The Worst is Yet to Come

Graeme Wood, staff writer for The Atlantic, joins The Remnant for the first time to ...

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Graeme Wood, staff writer for The Atlantic, joins The Remnant for the first time to discuss the future of the Taliban, the psychology of extremists, and why, depressingly, America’s political situation may only get crazier. For the sake of levity, Jonah is also sure to ask about Graeme’s experiences hitchhiking across Afghanistan and bootlegging liquor in Iraq, as well as the quirks of being bilingual. Tune in additionally for an update on Jonah’s book collection, but stick around for your periodical reminder not to immanentize the eschaton.

Show Notes:

– Graeme’s author page at The Atlantic

– Graeme on the future of ISIS

– Graeme on understanding the Taliban

– The overrepresentation of converts among jihadists

– Evangelicals who don’t go to church

– Eric Voegelin’s New Science of Politics

– Is the Muslim world ignoring the plight of the Uyghurs?

– Graeme’s profile of Peter Turchin

– The great man theory of history

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Comments (38)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    Very good show, with a genuinely interesting guest.

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    Antebellum Whig

    This was a fantastic conversation

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  3. Avatar photo
    Angie

    Thanks Jonah, and interesting guy and I learned a lot

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    1. Avatar photo
      Angie


      "an" not and...#editbutton

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  4. Jason Runyan

    WTF? "I'm not defending MBS, but..."? He had a man chopped into pieces because of his words. Will you not be defending Vladimir Putin next? He kills dissidents too? The Taliban, they also kill dissidents, do we give them a pass? I could see you making that argument for President Duterte who kills drug dealers, which is also wrong, but he is killing criminals. MBS kills people for talking (like Putin). I don't get it?

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  5. Bill Farrand

    The description of what Peter Turchin is doing made him sound like a real-life Hari Seldon from Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels. I think one of the points from Seldon's fictional science of psychohistory might apply to Turchin's work in that Seldon was explicit that psychohistory could only predict broad future trends. Admittedly, that's fiction, but it does have the ring of truth in terms of what mathematical modeling might be able to do at some point in predicting human events.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Fascinating discussion. Wood has a number of very interesting insights into the Middle East.

    The beetle-model prediction stuff leaves me a bit cold. I’d seen Wood’s article in the Atlantic a while back about that. I find it lacking. I had a lot of problems with the article at the time, or at least holes in the theory that the modeler was proposing. This discussion of the whole thing was much better and cleared up a bit for me. I appreciated Wood’s willingness to recognize limitations with the theory. Reminded me a bit of Foundation and then Second Foundation (eclectic individuals can throw off the models). Loved Asimov’s books as a kid, but I doubt any sort of psychohistory can ever predict the future with any degree of accuracy.

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  7. Avatar photo
    Tracie

    Deeply appreciated the deep dive into the Taliban, and the distinction with ISIS. We might be through with Afghanistan, but it's not finished with us. Wish all media commentary would take a more anthropological approach to these issues instead of projecting completely insufficient domestic
    (i.e. identity) American politics on to this very complex, very real situation. History will always strike back.

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  8. Avatar photo
    Eric "Otter" Stratton

    Killer interview, I’ve listened three times so far. It’s a wealth of good weedy information.

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  9. Avatar photo
    J. Eric

    Graeme Wood! The Remnant discussions continue to amaze.
    Thanks

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    1. Avatar photo
      James Spiller

      He is very good!

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  10. Joe Curtis

    I believe Turchin's on to something: "elite overproduction." In fact, I'm sure of it.

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    1. ExploreOK

      Could be, but seems eerily similar to the fixed economic pie argument.

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    2. Photo of Jonah Goldbergcircle-angle-nib
      Jonah Goldberg vertical-nib Author

      Yeah, I agree. I wrote something adjacent to this stuff here. https://gfile.thedispatch.com/p/royalty-real-and-imagined?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo0MzUwODMyLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozMzUyNjI1MSwiXyI6ImREUlVaIiwiaWF0IjoxNjMwNzAxODI2LCJleHAiOjE2MzA3MDU0MjYsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0xNzgxOSIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.PTPz-vqOjdU08ifGImRl8iWhfcjgilFhkOZ5ZgGw4t0

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      1. Avatar photo
        James Spiller

        Incidentally, if you haven’t read or seen Arcadia, the best play produced in the last three centuries, there are currently two productions on Audible. I’d recommend the BBC’s Stoppard Radio Plays one, since it comes with the obvious other things. Mostly highly relevant to your interests, but particularly Arcadia, maybe Rock N Roll, about the Prague Spring, the nature of collaboration, and British tankies, and Professional Foul, also about the nature of collaboration.

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        1. Avatar photo
          Seth B

          Arcadia is a damned fine play. Your characterization of it as the best in the past three centuries struck me initially as excessive, but... you know, at least as far as my own personal pantheon is concerned, I'm not sure what I'd place above it. The only real contenders would, I think, be some of Beckett's plays, but holding up such unremitting visions of bleakness as "the best" seems wrong - except in certain moods, in which it seems exactly right.

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      2. Avatar photo
        James Spiller

        I feel like it’s worth noting that Turchin is definitely a crazy person, though. In that article he says that he identifies with Hari Seldon and with Thomesina Coverly, two omniscient beings. It should go without saying that if you have grounds to support your belief that you’re uniquely able to predict the universe and want to do that, your career path is probably not going to be summed up by your non-transformative lectures on Bark Beetles.

        And worse than that, he apparently didn’t pay much attention to one of those two characters; he thinks her research was on grouse (that was a different character in the play) and that she gave up on it because it was hard not because she (spoiler, but not really; the modern characters reveal the end of the early characters pretty early on) died in a fire.

        Even if you were super into beetles, putting just a little of your time into earning billions on Wall Street would probably be a more effective way of maximizing your knowledge of beetles by expanding your research budget than spending 100% of your time on the beetles. Delusions of grandeur combined with extremely poor literary analysis (like, middle school failing grade poor) and a theory that, as Jonah notes, mostly restates previous advocates for class struggle based understanding combines into something of a type.

        Those previous scholars were brilliant, but not everyone who rephrases brilliant ideas is worth reading.

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