The four horsemen. Conquest, War, Famine and Death. Via Wikipedia.
I can summarize this one in a phrase. The world sucks right now. In the op-ed piece in the New York Times, Roger Cohen reviews all the things going wrong this year. Included are the battle against ISIS, Russia's ascendancy, the possible break-up of the United Kingdom, the weakness of the United States and her president, prejudice and hate and finally Ebola.
My Comment:
A good op-ed piece, again from the New York Times. It reflects my own thinking. I'd add more then a few things though. The economy is still weak and I wouldn't be too surprised if one of the dozen or so world crisis's brought it to its knees. China's expansionist behavior wasn't discussed either. And he understates the threat from both radical Islam and Ebola. And even though he touched on how horrible governments are treating their people right now, he really should have mentioned the NSA.
Still, these are indeed dark times. If you follow the news as close as I do it's hard to avoid apocalyptic thinking. I can't think of a time in my life where people were more pessimistic, more scared and more crazy then today. Even the darkest days after 9/11 were more hopeful, because at least then we had leadership and unity. The United States is so divided now that it almost seems like a 2nd Civil War is possible. Our government is corrupt and inept, the world is on fire and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. Even our entertainment industry and sports teams are riddled with scandals and abuse.
But it's important to note that every generation has thought they were the last. Every generation has been wrong. Humanity has faced worse challenges and survived. Both world wars, the Cold War, the Spanish Flu, all of those happened in the past century and we survived them all. And to be fair all of them were, at the very least, worse then what we are going through now, for the time being at least. It's important to keep things in perspective.
No comments:
Post a Comment