Hisham Matar has written about how, in “countless ways,” the corrupt and corrupting spirit of “the Libyan dictatorship, like a crazed jealous lover, infiltrated every aspect of public and private life.” We face that same problem here, and we do not have sturdy customs and institutions in place for talking about it, much less addressing it. If memory serves me, during the Arab Spring Hisham Matar also wrote, roughly, that it is much easier to force the tyrant out of the capital city forever than it is to remove his spirit from the what’s left of vital institutions and from the damaged hearts and minds of so many people.
In response to a thread here and here and here by A. Jay Adler, David Rothkopf, and Timothy Snyder.