An answer to little Lydia.

Απάντηση στο άρθρο του T.H. Friedman, το οποίο δημοσιεύτηκε στους New York Times(έντυπη μορφή) στις 16/5/2010.


Dear Lydia,

Just a few days ago, you asked humanity a question : “In what kind of a world will I grow up?”

Then came along a nice gentleman from a land far far away from your own, full of grace and eloquence, willing to answer this question for you. Unfortunately, even though the gentleman tried his best, his words must not have helped you very much with your puzzlement.

It’s not your fault of course, it was probably nothing more than a misunderstanding. You see, apparently the nice gentleman thought that your question was not “Why did 3 of my fellow citizens had to die?”, but rather “Why did Dow Jones drop?”.

So, after this unfortunate misinterpretation, I felt like I had the obligation to try and address your question myself.

The kind of world that you will grow up in little Lydia, is a place where some people that have lots and lots of money, may one day decide that they need to make even more money. These people (lets randomly call them G.S.) will be people from a far far away land (yes, the same as the home of the nice gentleman that tried to answer your question) and you will never meet them. Nor will the families of the people that died in the fire.
Eventually, these people will come up with a plan to make money, by taking advantage of the stupidity and greed of the people of your own country. People just like your mom and dad, who have proven to care more for their short term interest, rather than for your future.
Then, in the course of realizing their plan, the G.S. people will help implode your country’s economy. This in turn will produce a series of riots, during which occasionally people will get burnt alive. Your mum and dad will most probably participate in these riots in one way or another.
And finally, after all this happens, a nice gentleman will take advantage of a written expression of your trauma, not in order to ask the G.S. people why they helped mess your country up, but in order to tell YOU that when you grow up YOU should be very responsible and very controlled in your actions, because if you are not, YOU might in some way cause the Dow Jones to drop again and therefore the G.S. to lose a small fraction of the money they gathered while helping destroy your country..

This is the kind of world that you will grow up in little Lydia.

Good luck.