I’m not sure if Tom Friedman is just a stubborn optimist or whether he has somehow, after years on the international beat, not been divested of a childish naiveté.
His latest editorial in the NYT deplores the fact that the Republicans just cut the National Science Foundation budget by 2 percent. He says what they ought to do instead is marshal the country behind a massive effort toward energy independence, like Kennedy’s call to make it to the moon. Political reform would follow in trouble spots around the world. Birds would sing. The lion and the lamb would lie down together. A new day would dawn.
Well Tom, to quote my granddad, you can wish in one hand and piss in the other and see which one fills up first. Time to come to terms with the people in charge. Earnest idealists they ain’t.
