Ypi covers a lot of ground. Free goes a long way towards demystifying the lived reality of millions of people who currently straddle a historical divide between socialism and post-socialism. this whole book should be a sobering reminder to the american reader, with their sense of unbroken lineage and narrative consistency, that the actual geopolitical world is constantly in flux. countries and economic systems rise, are reshaped through use, are broken, change. in the West and particularly in america we think ourselves untouched by the vicissitudes of rebellion and the messiness of shifting borders, studiously unaware of our current status as a colony, of the island nations we have militarily invaded and taken over in the last 150 years, and really of anything that is not immediately comprehensible and easily palatable. how many of us would admit to the existence of secret police in the United States, despite this being an objective fact? how about the shadow state that is the Central Intelligence Agency, which can and does literally wage wars of which the primary government is officially and legally unaware? Ypi’s memoir (it is a memoir, just one by a political scientist) should shake us up and show us that socialist countries are/were simply countries like the U.S., and that democracy as we know it is no better or worse than the single-party systems (or monarchies) that we so readily decry as unjust. of course any attempt to scrutinize america as a shifting country located within a historical context immediately reveals the need for total decolonization or (if you’re a coward) extensive reparations/repatriations. also, it would be an acknowledgment that any government/economy can just be overthrown, that the constitution can just be scrapped and rewritten from scratch, an idea so un-american that I literally needed to be taught it in my 20s. 

I’m making this a lot about the U.S. when it really isn’t, but Ypi is clear-eyed about the failings of the Albanian government under single-party socialism AND under democracy and a logical application of her insights to any political situation is damning. I think one of her most interesting points is that the majority of people, even people who are extremely educated like her father, actually don’t know what they think the ideal form of government is. at our point in history it is temporarily easier to go all-in on the american conceptualization of democracy but that will change in 200-300 years and we’ll all have just hopped onto the next platform. there is no virtuous, irreproachable mode of government that stands out above all others.

another thing she points out is that countries where emigration is restricted tend to be condemned when they are the targets of Western criticism, but Western countries are savage about border control and the reality of people immigrating is actually completely objectionable to them. think of the literal heat rays they wanted to install on the U.S.-Mexico border.

oh final thought apparently kids growing up in Albania in the 1980s under socialism were waaaaay more educated than american kids at any point in history. the amount of education about world politics, science, and literature vastly outweighs what we attempt in america. by itself outlawing religion gives everyone an intellectual advantage lol