Someone Take Away Thomas Friedman's Computer Before He Types Another Sentence

By Matt Taibbi, New York Press. Posted January 22, 2009.

Obviously this sounds like a flippant analysis, but that's more or less exactly what Friedman is up to here. If you're going to draw a line that measures the level of "freedom" across the entire world and on that line plot just four randomly selected points in time over the course of 30 years -- and one of your top four "freedom points" in a 30-year period of human history is the privatization of a Nigerian oil field -- well, what the fuck? What can't you argue, if that's how you're going to make your point?

He could have graphed a line in the opposite direction by replacing Berlin with Tiananmen Square, substituting Iraqi elections for Iran's call for Israel's destruction (incidentally, when in the last half-century or so have Islamic extremists not called for Israel's destruction?), junking Iran's 1997 call for dialogue for the U.S. sanctions against Iran in '95, and so on. It's crazy, a game of Scrabble where the words don't have to connect on the board, or a mathematician coming up with the equation AB-3X = Swedish girls like chocolate.

Getting to the "ideas" in the book: Its basic premise is that America's decades-long habit of gluttonous energy consumption has adversely affected humanity because: a) while the earth could support America's indulgence, it can't sustain 2 billion endlessly copulating Chinese should they all choose to live in American-style excess, and b) the exploding global demand for oil artificially subsidizes repressive Middle Eastern dictatorships that would otherwise have to rely on tax revenue (read: listen to their people) in order to survive, and this subsidy leads to terrorism and a spread of "unfreedom."

Regarding the first point, Friedman writes:

Because if the spread of freedom and free markets is not accompanied by a new approach to how we produce energy and treat the environment … then Mother Nature and planet Earth will impose their own constraints and limits on our way of life -- constraints that will be worse than communism.

Three observations about this touching and seemingly remarkable development, i.e. onetime, unrepentant free-market icon Thomas Friedman suddenly coming out huge for the environment and against the evils of gross consumerism:

1. The need for massive investment in green energy is an idea so obvious and inoffensive that even presidential candidates from both parties could be seen fighting over who's for it more in nationally televised debates last fall;

2. I wish I had the balls to first spend six long years madly cheering on an Iraq war that not only reintroduced Shariah law to the streets of Baghdad, but radicalized the entire Islamic world against American influence -- and then write a book blaming the spread of fundamentalist Islam on the ignorant consumers of the Middle American heartland, who bought too many Hummers and spent too much time shopping for iPods in my wife's giganto-malls.

3. To review quickly, the "Long Bomb" Iraq war plan Friedman supported as a means of transforming the Middle East blew up in his and everyone else's face; the "Electronic Herd" of highly volatile international capital markets he once touted as an economic cure-all not only didn't pan out, but led the world into a terrifying chasm of seemingly irreversible economic catastrophe; his beloved "Golden Straitjacket" of American-style global development (forced on the world by the "hidden fist" of American military power) turned out to be the vehicle for the very energy/ecological crisis Friedman himself warns about in his new book; and, most humorously, the "Flat World" consumer economics Friedman marveled at so voluminously turned out to be grounded in such total unreality that even his wife's once-mighty shopping mall empire, General Growth Properties, has lost 99 percent of its value in this year alone.

So, yes, Friedman is suddenly an environmentalist of sorts.

What the fuck else is he going to be? All the other ideas he spent the last 10 years humping have been blown to hell. Color me unimpressed that he scrounged one more thing to sell out of the smoldering, discredited wreck that should be his career; that he had the good sense to quickly reinvent himself before angry gods remembered to dash his brains out with a lightning bolt. But better late than never, I suppose.

Or as Friedman might say, "Better two cell phones than a fish in your zipper."

See more stories tagged with: environment, consumerism, thomas friedman, the world is flat

Matt Taibbi’s last critique of Thomas Friedman,“Flathead,” appeared in the April 26, 2005, edition of New York Press.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Environment! Sign up now »