The New York Times Public Intellectual in a State of Political Collapse: On Thomas L. Friedman.
Old Socialist comments.
All The Reader need do is to read Mr. Friedman’s Nov. 1, 2021 column:
Headline: Would Russia or China Help Us if We Were Invaded by Space Aliens?
In a recent essay on great-power competition and climate change, Rob Litwak, an arms control expert at the Wilson Center, recalled a question that President Ronald Reagan posed to Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, after they took a walk during their 1985 Lake Geneva summit.
As Gorbachev put it later: “President Reagan suddenly said to me, ‘What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?’”
“I said, ‘No doubt about it.’”
“He said, ‘We too.’”
“So that’s interesting,” Gorbachev concluded.
It sure is, because it’s not at all clear, given the recent upsurge in raw great-power competition, that Russia, China or America would help one another in the face of an invasion of space aliens threatening us all. Litwak’s point in retelling that story, of course, is that today we are facing a similar, world-stressing threat — not from space aliens but from a much more familiar and once seemingly benign force: our climate.
…
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/01/opinion/climate-glasgow-russia-china.html
Friedman didn’t need to do any real work, for this framing was provided by Rob Litwak, and that master of the ‘awe shucks’ demeanor, as cover for his ‘Welfare Queens Driving Cadillacs’ , ‘I believe in States Rights’ and his mantra ‘Government is The Problem’, intellectual naïf Ronald Reagan. The Reader can’t avoid the fact that Reagan’s virtues were two, he knew his lines and hit his marks. And the inescapable fact that he was the political precursor of Trump’s nihilism!
The Reader doesn’t need to be too patient, as Mr. Freedman lapses into High School Pep Rally gush , just like Ronnie used to do, when he wasn’t sounding like a broken record on the blessings of Capitalism, at all those speaking engagements sponsored by G.E. Who can forget Ronnie’s performances on G.E. Theatre, warning of the menace of the Soviets ? I forgot Ronnie’s other virtue: he was the perfect bookend to the perpetually bellicose Mrs. Thatcher. Not to forget Ronnie as FBI snitch!
What we need instead of an arms race or a space race is an Earth race — a great-power competition over which country is rising fastest and farthest to enable a world of net-zero carbon emissions so men and women can thrive here on Earth. I’d love to see Biden do a real throw down to Xi and Putin in his speech in Glasgow for that race.
More of the same follows:
Challenging China and Russia over who can produce the most tools for global resilience, not just resistance, is a way for America to reclaim some moral leadership on the world stage and focus our economy, and our competitors, on the most important industries of the future. Unless we humans want to be a bad biological experiment, a zero-carbon grid, zero-emissions transportation, zero-carbon/zero-net-energy buildings and zero-waste manufacturing indeed will — and must — be the next great global industry.
And by the way, while Russia is currently not a player in that competition, I would not bet against China.
The closing paragraph offers:
As long as both countries keep focused on the Earth race, it almost doesn’t matter which one wins, because together they will drive down the costs of clean power for everyone. If they slow down or get diverted, though, we may wish for some space aliens to take us to their planet.
How can Mr. Friedman be both fool and knave?
Old Socialist