It hurts. It’s painful. It didn’t have to be done, but I’m grateful that Barry Rubin has undertaken a close reading of one of Thomas Friedman’s recent profusions of inanity. Rubin begins with an apt quotation from Bob Dylan and then says in his own words:
The entertainment director on the ship of fools that constitutes so much mainstream analysis of the Middle East—I refer, of course, to Thomas Friedman—has produced a wonderful paragraph that beautifully characterizes the problem, exquisitely expressing a Western mentality that not only makes it impossible to understand the Middle East but even to set up the question in a way people that could help people even begin to confront the truth. So perhaps it is worth disassembling. Sound like fun? Let’s go!
Now how can you resist an invitation like that?