Obama, Trotsky and Chiasmus

I don’t normally read the Economist Magazine, for a whole range of reasons including time, money, energy, degree of difficulty (I’ve never studied commerce), and also because I’m not much of a magazine person. But whenever I do read it, I enjoy it. I enjoy the reporting, and the coverage of issues, but most of all I enjoy the quality of writing.

For example, here is another chiasmus , perfectly intertwined in an article about Barrack Obama. The journalist is commenting on the United States need for someone to rescue the world economy, tackle climate change, reform global institutions, and above all revive America itself, and how it’s hardly the agenda Obama would have chosen for himself:

“But a new president cannot pick the place his story starts. ‘You may not be interested in war,’ Trotsky once said, ‘but war is interested in you.’ Thanks to the legacy bequeathed by Osama bin Laden and George Bush, Mr Obama will begin his term as a war president, one who has promised to end the war in Iraq but to win the one in Afghanistan. These, no less than digging America out of recession, will be preoccupations from day one."

(click here to read a previous chiasmus post)