… of the earth. Its impossible constellations, its terrifying caves… I mean, without wanting to be a wimp about it, there’s something overwhelming about massive chambers of dripping stalactites beneath, and infinite dripping stars above; and Les UDs got that particular double helping quite intensely on their little trip.
It was deliciously cold both above and below, but now we’re back at surface heat, waiting for summer to give way.
On the winding road up Skyline Drive, I insisted we talk about this article on Lebanon in The Economist because the country it evoked seemed as impossible to me as the constellations. On the one year anniversary of the port explosion, the country the writer evoked is disgustingly corrupt, corrupt beyond belief, absolutely corrupt, and, because of that corruption, seemingly dead beyond repair. How did that happen, and how is Lebanon to survive its own death?
Certes, UD knows that corruption is part of political life, and a very significant part of political (and social) life in many countries (note Lebanon’s location on the corruption index to which I just linked). But the Economist writer seems to be announcing the protracted lurid extinction of a country because its governing and business elite is totally happy to dine on the corpse of the Lebanese people until there’s nothing left but bones … at which point they’ll all move to Monaco.
It’s pure Ubu: “I”ll make my fortune, kill the whole world, and bugger off.”
Ubu is a way over the top, hilarious, moral monster. How did Lebanon, where religious faith is the reason it looks the way it does, get an entire political class of moral monsters? Forget hypocritical; these people are evil. To paraphrase another UD favorite: They are monsters without being a myth.
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Consider the language of the Economist piece: Lebanon is an “abyss,” there is “no bottom” in its “bottomless collapse.” Its “shambolic politicians cannot agree on a new government.” The police, grossly underpaid “agents of a bankrupt state,” cannot be expected to cooperate with the authorities forever. A year after the blast, “things are indeed worse, almost immeasurably so.”
The blast was not a nadir, just another twist on Lebanon’s long downward spiral. There has been no accountability for the disaster. Nor is there a government empowered to tackle an economic crisis that, according to the World Bank, may rank as the third worst anywhere in the world since the 1850’s...
[The country] tipped into economic crisis in 2019, the result of a years-long Ponzi scheme overseen by the central bank, which borrowed billions from an outsized banking industry to sustain a currency peg. The scheme unraveled when banks no longer took in enough fresh deposits to keep it going. [An observer] estimates that there was an $83bn hole in their balance-sheets last year.
Half the country now lives below the poverty line. [There are] only a few hours of electricity each day… A young girl died from a scorpion sting that could not be treated for lack of antivenom in depleted hospitals and pharmacies… Beirutis wander the streets glassy-eyed: no one is sleeping well, without even a fan to cut the heat and humidity. Everyone seems to have caught a stomach bug this summer from food spoiled by power cuts… [T]he… days are a brew of rage and despair.
The World Bank calls this a “deliberate depression,” a man-made crisis – and the men who made it are still in power, with no plan to fix it.
Lebanon is not a failed state; it’s a zombie state. In order to have a free hand to steal all the country’s money, its governing elite has reduced the population to automata unable to act on their own behalf. The closest analogy UD can think of is North Korea.
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So, nu, Mr UD, what to do?
Here are some of his comments.
1.) The Economist writer exaggerates, focuses only on the very worst aspects of the situation. “Spoken like a Pole,” replied UD. “Not every country conjures Solidarność, you know.”
2.) One solution might be The Appointment of the Respected, Legitimate Person/People. Here, as in Italy calling the non-corrupt, brilliant technocrat Mario Draghi out of private life at an advanced age in order to deal with Italy’s ridiculous economy, Lebanon would search for a small group of morally serious people with relevant expertise, people respected by all because of their above-the-fray gravitas, and ask them to save the country. Even better – bring together organizations that have independent legitimacy, have them constitute themselves as, say, The National Salvation Congress, and wait while their moral and intellectual legitimacy endows them with meaningful power.
3.) If/when things deteriorate into actual civil war, call in the UN.
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UPDATE: A personal view of the end of the world.