What do you make of this?

Sometimes what I read seems to be very appropriate for the times.

There is a book that I had not read for many years – “The Garden of the Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran - published posthumously in 1933. I have always liked his books and poetry – he seems, to me, in his writing, to capture the inner most hopes (and fears) of many people – certainly me.  

And yes, I know he was referring to a different time and different circumstances (the world in the early 1930s) but still, this one passage I believe, applies today and resonates to the circumstances and the leaders in many countries:-

“And Almustafa was silent, and he looked away towards the hills and the vast ether, and there was battle in his silence.

Then he said: ‘My friends and my road-fellows, pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.

‘Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave, eats a bread it does not harvest, and drinks a wine that flows not from its own winepress.

‘Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.

‘Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream, yet submits in its awakening.

‘Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it walks in a funeral, boasts not except among its ruins, and will rebel not save when it neck is laid between the sword and the block.

‘Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.

‘Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpetings, and farewells him with hootings, only to welcome another with trumpetings again.

Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.

‘Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation."

Draw what conclusions you think are appropriate from these lines written nearly ninety years ago.