- Included in the Political Analysis Posts List.
- It occurs to me that a lot of recent problems in the world go back to World War I (or “the Great War” as they called it then).
Martin Winfree
January 8, 2015
It occurs to me that a lot of recent problems in the world go back to World War I (or “the Great War” as they called it then). Besides being surely the most pointless major war in human history, there were the confiscatory sanctions against Germany that led to absurdly high inflation (I just read an sf story about this and was reminded) and then the rise of Hitler and the other World War (not that fascism has gone away). Then there was the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire and the division of that part of the world into these patchwork countries. A lot of Muslim identity was lost when the Ottoman fell, and now we have all of these Islamist extremists to contend with.
George Konstantinow
Speaking not entirely tangentially, I’m currently reading Joseph Roth, The Radetsky March, about the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the beginning of the “world will never again be the same.” It makes me wonder: What great era has died and left us in chaotic darkness?
Michael Stafford
George, I believe the era of common sense has died.