There’s a fast-enveloping sense of doom about (only partially alleviated by the events in Davos yesterday), with Western allies falling out and the rules-based world order in danger of collapsing around us.
What is the nature of this upheaval, why is it happening and how are things likely to play out?
What is needed is authoritative, insightful and clear-eyed analysis.
Part of the challenge commentators face is the US president’s habit of flooding the information space, with one provocation quickly being superseded by another, meaning journalists are faced with a constantly shifting target. The result is critical analysis is spread thin.
We need someone who can see the wood for the trees, who can see with crystal-clarity what is happening and why and the likely end result if countries continue on their present course.
Someone like Sally Carson…
Sadly no longer with us, she was the author of a remarkable book I read earlier this year, called ‘Crooked Cross’. Written in 1934 and out of print for many years, it was rediscovered and republished by Persephone Books, no doubt because the themes it explores strike a chord with many people today.
Its brilliance is partly down to the date it was published; just one year after Hitler came to power, it charts twelve months in the life of one very normal Bavarian family and how it loses its moorings in the rising tide of extreme racism and nationalism.
Carson saw with breathtaking clarity, just one year into Nazi rule, the direction of travel and how the ghastly words and deeds of people in power would filter through the rest of society and the devastating impact it would have on ordinary people.
What we need is someone like Sally Carson who can write with similar prescience about the deeply unsettling times we are living through today.
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