She finds the whole idea absurd. To Prof Marci Shore, the notion that the Guardian, or anyone else, should want to interview her about the future of the US is ridiculous. She’s an academic specialising in the history and culture of eastern Europe and describes herself as a “Slavicist”, yet here she is, suddenly besieged by international journalists keen to ask about the country in which she insists she has no expertise: her own. “It’s kind of baffling,” she says.
In fact, the explanation is simple enough. Last month, Shore, together with her husband and fellow scholar of European history, Timothy Snyder, and the academic Jason Stanley, made news around the world when they announced that they were moving from Yale University in the US to the University of Toronto in Canada. It was not the move itself so much as their motive that garnered attention. As the headline of a short video op-ed the trio made for the New York Times put it, “We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the US”.
Starkly, Shore invoked the ultimate warning from history. “The lesson of 1933 is: you get out sooner rather than later.” She seemed to be saying that what had happened then, in Germany, could happen now, in Donald Trump’s America – and that anyone tempted to accuse her of hyperbole or alarmism was making a mistake. “My colleagues and friends, they were walking around and saying, ‘We have checks and balances. So let’s inhale, checks and balances, exhale, checks and balances.’ I thought, my God, we’re like people on the Titanic saying, ‘Our ship can’t sink. We’ve got the best ship. We’ve got the strongest ship. We’ve got the biggest ship.’ And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink.”
You know national borders exist, right?
Sure, but what about them?
In most cases they’re just lines on a map that don’t actually exist physically in the real world.
Tell that the the sovereign nations you’d be illegally entering
“What are walls, just some man made obstacles, I live in your house now”
That’s what refugees do. And they’re allowed to. Persecution as it is happening in America right now is an international crime. If you’re the victim of persecution you can get eefug status.
Uh, why do you think those Syrians had to walk all the way to the Arctic to get to Europe when they were coming from Syria?
They wanted to admire the scenery of the bogs and pines?
Why didn’t they just take the direct route, because “they’re just lines on a map”?
Why did they more than double the over 4000km long journey to over 8000 km?
Oh, right, because of border control. They had to travel more than 4000 kilometres more to use less guarded crossings.
And good fucking luck crossing any Russo-European borders currently.
Yes, it’s true that borders are vast and not all controlled as easily. But nations sure as fuck try to.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland–Russia_border
That alone added a few thousand km for them, as they went all the way to Norway to cross, because we Finns actually guard the border pretty intensely due to that fucker Vanja disrespecting it so.
Of course that’s the reason. I never claimed otherwise.
So we do agree that people with no money are capable of walking 4000 kilometers. Yet, it is somehow impossible for people in America to walk 500 kilometers, because “America is just too big” and “being financially trapped”.
Their journey was more than 8000 kilometers, not 4000.
And why is that, again? Why did they not take the 4000km shorter route? Are you genuinely going to make me copypaste my reply again?
You’re just too naive about what border control is.