There is very much to think about — very much — in this article by Stephen Kinder:
His comments about missing longterm trends while focusing on superficial headlines and on the importance of cultural diplomacy merit attention alongside his specific discussion of Saudi Arabia’s influence around the Islamic world. America has withdrawn, to a large extent, from engaging in cultural advocacy, perhaps because we’ve lost confidence in our own culture. In this context, it’s difficult not to think of the first stanza of William Butler Yeats’s 1919 poem “The Second Coming”:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
And the difficulty that democratic politicians have of thinking and working for the long term — given that they face reelection battles every six, or four, or two years — is well-known.
Posted from Grindelwald, Switzerland
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