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Courtesy od Midjourney

The world is an inkblot

In 1921, a Swiss psychologist spent months carefully crafting a series of seemingly random blots of ink. When he was done, he arranged them in a set of 10 for publication.

He had discovered that different people saw different things in the inkblots and that this could tell him a lot about their mental state, their concerns, and their worldview.

I thought of Dr. Rorschach and his now-famous inkblots this week as I leafed through a massive new study of what people in a dozen of the world’s most powerful countries – the G7 industrialized democracies, plus Brazil, China, India, and South Africa – are worried about when it comes to their security.

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Quick Take: Biden's challenge and Navalny's courage
Ian Bremmer: Biden's Challenge and Navalny's Courage | Quick Take | GZERO Media

Quick Take: Biden's challenge and Navalny's courage

Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:

Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and it is the last full day of the Trump administration. Extraordinary four years, unprecedented in so many ways. I guess the most important feature for me is how much more divided the United States is, the world is, as coming out of the Trump administration than it was coming in. Not new. We were in a GZERO world, as I called it well before Trump was elected president. The social contract was seen as fundamentally problematic. Many Americans believed their system was rigged, didn't want to play the kind of international leadership role that the United States had heretofore, but all of those things accelerated under Trump.

So perhaps the most important question to be answered is, once Trump is gone, how much of that persists? It is certainly true that a President Biden is much more oriented towards trying to bring the United States back into existing multilateral architecture, whether that be the Paris Climate Accord, or more normalized immigration discussions with the Mexicans, the World Health Organization, the Iranian Nuclear Deal, some of which will be easy to do, like Paris, some of which will be very challenging, like Iran. But nonetheless, all sounds like business as usual.

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World Bank President David Malpass on the January 6th Capitol riots
David Malpass on the January 6th Capitol Riots | GZERO World

World Bank President David Malpass on the January 6th Capitol riots

World Bank President David Malpass was as horrified at what he saw during the January 6th pro-Trump riots on the Capitol as millions of other Americans. But he was concerned for another reason as well: "From the standpoint of world development, it distracts attention at a time when we need to help countries actually develop and get beyond COVID and get back to growth path." He joined Ian Bremmer to talk about how the civil unrest on Washington was distracting from the urgent development work of the World Bank during a pandemic. Their conversation was part of the latest episode of GZERO World.

The world believes the US can do better but its ability to lead diminishes
The World Believes US Can Do Better but Its Ability To Lead Diminishes | World In :60 | GZERO Media

The world believes the US can do better but its ability to lead diminishes

Ian Bremmer shares his perspective on global politics on this week's World In (More Than) 60 Seconds:

Sum up the world's response to the US Capitol riots.

I'd say two things. The leaders I've spoken to around the world in the last few days, the first is disappointment, shock that something like this could happen in the United States. I mean, on the one hand, really depressing. On the other, a lot of people that really do expect and believe that the United States can do better. And I think that's still the case. I think there is still a lot of belief that the United States is better than what is being reflected in the international news right now, from the activities that are happening in Washington and perhaps across the country over the coming days. The second is people want to know what's going to happen as a consequence. And when I say what's going to happen, I mean, first and foremost, what are the consequences of the behavior that's been taken of President Trump, of all of these members of House and Senate that have been putting forth this disinformation and calling for this insurrection? And on that front, I don't have anything very good to say. I mean, there is no question in my mind that tomorrow Trump will be impeached for a second time. It will be largely a party line vote. People are getting excited because maybe 10 or 20 Republicans will vote their conscience and vote in favor of impeachment. The vast majority of sitting Republicans will vote against, which is an extraordinary thing and sends a very strong message to other countries around the world that impeachment is no longer a part of rule of law in the United States, which of course really diminishes the balance of powers in the US and allows the executive, if the executive controls the legislature, to get away with basically whatever they want.

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