I know a lot of people that absolutely bust a nut over The World is Flat but I am not adept at separating his ideas (along with his horrendously awful execution of metaphor) from his cheerleading for imperialist racist foreign and economy policy.
Glen Greenwald hits all the nails on the head:
Almost five years after helping to unleash the greatest disaster in our country’s history, Tom Friedman is still openly indulging his adolescent, weakness-based fantasies about ass-kicking and chest-beating Dr. Strangelove threats and the virtues of acting like a mafia thug such as Tony Soprano, “quietly pounding a baseball bat into his palm.” Friedman sits around watching TV shows and — for reasons far more psychological than political — identifies with amoral Tough Guy thugs and gets all excited by the vicarious sensations of strength and power and then disguises all of that as “foreign policy analysis.”
Posting this here instead of on the personal blog since so many business folks are so enamored of Friedman’s clumsy explanations of global trends.
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