I very rarely read Thomas Friedman anymore, except today.

And this column really rang a bell and urge you to read it because I feel the same way when I saw Dubai:  Who Will Tell the People?.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York’s Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.’s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore’s ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children’s play zones throughout. We felt, as we have before, like we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons. If all Americans could compare Berlin’s luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II.

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Who will tell the people? We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country.

That shouldn't suggest that I think Dubai is fantastic and wonderful and without flaws. By no means. But there is a problem in the USA  and I am not sure if we are aware of it much les have any idea what to do. I guess we will see this next election though I don't think that even Obama really has the nerve to tell Americans the truth about our not-inevitable decline. Certainly no local/state politicians in my area seem even dimly aware.

Comments

[Mark Centz]

"We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country."

So says billionaire Thomas Friedman to us proles whose incomes have remained flat or declined over the past 30 years, while the income of the upper 5% has more than doubled. Dubai floats on an ocean of petrodollars (wisely invested, to be sure) and served by guest workers without rights from all over the Indian Ocean basin. Not a model to be copied here.

"If all Americans could compare Berlin’s luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II" Or perhaps there would be a real revolution in this country, or at least a genuine left wing government.

"Who will tell the people? We are not who we think we are." I don't think that means what he thinks it means.

Best left unread, after all.