There’s a fine, gloomy piece by Roger Cohen in the Times today: The Great Unraveling.
The fabric of society frayed. Democracy looked quaint or outmoded beside new authoritarianisms.
…Nobody connected the dots or read Kipling on life’s few certainties: “The Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire / And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire.’
Until it was too late and people could see the Great Unraveling for what it was and what it had wrought.
Now this is something: Rudyard Kipling, quoted with approval on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times. Do I detect the tendrils of neoreaction?
Welcome, Mr. Cohen. Do come in.
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When Cohen admits that his own puny hands in cooperation with the mighty hands of The Grey Lady, and Those with whom She cooperates, have done it; then that will be the beginning of Wisdom.
Patience.
Since that bit from Kipling’s poem is paraphrased from the proverbs, I am most amazed that Cohen tricked all his readers into reading the Bible.