When This Blows Over

The smears “racist,” “fascist,” “white privilege” and “Nazi” — like
“commie” of the 1950s — are so overused as to become meaningless.
There is now less free speech on campus than during the McCarthy era
of the early 1950s.
As was the case in 1968, the world abroad is also falling apart.
The European Union, model of the future, is unraveling. The EU has
been paralyzed by the exit of Great Britain, the divide between Spain
and Catalonia, the bankruptcy of Mediterranean nation members,
insidious terrorist attacks in major European cities and the onslaught of
millions of immigrants — mostly young, male and Muslim — from the
war-torn Middle East. Germany is once again becoming imperious, but
this time insidiously by means other than arms.
The failed state of North Korea claims that it has nuclear-tipped missiles
capable of reaching America’s West Coast — and apparently wants
some sort of bribe not to launch them.
Iran is likely to follow the North Korea nuclear trajectory. In the
meantime, its new Shiite hegemony in the Middle East is feeding on the
carcasses of Syria and Iraq.
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Is the chaos of 2017 a catharsis — a
necessary and long-overdue purge of
dangerous and neglected pathologies? Will
the bedlam within the United States descend
into more nihilism, or offer a remedy to the
status quo that had divided and nearly
bankrupted the country?