Homesick Politics

But I am not a nostalgic type.

Diaspora cultures thrive on nostalgic dreams of return.

At that point, we'll start romanticizing the future again, instead of the nasty, brutish past.

There is still a certain degree of nostalgia on the far right for Fanco s dictatorship.

No surprise, then, that they are nostalgic for the past, including Stalin.

Some of Russian President Vladimir Putin s statements seem to recall the Soviet era with nostalgia.

The Edo nostalgia in Japan and the Norway model s appeal in the UK are not rational choices.

This absence of animating purpose, of faith in the future, has made us hungry for our past.

Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War.

These two versions of the Chavez years are both distorted to a certain degree by nostalgia.

But Soviet nostalgia has far more to do with Russia s traditional Great Power ambitions than with communism.

Somebody once said that nostalgia is the one utterly most useless human emotion so I think that s a case for serious play.

He is nostalgic for the 1960's and the Gaullist ideology that shaped both France and himself.

This yearning for providential men or women in our global age results from at least three factors.

Yet there is an undeniable whiff of nostalgia in the current rapprochement between two powers that are both conscious of their relative decline in the world.

The blog, which has posts in Arabic and English, reflects the students hopes, doubts, worries, optimism, homesickness and wishes for a better future in their home.

In Japan, the isolationist temptation is expressed in the current nostalgia for the Edo period, from 1600 to 1868, before Emperor Meiji opened Japan to the world.

Still, the illusion was nice while it lasted, and Obamamania may contain an element of nostalgia, as well as hope.

But this slogan is from the 1920 s and seems like a nostalgic reminder of past turmoil that one prefers to see on the stage.

So no one in Europe needs to fear that the Czech Republic has some nostalgic or idiosyncratic agenda that it wants to impose on the Union.

What is the link between nostalgia for a simplified and less risky banking sector and the wish to reintroduce a currency system that also seems a relic of the past?

The operation of European institutions the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the Stability Pact is facing severe criticism, but not in the name of a nostalgia for national sovereignty.

So, for the foreseeable future, the West will have to deal with a Russia that yearns for its lost imperial power and shapes its foreign policy to this end.

This bizarre brew appears to have been concocted in an effort to reconcile the irreconcilable the current yearning for democracy with Russia s despotic past.

Revitalization of the extreme right in Hungary and the rise of National Bolshevism in Russia, where Tolstoy is now re condemned by the Orthodox Church as a proto communist, suggest a deeper and more pervasive atavistic longing.

Ukraine s break with Russia was perhaps the most wrenching, both for those in the Kremlin nostalgic for imperial control and for ordinary Russians who see Ukraine as the wellspring of Russian civilization.

In the words of the strategic analyst Stanley A. Weiss, this helped suck the lifeblood out of communism s global appeal, making it incapable of meeting the widespread yearning for a better and more open life.

But nostalgia has led both states to misinterpret the challenges they now face, whether by linking al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein s Iraq, or Hezbollah to Iran and Syria.

This politics of nostalgia is troubling, not only because France and Europe confront severe economic challenges, but also because France and other democracies are confronted with real challenges to their legitimacy.

Maybe Romney really is feeling sentimental about the Anglo Saxon heritage, even as Asian power grows. If so, nostalgia for Churchill is hardly a sign of American vitality, but more like a romantic rearguard battle, typical of a country in decline.

A video by geographer Homer Dávila is making nostalgia grow on Facebook as people are reminded of the light traffic that used to be the norm between the capital city of San José, Costa Rica and neighboring city of Alajuela.

Both Israel and the US are nostalgic for a twentieth century world of nation states, which is understandable, since that is the world to which the kind of conventional power they possess is best suited.

Japan s powerful bureaucrats, nostalgic for the 1960 s model of development, whereby government and its business cronies nurtured the Japanese miracle, strongly opposed this bold, free market solution.

You take a six to eight cell embryo, you tease out one of the cells, you run a genetic test on that cell, and depending on the results of that test you either implant that embryo or you discard it.

This absence of animating purpose, of faith in the future, has made us hungry for our past. Faced with the loss of the nation s central idea and desperately in search of a new one, millions of Argentines have become interested in their history.

With political pressures encroaching on the bank s policy decisions and a faux consensus, it is not surprising that there is now nostalgia in Frankfurt for earlier times and for Wim Duisenberg, even among his former critics.

In deliberately ignoring this diversity and embracing nostalgia for a long gone past, the Republican Party led astray by its ultra conservative lunatics was far more responsible than its decent candidate for the defeat.

But Volcker has also been a prominent critic of the dangers of currency volatility. What is the link between nostalgia for a simplified and less risky banking sector and the wish to reintroduce a currency system that also seems a relic of the past?

The current trend toward rose colored retrospection is a case in point. Faced with political, economic, geostrategic, and social uncertainty, policymakers have increasingly succumbed to the allure of nostalgia, promising a return to what they portray as the familiar and complete rules and practices of the past.

The Edo nostalgia in Japan and the Norway model s appeal in the UK are not rational choices. They merely channel national wariness at a time of global competition between cultures, economies, and emerging strategic ambitions.

Romania is not alone, of course, in reliving this dark comedy. Revitalization of the extreme right in Hungary and the rise of National Bolshevism in Russia, where Tolstoy is now re condemned by the Orthodox Church as a proto communist, suggest a deeper and more pervasive atavistic longing.

All these transformations will take time, and they will not come easily or be free of conflict. So, for the foreseeable future, the West will have to deal with a Russia that yearns for its lost imperial power and shapes its foreign policy to this end.

But de Gaulle s legacy would most likely be snuffed out gently, with nostalgia for both Mitterrand and Chirac possibly proving very tempting for a people disaffected with the political system but desiring to be reassured.

Do heady times of struggle always give way to a somewhat deflating taste of victory? Am I merely a veteran wistfully reminiscing about the old days of struggle?