KLMNO
Outlook
SUNDAY, MAY 15 , 2022. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/OUTLOOK. SECTION B EZ BD K
INSIDE OUTLOOK
Why is the U.S. so good at
mistaken identity? B3The mystic political writer
known as “Putin’s brain.” B4INSIDE BOOK WORLD
An intimate look at George
Floyd’s life and legacy. B8Nine ladies who laughed while
making history. B6When warring cultures and distant poles are the
recurring metaphors for our politics, genteel calls for
moderation may seem quaint. When authoritarian
impulses are ascendant, wishing for self-restraint can
feel foolish, a denial of reality and an abdication of
responsibility.
But what if moderation and restraint — the
acceptance of limits in political life — are not just the
right thing, but really all that is left to try?
“We are now in the midst of the most sustained global assault on
liberal democratic values since the 1930s,” Gideon Rachman writes in
“The Age of the Strongman,” his survey of illiberal political leaders in
countries such as Brazil, China, Hungary, Russia, Turkey and, yes, the
United States. It is not exactly a novel account — the death-of-
democracy bookshelf is quite crowded — and it covers the greatest hits
of aspiring autocrats: the cults of personality, the us-vs.-them
populism, the disdain for law, the manipulation of racial and
xenophobic resentments. It is most intriguing, perhaps, for placing
one country, and one leader, virtually alone on the other side of the
fight. “A crucial question for the Biden era,” Rachman writes, “is
whether the new president will be able to restore the prestige of the
American liberal democratic model — and so halt the global march of
strongman politics.”
The question becomes even more crucial when that restoration
must take effect within the United States as well as beyond it, when
liberalism, the doctrine that limits the powers of government and
upholds the rights of individuals, is under assault not just by
competing ideologies but by those long living under its protection. In
“Liberalism and Its Discontents,” Francis Fukuyama restates the case
for liberalism even as he considers its critics on the nationalist right,
who despise its cultural and secularist manifestations, and on the
progressive left, who abhor its economic inequalities and its
privileging of individual over group identities. “The answer to these
discontents is not to abandon liberalism as such,” Fukuyama argues,
“but to moderate it.”
SEE LOZADA ON B5Carlos
LozadaAuthoritarianism
is surging. C an
liberal democracy
fight back?
SHANE CLUSKEY FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
A
fter I lost my only child more than 20
years ago, I told three lies over and over.
Yes, I’m fine , I said when people
asked how I was doing.
I said this in the first year because I was in
shock and didn’t have the words to begin to
describe what I felt. My son was 7 when I got
the phone call that he’d died unexpectedly
while visiting his grandparents. The fact I
wasn’t there to hold him in his last hours
haunted me.
I said it in the second year because by then
I’d instinctively absorbed the message that it’s
not culturally acceptable to continue to talk
about deep sadness more than a year after a
loss. It makes people uncomfortable. It makes
people feel they should be able to do some-
thing; it makes them feel helpless.
I said it year after year to convince others I
was okay. I said it to convince myself. It
worked, for the most part. Three years after
my son’s death, I went back to my job as a
journalist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I
smiled, laughed even. To the outside world, it
looked like I was “over it.” But I was living in
my own private snow globe. I avoided rela-
tionships, old and new.
The first lie was to protect others. The
second was to protect me.
Yes, I’m happy I’ve moved back , I said
when people asked about my return to Seattle
from California. I said it to deflect deeper
conversations about hard decisions. I said it
so I didn’t have to talk about why I moved, so
I didn’t have to utter the words: My son died.
My giggly little boy with eyes the color of
maple syrup, who loved trains, and T-ball, and
“101 Dalmatians.” My son, who was deaf and
helped me see both language and the world
around me in a brand-new way. My son, who
pressed his hand to mine when we signed I
SEE GRIEF ON B2
A sad debut
for ‘prolonged
grief disorder’
It’s what Carol Smith experienced
for years after her young son died.
As we pass 1 million covid deaths,
others are bound to suffer from i t.
Ukraine has surprised the world with its
ability to hold back Russian aggression.
Yet its success in doing so appears to be
prompting Western leaders to expand their
goals for the war in ways that may carry
extraordinary, underappreciated risk. The
earlier hope was that a robust Ukrainian
defense would ensure the country’s right to
exist as a sovereign and independent state
while minimizing the loss of territory in the
south and east. But now, many political and
military leaders are laying out much loftier
goals, backed by an unprecedented infusion of
military aid.
“Ukraine’s victory is a strategic imperative
for all of us,” British Foreign Secretary Liz
Truss recently proclaimed. “... We are dou-
bling down. We will keep going further and
faster to push Russia out of the whole of
Ukraine.” Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), who
traveled with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
(D-Calif.) to Kyiv, made a similar point: “The
United States is not interested in stalemates.
We are not interested in going back to the
status quo. The United States is in this to win
it.”
Talk of total victory aligns well with an-
other recently floated objective: an extended
bloodletting of the Russian army. Defense
Secretary Lloyd Austin asserted on April 25
that the United States wants “to see Russia
weakened to the degree that it can’t do the
kinds of things that it has done in invading
Ukraine.” And that fits with Joint Chiefs of
Staff Chairman Mark A. Milley’s prediction
that the war will turn into a “protracted
conflict... m easured in years.”
Yet crippling Russia’s military or expelling
Russia from Ukraine are significantly more
dangerous aims than preventing the further
loss of Ukrainian territory or, through limited
SEE UKRAINE ON B4The expandingU.S. goals inUkraine are riskyNATO’s aim should be to get
Russia to the bargaining table, say
Brendan Rittenhouse Green and
Caitlin TalmadgeJOSHUA LOTT/THE WASHINGTON POST