A great piece from NYT’s Roger Cohen on the lack of genuine freedom:
Cohen observes:
“I don’t know if
the world is freer than a half-century ago. On paper, it is. The totalitarian
Soviet Imperium is gone. The generals who bossed Latin America are gone,
generally. Asia has unshackled itself and claims this century as its own. Media
has opened out, gone social.
Yet minds feel more
crimped, fear more pervasive, possibility more limited, adventure more
choreographed, politics more stale, economics more skewed, pressure more
crushing, escape more elusive….
I don’t think it’s
that the world’s more dangerous. I think it’s that people are more frightened.
Fear is a much-trafficked commodity.”