American writer Thomas Friedman said that the situation in the United States has become similar to Lebanon and the rest of the Middle East countries, with regard to managing political disputes and politicizing events, and that fighting this trend is the most important project for the current generation.
Friedman noted - in an article for the American New York Times - that when he heard the news of the terrible explosion that rocked the Lebanese capital Beirut on August 4, and the speculation about who was behind it, his memory returned to a conversation that took place at a dinner party. Forty years ago, at the home of Malcolm Kerr, then president of the American University of Beirut, a guest commented on unusual thunderstorms accompanied by hail that had struck Beirut during the previous two nights.
The attendees gave their views on the severe weather, before Malcolm asked his guests - by way of irony - "Do you think the Syrians are responsible for that?"
Friedman commented that Malcolm's question was mocking the tendency of the Lebanese to interpret everything as a conspiracy, and he was also referring to something deeper related to Lebanese society, and that unfortunately also applies to America today, which is the fact that he is in Lebanon - at that time and to this day - Everything became politicized, even the weather.
Sectarian America
Friedman said that America has become more like a Middle Eastern country, to the point that while the Lebanese were inferring that the Beirut bombing was due to a real accident, US President Donald Trump was speaking as if he were a militia leader in Beirut, announcing that the explosion must have resulted from a conspiracy, stating that His army generals told him that what happened "was an attack, it was some kind of bomb."
The writer pointed out that the United States has come to resemble Lebanon and other countries in the Middle East in two ways: The first is that the political differences have become so deep that the two parties that are at the forefront of the American political scene are now similar to the religious sects in their futile struggle for power.
Whereas the Lebanese sects are divided into “Shiites, Sunnis, and Maronites,” the American sects are divided into “Democrats and Republicans,” but the American sects now behave exactly like the competing tribes that they see should rule or die.
As for the second similarity - according to Friedman - it is that everything in the United States has become politicized, just as it is in the Middle East, from climate to energy, and even the face masks that people wear to guard against the Corona epidemic.
The road to collapse
Friedman warned that society and democracy also die at the end when everything becomes politicized, it leads to the strangulation of the government. Or in other words: When everything is politicized, this means that everything becomes related to power only, there is no middle ground, there are only parties, and there are no facts, there are only different narratives, that is, nothing remains but a struggle of wills.
He pointed out that this tendency towards politicizing everything not only harms America, but kills it, and that the reason for Trump's utter failure in managing the Corona pandemic is that he finally met a force that could not discredit and banish it by turning it into a political matter, namely nature.
He expressed his confidence that if Trump loses in the upcoming presidential elections in November of this year, he will not overcome the public good over his private interests and leave quietly.
Friedman concluded his article with a quote by the Hebrew University religious philosopher Moshe Halbertal, who said that “sound politics needs reference points outside of itself in order to flourish, it needs points of reference for truth and a concept of the common good. In Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Iraq, which is slowly happening in Israel and America. "