Colombo

Waking up to the news of a series of bombings that had killed hundreds in Sri Lanka, I felt deeply saddened. As the world becomes more peaceful overall, the brutality of such acts becomes even harder to comprehend. From my own visit to Sri Lanka five years earlier, I remember the visible military presence and the constant checkpoints – but also a sense of optimism, as the country was finally leaving its civil war behind.

In the May issue of The Atlantic, there is a long article about Richard Holbrooke entitled “Elegy for the American Century”. While I remain cautiously optimistic that the United States will ultimately find its way again, there are, of course, many reasons for concern. Beyond the obvious ones, I find myself reflecting on how dark and disoriented parts of the contemporary Left’s worldview have become – something that was on full display at WPSA. Talk of not wanting to have children because of climate change may be an extreme example, but there is a more general sense of malaise and post-colonial self-hatred that has been allowed to completely overshadow the great possibilities of this century.

As the Left has drifted from its original emancipatory vision and replaced it with a politics centred primarily on grievance and identity, it risks not only failing to take meaningful responsibility for historical wrongdoings, but also failing to articulate something constructive for the future.