Pundits: Our age is most dangerous!

OP-ED: Our Three Bombs, By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, New York Times, October 6, 2009

Classic additive reasoning from Friedman, who usually doesn't dip into such obvious fear-mongering.

He says he grew up with nuke bomb that only the Sovs could deliver, and now ANYBODY can deliver, so clearly a more dangerous world.

Then he adds on the debt and climate bombs, so clearly, the Cold War was better and nicer and safer than today.

It's a load of shit but nicely packaged.

Truth: back then we faced global destruction, and we face no such threat today. The likelihood of a small nuclear exchange between rising powers is no higher today than it ever was in the past. We just have different characters. The lucky strike by a terror group? More likely than during the Cold War, but where is the end of the world in that? How much more likely? Theoretically a bunch more, but in reality, it's still never happened.

Equating national debt to global nuclear war is cute, but unhelpful fear-mongering. Again, the potential for bankruptcy doesn't exactly equal the end of the world.

As for climate change, there we're getting the level of hyperbole usually associated with Al Gore. I would suggest reading Bjorn Lomborg's "Cool It" before I bought this vague sort of fear-mongering sale by Friedman.

Why are pundits always so quick and vigorous in defining our current age as the most "dangerous," when by all objective standards that statement is simply unsupportable?

Why, if the world is THAT scary and THAT complex and THAT dangerous, you better read me, the oracle--yes?

I prefer straight advertising to such disinformation. And if it ain't disinformation (as in, Friedman really believes this), then it's an ad for turning to more sensible and less hyperbolic analysis.

My point: be a skeptical consumer

Comments

[Elmer Humes]

I agree with your comments on this editorial & I hope you will comment on his Obama Nobel prize Monday editorial, which I felt was much more positive & honorable as was yours on the same subject.

[William R. Cumming]

Friedman seems more and more irrelevant to me! Why does he maintain such a big rep? Certainly even in his personal life does not live GREEN despite his advocacy of the threats of environmental and climate catastrophe?