"One question historians will puzzle over is why both great geopolitical systems fractured at once? The answer, I believe, is the intensifying merger of globalization and the information technology revolution, which made the world dramatically flatter in the last five years, as we went from connected to hyperconnected. In the Arab world, this hyper-connectivity simultaneously left youths better able to see how far behind they were — with all the anxiety that induced — and enabled them to communicate and collaborate to do something about it, cracking open their ossified states.
In Europe, hyperconnectedness both exposed just how uncompetitive some of their economies were, but also how interdependent they had become. It was a deadly combination. When countries with such different cultures become this interconnected and interdependent — when they share the same currency but not the same work ethics, retirement ages or budget discipline — you end up with German savers seething at Greek workers, and vice versa."
Hyper-connectivity is why the Sunnis in Syria are revolting against their Alawite masters in Syria? Hyper-connectivity explains the tribal conflagration in Libya? Hyper-connectivity explains budgetary excesses in Greece? I don't think so.
So why did Europe and the Muslim Middle East descend into chaos all at once? I have an even simpler explanation taken from that now classic movie "Forest Gump": Shit happens. It always did; it always will.
But that "Perfect Storm" brewing as the result of economic malaise in Europe interacting with unrest in the Muslim Middle East has also been compounded by a lack of a firm hand at the tiller, best characterized by Obama's refusal to utter a word as Assad butchers thousands of innocents.
Obama? Catherine Ashton? Both symptomatic of a world without leadership.
Indeed, shit does happen.
Jeff, it is reaching the stage - indeed has reached it long ago - that you should consider whether it is worth dignifying Tom Friedman's journalese drivel with serious comment.
ReplyDeleteIf it caused the New York Times to consider whether to continue paying the fellow to scribble or, for that matter, Roger Cohen or Maureen Dowd, then it might be worth it. But the NYT has its own agenda based on how it wants the world to look. So accurate reporting, intelligent reasoned comment and analysis based on facts on the ground is not something one should expect. They are looking for convenient theory or mystery. And they may have found their guru in the US President, for they can hang whatever they like on his mantra "Change".
Well, I read (tried) Thomas Friedman twice. I found what I read (tried) pompous and idiotic and I stop reading.
ReplyDelete