Rock the Casbah

I was listening to the radio on my morning commute and there was a discussion between the NPR guy and an author, Neil Ferguson I think his name was. He had written a book called War of the World or something to that effect. His point in the book was that there is a historical trend toward violence and chaos when certain historical precedents are present and when conditions are just so. The conversation was detailed and the commentator asked for specific instances to support the author’s assertions, but the bottom line was that the Middle East is about to experience a period of civil and ethnic strife that will encompass the entire region. This, he said, was because of the economic volatility, ethnic heterogeneity within national boundaries, a change from one form of government to the next in too short a period (a “rush from the battle field to the ballot box”), and the disintegration of the hegemony of a controlling empire, in this case the United States.

My take on his thinking is this: historical precedent may be a strong indicator for possibilities, but it does not mean that the past will repeat itself. He is not the second foundation from Asimov’s foundation trilogy so he can predict the future with no discrepancies. Might not the prevalence of pessimism about the fate of a region have as much to do with the region’s situational outcome as the confluence of precedents? OK, maybe not as much, but some?

Now you may ask what this topic has to do with the Irish-American experience, or the milieu of overlapping (or “Borderline”) cultures. Well, I don’t really know, but…