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The fun thing about Bernard-Henri Levy is that he tries to cover up for insufficient expertise by writing about national affairs in the style of a melodramatic teenager who just got a LiveJournal:
We are living in an extraordinary time.The world has been badly shaken.In the space of a few days a system that we thought was as secure and assured as the air we breathe lost all its landmarks, its clarity, and was seemingly swallowed up by a black hole.Money--essential to the spirit of peace--congealed, like blood in veins.Credit--this fine word is also expressive of people's faith in others--like a machine that jammed, and then stopped.Confidence--the famous "confidence" that is also integral to the pact among citizens and the reasons it must be perpetuated--like a spell that is evaporating.I should stop, but c'mon. Indulge me. One more quote:
Is man a predator of man? Does the fear of this predator slumber within us? An anxiety, formerly concealed by a poorly applied varnish of civilization, about a state of nature that is re-emerging? Consider the princes of finance, once so polite, so complicit, so civilized, who have been facing each other at the edge of the abyss, waiting to see who will be the next to fall; consider that dance of wolves, the ferocious ballet of battered predators sniffing at each other, detecting the scent of death on their neighbors, coveting their remains; consider the tango of white-hot hate that has been discreetly called the "drying up of interbank credit."Yeah, consider that! Now, why The New Republic decided to sound him out on the financial crisis is really anyone's guess. It certainly compares poorly with recent BHL-related editorial decisions made by The Nation magazine, which published this delicious takedown of France's leading pseudo-philosophical export.
