Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

The Great Unraveling
NYT ^ | 9/15/14 | Roger Cohen

Posted on 09/16/2014 8:26:28 AM PDT by Baynative

It was a time of beheadings...It was a time of aggression...It was a time of breakup...It was a time of hatred....

It was a time of weakness. The most powerful nation on earth was tired of far-flung wars, its will and treasury depleted by absence of victory. An ungrateful world could damn well police itself. The nation had bridges to build and education systems to fix. Civil wars between Arabs could fester. Enemies might even kill other enemies, a low-cost gain. Middle Eastern borders could fade; they were artificial colonial lines on a map.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: cohen; unraveling
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-44 next last
I'm not familiar with Roger Cohen. But, this column is saying a lot about our world and our contemporary attitude.

I was hit by how his description of the emotional mood in Scotland is so much like the Obama fervor that helped begin the unraveling of American society and civility.

1 posted on 09/16/2014 8:26:28 AM PDT by Baynative
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Baynative

2 posted on 09/16/2014 8:28:52 AM PDT by Fido969 (What's sad is most)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Baynative

If you read his entire commentary...he really hits on all points very well. He’s right....it is a discouraging and frustrating time...with nothing much going right. Meanwhile...it’s like we are in a 66 Rambler and just parked on the street with no fuel and no map...waiting for November of 2016 to come and lift our spirits.


3 posted on 09/16/2014 8:29:40 AM PDT by pepsionice
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Baynative

The handouts through welfare to people who do nothing but take and make choices which deplete others of their EARNED money are more of a waste than any war, IMHO.


4 posted on 09/16/2014 8:33:15 AM PDT by JudyinCanada
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Baynative

It was the worst of times,
It was the ........well, just leave it at that....................


5 posted on 09/16/2014 8:34:58 AM PDT by Red Badger (If you compromise with evil, you just get more evil..........................)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Baynative
It was a time of beheadings...It was a time of aggression...It was a time of breakup...It was a time of hatred....

It was the Crusades.

6 posted on 09/16/2014 8:36:37 AM PDT by Don Corleone ("Oil the gun..eat the cannoli. Take it to the Mattress.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: pepsionice
2016 is likely not going to help.

Time to get on with things and go Galt wrt 0bama and DC.

7 posted on 09/16/2014 8:39:06 AM PDT by Paladin2
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Don Corleone

It’s a very good article.. darkly poetic prose.

I recently re-read the Dickens novel “A Tale of Two Cities”, from which his “it was a time of....” idea is borrowed.

it’s a very dark novel..

and like this great article, these are very dark times... storms are gathering, and have yet to break...

get ready ... prepare...


8 posted on 09/16/2014 8:41:44 AM PDT by Chuzzlewit
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: JudyinCanada
The handouts through welfare to people who do nothing but take and make choices which deplete others of their EARNED money are more of a waste than any war, IMHO.

You've pretty much defined the Democrats 50+ year old 'war on prosperity and success.

9 posted on 09/16/2014 8:41:49 AM PDT by sjmjax (Politicans are much like bananas. They start off green, turn yellow then rot.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Baynative

Many of us knew obama would be horrible, but we didn’t know it would be this bad!


10 posted on 09/16/2014 8:41:58 AM PDT by subterfuge (Hey NSA snoop, get a real job you idiot!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: JudyinCanada
The handouts through welfare to people who do nothing but take and make choices which deplete others of their EARNED money are more of a waste than any war, IMHO.

And this will be our downfall more than any war we've fought.

In another vein, I have come the conclusion that America will not win another war, and it's for the same reason we waste money on domestic handouts. Americans no longer have the political will to make tough decisions and do difficult things. We can't bring ourselves to tell the parasites that they are parasites and we aren't going to give them a free ride anymore.

In foreign relations, we no longer have the stomach to wage war. We throw bombs and missiles from afar at a few random people we don't like. We try to make our soldiers appear to foreign populations as visiting tourists bringing presents. We try to make international conflict "nice." That's not war. War is nasty, brutal and involves killing lots of people and destroying everything they have. If you want to win a war, that's what you have to do. The liberal mindset that runs our institutions will never bring themselves to do that. And so we will never win.

11 posted on 09/16/2014 8:42:45 AM PDT by henkster (Do I really need a sarcasm tag?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Fido969

Did CNBC actually attribute this piece to Krugman?


12 posted on 09/16/2014 8:42:46 AM PDT by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Paladin2

The economy and the country won’t make it another year.
Sept 13, 2015


13 posted on 09/16/2014 8:44:41 AM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Baynative

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.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Yeats


14 posted on 09/16/2014 8:44:50 AM PDT by Kartographer ("We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: subterfuge

My brother is a dyed in the wool liberal and even he’s amazed about how bad it is. He says this country is basically over. I told him he will be even more amazed when he finds out who Obama really is.


15 posted on 09/16/2014 8:47:35 AM PDT by goldi
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: subterfuge

I knew he would be every bit as bad as he is. He was not an engima to me; 0bama might as well have been one of the Political Science Grad Student/Associate Instructors I knew at IU in 1977. They would show up to class, wearing camo pants and talking about “manning the barricades” and being all for “the struggle,” which they were going to do right after having coffee with the other commies at the Student Union coffee shop.

Yeah, we turned our country over to them. I knew they’d screw it up royally.


16 posted on 09/16/2014 8:48:52 AM PDT by henkster (Do I really need a sarcasm tag?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: Baynative

As in the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times,” these are the times of which they spoke.


17 posted on 09/16/2014 8:49:33 AM PDT by DJ Taylor (Once again our country is at war,and once again the Democrats have sided with our enemy.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: henkster

I agree that are our response is feeble. I weep for America.

Jughead is a success. He has accomplished all he promised he would do. And the promises were to fundamentally transform America.

Welcome th a new era, America is headed by a homosexual marxist muslim. It will not end well.


18 posted on 09/16/2014 8:52:41 AM PDT by the anti-mahdi
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: henkster

To totally steal another person’s quote:

It is good that we recognize how terrible war is our else we might grow too fond of it.

But I suppose the problem is that the other side is very fond of it.


19 posted on 09/16/2014 8:53:07 AM PDT by VanDeKoik
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Baynative
No matter what the subject, the Times is always good for a chuckle.

Here are one of the comments. There are several expressing similar sentiment:

"You missed the biggest breakup of all, the breakup of the planet's climate, caused by an accumulation of exhalations from a society addicted to consumption, told they must continuously expand or bust, who decided the the air, water, and earth were either a cornucopia or a dump, depending on their needs.

The accumulation of heat-trapping greenhouse gases has reached a point where consequences are mounting. Earth is reacting to the most predatory species ever, gone mad with hubris and thinking its politics trump reality."


And it's signed Susan Anderson of Boston.

Boston, a major metropolitan area. Ya think Susan is using a sawdust toilet and manually hoeing her subsistence garden? Or is she, more likely, living in a tony part of the city, completely unsustainable without the farming, trucking, power, sewage and water industries she decries.
20 posted on 09/16/2014 8:57:32 AM PDT by chrisser (When do we get to tell the Middle East to stop clinging to their guns and religion?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-44 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson