Beirut 2020: Diary of the Collapse

An interesting account of Beirut in the two months before, and the immediate aftermath of the Aug 4th explosion. A very personal duarylike account of the emotions of an upper middle class family gas their country descends into collapse. An emotional account, but it left me wondering how the myriad of poor are surviving, or Lebanese in other areas of the country. His comments on the ruling class and Hezbollah (the now non-revolutionary status quo movement) gives no reason for optimism that there can be positive change. Lebanon seems destined to descend into family, clan and tribe as they compete for dwindling resources...

I read this Diary of the Collapse of Beirut in one sitting. I couldn't put it down. I once lived happily in Beirut with my husband and two boys, one four, the other two, at the time. I can really carry on about those years, the openness and utter kindness of the Lebanese, the beauty of the country, the languages I learned while living there--a decent amount of Arabic and pretty good French. And this, when everyone around me spoke English as well as I did. But for the booK: It's not fair to compare what we've been through in this country in the last 20 some years and the horrors the Lebanese have been forced to bear. But I swear I began to see enough commonalities that it left me, equally sad and scared. Please read it, whether you know much or give two shakes for Lebanon, and see if you don't feel as shaken as I did, and still do. The corruption is every where and succeeds under many guises but the simply act of not governing while grabbing all you can with both hands is as much Trump as it was and is General Anon and his Mafia cronies.