In some ways it was wrong, but more in the sense that astronomers working within the paradigm of an earth centric solar system were wrong. Not dumb as such, just working with a flawed toolkit.
What I'm getting at is the liberal trend to view evil as either stupid or insane whereas Kissinger is neither.
I mean, his analysis comes up with it being a bad idea but probably for different reasons than others. I see the growing possibility of nuclear war and the suffering of countless innocents as a bad thing and a good reason not to pour petrol on the fire. He sees Russia as getting closer to China as the reason not to do so.
yeah, that's fair. some of the ideas he's espoused were completely batshit, but he definitely isn't any different functionally from your average technocrat, he was just better at saying/doing what people wanted in order to get access to the levers of power.
A lot of this stems from the liberal idea that if someone's evil then they're also gonna be stupid. You can see it with Trump, Bush mk. 2 etc....
The problem we have with Kissinger isn't that his analysis of things was dumb. It's that he used it for greatest evil he could.
his analysis was also dumb, but in a completely standard liberal way.
In some ways it was wrong, but more in the sense that astronomers working within the paradigm of an earth centric solar system were wrong. Not dumb as such, just working with a flawed toolkit.
What I'm getting at is the liberal trend to view evil as either stupid or insane whereas Kissinger is neither.
I mean, his analysis comes up with it being a bad idea but probably for different reasons than others. I see the growing possibility of nuclear war and the suffering of countless innocents as a bad thing and a good reason not to pour petrol on the fire. He sees Russia as getting closer to China as the reason not to do so.
yeah, that's fair. some of the ideas he's espoused were completely batshit, but he definitely isn't any different functionally from your average technocrat, he was just better at saying/doing what people wanted in order to get access to the levers of power.