So you live in a nation where either Anthony Weiner or Donald Trump
command the headlines – not just in the tabloids but in the papers of record
too.
Americans may be racing to the heavens in Silicon Valley (SpaceX and Blue
Origin, a colony on Mars, anyone?), but in political, economic and social news,
it’s a race to the bottom. That’s not so much a comment about American global
power or domestic economic health. Rather about the quality of its news and
commentary.
Then there is “And the Weak Suffer What They Must?” by Yanis Varoufakis,
a onetime finance minister of Greece. In a single volume published by Nation
Books (Hachette), Varoufakis follows the money in a well-written expose of
surprising literary flourish on the modern global economy, with the US and
Europe at its center.
Consider this splash of wisdom, in which he quotes from Thucydides’s Pelopennsian
War, a portion that was underlined by John Maynard Keynes:
“There it was
underlined in pencil, the famous passage in which powerful Athenian generals
explained to the helpless Melians why ‘rights’ are only pertinent ‘between
equals in power’ and, for this reason, they were about ‘to do as they pleased
with them.’ It was because ‘the strong actually do what they can and the weak
suffer what they must.’”
A harsh concept. But words to learn by. You won’t go wrong in getting a
firmer grasp of where we are – and where we are heading – than by sitting down
and reading this book.
Next: Running for Your Life: September!
