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The world as it is by ben rhodes7/4/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() And citing a series of examples, like an American citizen being detained and tortured in an Egyptian prison, a young Hungarian journalist observing “there is no reality, there’s no facts”, and Putin poisoning Alexei Navalny “because he could”, Rhodes struggles to reconcile his own role in creating, or at least failing to prevent, the world he finds. ![]() Based on a four-year, cross-continent journey, he explores politics from Russia and Hungary to China and Hong Kong to trace the route from the end of the Cold War-a moment of American hegemony and democratic ascendancy-to the current age of Putin, Orban, and the Chinese Communist Party, all of which he views as direct and credible challenges to an American-led world order. It is this proximity to power, especially during a historic presidency, that makes Rhodes’ second book, After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made, worth considering.Īfter the Fall centers on an author grappling with a reality-in America and across the world-that has shaken his faith in the “happy democratic endings” he and Obama once held as an ultimate goal. ![]() Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign undoubtedly inspired a movement of young progressives across America, and few believed in the sprawling idealism more than Ben Rhodes, a young New Yorker who ultimately rose to become Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor. ![]()
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