The Realism school of “political philosophy” is when you indiscriminately murder babies and turn entire countries into minefields to protect the interests of your country’s billionaire class from a vague possible threat in the far future.
The Realism school of “political philosophy” is when you indiscriminately murder babies and turn entire countries into minefields to protect the interests of your country’s billionaire class from a vague possible threat in the far future.
The IMF usage of realism is in contrast to ambition. That’s to say “you can’t achieve your ambitions and you don’t deserve ambitions because you’re savages, and all that you’re good for is exploitation. So, you need to be implementing free market policies that will open you up to exploitation so that you can be making money for us, and we’ll give you a bit to repay your loans”.
That’s very similar to realism in geopolitics “we don’t actually know what these savages might be planning, but either way, it’s not pro-American and doesn’t further our interests. Let’s bomb them to be on the safe side.”
In the end, realism is idealism. And this ideal is the ideal of western chauvinism. To be “realistic” is to adhere to the ideal of the western chauvinist and their position at the top of the capitalist pyramid scheme.
Like, you’re completely right in your sentiment but I just want to clarify some things.
Earlier I used the term “risk management”, and while risk management is actually a thing, the way it can be implemented can have bias, similar to how risk management was used to justify redlining.
The contrast to idealism is materialism; to see things as it is without the bias and ideal of chauvinism.