2010.
Looking back on it five years later, it almost seems like a paradise
lost. A lot of Americans still had their old flip phones, including me,
so smartphone infestation hadn’t yet reached critical mass. There wasn’t
as much attention whoring. “Social justice” insanity hadn’t quite yet
completely taken over the media and popular culture both in the
Anglosphere and Europe. The epidemic of weird tattoos and neon hair had
not yet begun.
Most importantly, for purposes of this article, it was a relatively
peaceful and stable time. Sure, the Iraq War was still on, but it was
winding down. The wider Middle East was also fairly stable. The group
that would become ISIS was almost extinct. The destabilizing “Arab
Spring” was still a year away, and the failed effort to impose democracy
in Iraq had not yet been attempted to be exported to the rest of the
Middle East.
It was an interesting time in my own life too. Through circumstance, I
wound up working for the International Rescue Committee, an
organization that provides services to refugees around the world. My
task was to tutor children and adolescents so that they could better
understand the English language, and in so doing also act as an
ambassador that would help the refugees acclimate themselves to life in
the United States.
Read the full article here.
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