrumental — some might say cynical — approach to contesting elections. But I think there's often a broader and more deeply misguided vision behind it, a conceit that expert social science, relying on institutions like public polling, can supplant or circumvent or supersede messy, corrupt politics. This is the homonculous theory of democracy. It disdains the partisan and polemic, in favor of scientific rationality. It imagines there's some "truer" procedure that we can measure our democracy against. It's a project fundamentally in denial of the human condition — that we fundamentally cannot know how collectively to act or even how we "want" collectively to act, yet we must nevertheless act, together, in time and in the world. We must grope in the darkness to invent institutions, and then only afterwards see whether they function well or poorly, and do our best to adjust. Representative democracy requires ideologues, sincere partisans, people genuinely committed to a way of going forward. That renders it possible for elections to constitute a representative body of such partisans to deliberate on affairs of state and make laws. When political parties reshape themselves on the basis of polling, it renders the whole process nonsensical, a kind of infinite regress. It deprives the public of meaningful choice in the name of giving it what it wants.
August 26, 2025 at 2:29 PM