I despise Thomas Friedman. He believes in magical technology, is a white apologist for China and pretends he knows anything about foreign affairs: a combination of everything I hate. There are others who make less sense than him (like fellow NYT columnist David Brooks), but there is a particular air of pretense around Friedman; it's his belief that he has figured out the political economy of our times, as well as harping about poverty
while living in his mansion. Styled after Gully Foyle's outing, this topic is intended to make you never consider Friedman seriously again. Due to my passion for this issue, I will be using less than diplomatic language throughout.
With that said, let's go over Friedman's latest crap.He starts off by describing the Arab Spring, Israelis "protesting ... the way their country is now dominated by an oligopoly of crony capitalists" and Europeans "railing against unemployment and the injustice of yawning income gaps". "What's going on here?" But didn't you just say they were protesting against injustice?
That's not the real problem, says Friedman! Globalisation is to blame, but not exactly; since the advent of stuff on the Internet, "the world has gone from connected to hyper-connected. This is the single most important trend in the world today." Thus he goes from BSing to hyper-BSing. This techno-globalisation is taking our jobs! What jobs nobody knows, but Friedman assures they can be done "with machines, computers, robots and talented foreign workers." I must assume he's talking about call centres and telemarketing, in which case I ask when the hell they supported a middle-class lifestyle.
Friedman's thesis is that techno-globalisation and the witchcraft of efficiency explains the growing disparity in income; how you like them apples, leftists? In Friedman's world, Chinese students come from beyond the ocean, waving their perfect SAT math scores and being snatched up by universities, taking those spots from Americans. In the real world, only the elite can afford to prepare for American schools, those Chinese students are rejected and many American college graduates are unemployed. Who knows if Friedman believes there's an economic crisis going on? Maybe he thinks the recession is caused by the foreigners.
According to the man, governments can no longer afford welfare and distribute cheap credit. Brilliant insights if this were written in the 1920s; insane after a crash caused by an excess of cheap credit. I would argue against the idea that governments today can no longer afford welfare, but that's too complex for a Friedman thread.
The kicker is when he talks about "the globalization of anger, with all of these demonstrations now inspiring each other." His only example is an Israeli sign referencing the Egyptian Revolution. I guess Mohamed Bouazizi decided to self-immolate himself after looking up
Buddhists on Wikipedia? "Every leader and C.E.O. should reflect on" Mubarak's overthrow, since they too have ruled for 30 years and terrorized tens of millions of people. And he says technology-globalisation enables people "to challenge hierarchies and traditional authority figures",
as if people weren't doing that two goddamn centuries ago! And he's using the Tea Party as example when there's a civil war going on in Libya?!
Let's review Friedman's style of argument. He loves to shoehorn his theory in everything. He throws out a bunch of claims, supported by one example or citation. He has the ability to state common sense and explain it in his own fantasy terms. All those words can be reduced to a modern xenophobia. What's frightening is that he can taint the most uncontroversial of statements with his theorizing.
And his theories don't even explain "today's front-page news!"
Who knows how technology-globalisation is behind why Lady Gaga took pictures of her feet.