Contradictions Left and Right

One of the best essay’s I’ve read in a long time was “The Brazilianization of the World” by Alex Hochuli.

Published in the American Affairs Journal, Hochuli talks about how the political and socioeconomic arrangements of the Brazil are increasing being seen in the rest of the world. He articulately yet bluntly illustrates how “hollowed-out state capacities, political confusion, cronyism, conspiratorial thinking, and trust deficits have exposed the crumbling legitimacy that now makes rich and powerful states look like banana republics.”

Hochuli’s essay is full of impactful quotes, but the one below stuck with me the most:

Precisely the same mismatch of ideas and reality is now being found in modern times. ‘Conservatives’ encourage the forces that destroy things worth conserving (say, the family); liberalism means defending the illiberalism of surveillance apparatuses; hyper-individualism winds up reifying essentialist conceptions of race (such that group belonging is treated as logically prior to the individual person); the Left is increasingly the party of the highly educated and well-heeled.

Though I don’t fully agree which every part of this passage (I have some thoughts on the “hyper-individualism winds up reifying essentialist conceptions of race” line, but won’t harp on it in this essay), the criticisms of both…