In 1970, then U.S. Vice-pres­i­dent Spiro Agnew derid­ed jour­nal­ists (although some say he meant politi­cians) crit­i­cal of Nixon admin­is­tra­tion poli­cies as “nat­ter­ing nabobs of neg­a­tivism.” Today, the char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion seems to be con­sid­ered either com­pli­men­ta­ry or aspirational.

If that sounds like over-embell­ish­ment, con­sid­er that FOX News has made it a suc­cess­ful busi­ness model which has been called both dam­ag­ing and dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly influ­en­tial, in the sense that what FOX says, MAGA does, and vice-versa.
Politi­cians of a cer­tain stripe mir­ror it. In an Op-Ed (sor­ry, “essay”) to mark the 80^th anniver­sary of D‑Day, Sen­a­tor Mitch McConnell wrote that “…the world was plunged into war, and mil­lions of inno­cents died, because Euro­pean pow­ers and the Unit­ed States met the rise of a mil­i­tant author­i­tar­i­an with appease­ment or naïve neglect in the first place.”
Replace “Euro­pean pow­ers and the Unit­ed States” with “a self-serv­ing politi­cian”, and you get a won­drous dearth of irony and a self-descrip­tion that could only abide in a slav­ish-to-the-point-of-slob­ber­ing backer of a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date who wants to opt out of NATO, let Vladimir Putin (a “mil­i­tant author­i­tar­i­an” of proven and dan­ger­ous pro­por­tion) “do what­ev­er the hell” he wants, and called North Kore­an dic­ta­tor Kim Jung Un a “a great leader” with whom he had a “real­ly good” relationship.
In the inter­est of fair­ness, how­ev­er, bear in mind that 40 per­cent of South African vot­ers ‚who have been failed by the African Nation­al Con­gress (ANC) for three unin­ter­rupt­ed decades, vot­ed for them any­way. In a mini MAGA moment, 15 per­cent of vot­ers cast bal­lots for a new par­ty led by Jacob Zuma, a for­mer pres­i­dent and con­vict­ed crim­i­nal, whose tenure was defined by ram­pant cor­rup­tion and polit­i­cal violence.
I’m not sure how you put “Make South Africa Zuma Again” on a hat, but if there’s mon­ey to be made form it, no doubt some­one in his new par­ty will find a way.

        EVEN THOSE WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER

In coun­tries where polit­i­cal matu­ri­ty and his­to­ry ought to be guide­lines, if not stan­dards, the far right is on the rise by call­ing for neg­a­tive actions against immi­grants and in many cas­es, the very val­ues for which the coun­try they are sup­pos­ed­ly try­ing to improve was either found­ed or prides itself on.
Top of the heap are Israel’s far-right cab­i­net mem­bers Ita­mar Ben-Gvir (Nation­al Secu­ri­ty) and Beza­lel Smotrich (Finance), both of whom advo­cate kick­ing all Pales­tini­ans out of what pro-Pales­tin­ian demon­stra­tors like to char­ac­terise as “from the riv­er to the sea”.
To square the cir­cle of their fanati­cism, they also refuse to accept any peace deal for Gaza that stops short of com­plete­ly elim­i­nat­ing Hamas, even if it means all of the remain­ing Israeli hostages held by Hamas die.
The Biden admin­is­tra­tion seems hap­py to accept any and all neg­a­tive actions by the Netanyahu gov­ern­ment, from using U.S. weapons in ways that are banned, to an online influ­ence cam­paign that “…used hun­dreds of fake accounts that posed as real Amer­i­cans on X, Face­book and Insta­gram to post pro-Israel comments.”
The only sur­prise is that it seems to have come as a sur­prise. Israel has one of the most sophis­ti­cat­ed – and unprin­ci­pled – hack­ing and cyber-spy­ing capa­bil­i­ties in the world.

                       HO-HUM

In the pub­lic forum, some bad news is accept­ed, some rev­elled in, and worst of all, ignored. Sudan is the most dis­grace­ful example.
By Amer­i­can esti­mates, since the war there erupt­ed a year ago, as many as 150,000 peo­ple have died. The UN says that in the largest dis­place­ment cri­sis on earth, some nine mil­lion peo­ple have been forced from their homes and a loom­ing famine could kill hun­dreds of thou­sand od chil­dren if it is unchecked.
Not being aware of, or worse, brush­ing that aside, is neg­a­tiv­i­ty on a sin­ful scale.
The war is the embod­i­ment of point­less, which adds anoth­er lev­el of mean­ing to negative.
It boils down to rival gen­er­als ( read war­lords) and their arms sup­pli­ers who are will­ing to lay waste to cities, towns and vil­lages, dri­ve the pop­u­la­tion to star­va­tion and com­mit geno­cide  so they can con­trol what­ev­er is left.
It’s fair to ask whether the dev­as­tat­ing and mas­sive human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis is being allowed to grind on in the back­ground of pub­lic con­scious­ness because its vic­tims are brown and black peo­ple who live in a place and in ways most West­ern­ers can­not begin to imagine.
Arguably, the answer is yes, which is anoth­er way of say­ing people’s per­ceived val­ue is neg­a­tive­ly affect­ed by their ethnicity.
It’s sad but also fit­ting in its own way that the last words on those doing their utmost to ignore or prof­it by neg­a­tiv­i­ty, are summed up in allit­er­a­tion from the dis­graced U.S. Vice-Pres­i­dent: “hope­less, hys­ter­i­cal hypochon­dri­acs of history.”

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