The Ptolemeic Left

Here is an interesting article about the turn against secularism in Turkey and the turn against Turkey in Europe. What is so odd about it is that the author sees these developments as more evidence of the failure of neocon foreign policy. It is really quite bizarre. All of this is very important, but to somehow make it all a function of American foreign policy, much less the foreign policy of the last 6 years, just seems to border on a mania. It is like ancient astronomers that were always ready to take any observation and pry more proof of the geocentric universe from it. For the contemporary left there is not a star in the heavens whose course cannot be explained by the machinations of the neocons.

It is eerily reminiscent of the American's before Pearl Harbor who, as Prangle argues, assumed that whatever Japan was going to do depended on the actions of the United States. No matter how far removed from our control a phenomena may be there is always an epicycle to bring it back to the orbit of America instigated evil.