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(noun) a common babbler; one who won't shut up.
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Wednesday, October 17, 2001
The Closing of the Anti-American Mind I had yet another one of those conversations with someone today who is still using the old filters, still propping up the old rhetorical workhouses of anti-Americanism. This person, a Peace Corps volunteer and world traveler, couldn't avoid insulting me as a provincial hick. If I heard the word "bombing," I heard it a hundred times--I was bombed with "bombing," as if no other words mattered, as if bombing was all we were doing or would ever do, and underlying all that, the notion that bombing was inherently evil and never an acceptable option. She was from the "we're making them hate us more" school, which, as I've argued before, presupposes that we can make them do or feel anything. America is always the acting agent. Non-America is always the acted upon. I felt beat up afterwards, and needed some cool analysis of this mindset. Thanks to Matt Welch, I got it from a Todd Gitlin column. I'm not quite as impressed as Welch, in some ways the essay itself doesn't "engage with reality" in the way it seems to endorse, but it's a nice read regardless. For [anti-Americanism], ordinary Americans can never be just that. They can certainly never just be victims, a status already monopolized elsewhere. Americans, or ‘the West’, are blithely dehumanized into the molecules of a structure, what bin Laden calls America’s “vital organs”. As for their government, its policies amount to a condition, an essence. The actions of various mass murderers (the Khmer Rouge, Bin Laden) must, rightly, be “contextualized.” But to the anti-American, American policy never has “context.” It War or Peace: Pick One An editorial in the Daily Telegraph, on the occasion of Blair's recent flourishes surrounding the Palestine issue, warns of the danger fixing "all the wrongs of the world" in a time of war. We should not respond obediently to whatever problem Osama bin Laden chooses to put on the international agenda with one of his propaganda broadcasts. Will there be a Western mission to Kashmir, just because that has now been added to the al-Qa'eda shopping list? We should behave as humanely as possible in Afghanistan, but the world will rightly despise us as hypocrites if we claim that we are there chiefly to bring food and medicine to the population. We are there in justified pursuit of murderous enemies.Regarding responding obediently, I really doubt Israel means so much to bin Laden anyway, save as a location for more of his killing fields. Tuesday, October 16, 2001
The man who would speak with (Larry) King Osama, ever the media star, has agreed to answer some questions from CNN to further his propaganda war. Here are the questions: 1. Your spokesman has praised the September 11 terrorist attacks that killed thousands of innocent people and threatened to carry out more attacks involving planes and tall buildings. How can you and your followers advocate the killing of innocent people? A larger question might be, what does either CNN or Osama have to gain from this? CNN, like Aladdin and his wishes, squanders an opportunity by wasting time pursuing admissions of guilt when they could have consulted with the psych-ops folks, and blown bin Laden's mind before we blew up his bunker. This whole exercise of a media interview assumes rational discourse, and as Jonah Goldberg has argued, that's a big assumption. "I want you to protect the White House at all costs." Chilling order given by the Secret Service to jet pilots flying over Washington on the morning of Sept. 11th, according to the NY Times. Monday, October 15, 2001
Pro-US Fatwa Glenn Reynolds over at InstaPundit.com is upset, and I'm with him. There's only so much you can say about Anthrax with as few people who have been exposed (and I'm of the opinion that this could be homegrown attention-getting by some sick mofos), but there's plenty that could be said about Muslim support for our cause. We sure can't depend on the Al-Manaar television network. Sunday, October 14, 2001
Devolution I'm not ashamed to say that I once wrote CBS to complain about their cancellation of the "Planet of the Apes - the TV series," which was one of the worst shows ever to be shown on television. I think I may have taught myself to type writing that letter. Thankfully, I didn't persuade them. Well, I should have written to Tim Burton before he ever tackled the remake of POTA and told him to take his cue from CBS in 1974. I finally saw the new movie last night and it lived up the standards of the TV series, which is to say that it was pretty horrible, despite the valiant efforts of Mark Walberg and Helena Bonham Carter and a budget that would make a 70s-era TV producer faint dead away. Maybe 10-year-olds would like it. I'm still coveting the newly released DVDs. Terrible Cowardliness William Ian Miller tells it like it is in Salon. We've gotten to the point where we're thought of as objects of contempt by tough, warrior-minded people -- like certain Islamic fundamentalists, for example. We're not willing for even one troop to die before we'll leave Somalia. We aren't willing to die anymore, for anything. And when they sense that, they have nothing but contempt for us and will not believe any threats we make. I take it as the decline of our virtue that we can somehow see 6,000 of our citizens blown up and start to make excuses for the people who blew us up instead of first defending ourselves, and getting them back so they don't do it again. I don't want to have too much understanding for the guy who rapes my daughter. War Rant I've wanted to write something since the attacks, but I've struggled with my own limitations as a writer, and my struggle to understand the shifts in consciousness that have come with these events. I hope this is a new beginning for this country. I hope that since our generation, for the first time, can apply the adjective "war-ravaged" to some places within our borders, that the cartoon-like, Rambo-inspired patriotism of our more recent past is dead and replaced with a more contemplative kind of patriotism, informed by a realization that we don't exist in isolation, and a serious understanding of what lay ahead. I'm a huge John Lennon fan, but as he is the patron saint of peaceniks everywhere, I think some of his foundational "works" might bear some fresh explication. I think "Imagine" is the most perfect expression in song of an ideal--the ideal of a secular utopia where no one owns anything, or wants to. "The Communist Manifesto" describes a similar ideal. The problem with these ideals is that, in practice, human nature gets in the way. When you try take "Imagine" as something other than a musical exercise in escapism from human history, you start to realize that you'll need a totalitarian regime to make sure people follow the rules, e.g., become atheists, give up their property, etc. But can't I imagine that we all (and yes, it would take all of us) become "enlightened" of our on accord? I cannot. As to how it applies to post-9/11 America, during the "Tribute to Heros" telethon last Friday night, I thought "Imagine" was a strange choice for Neil Young to make because a pacifist attempt to escape history now would be suicidal. I know some may disagree, but in the absence of a 61-year-old New Yorker named John Lennon who can tell us what he thinks about recent events, it's purely theoretical to discuss "What would Lennon do?" A few other things have bothered me about vocabulary surrounding "the events of September 11th," because I think our word choice affects how we process these events. I know writers and commentators get tired using the same old words: terrorist attack. But referring to events as if they were only a disaster or calamity or tragedy only diminish the significance and true nature of what's happened. And don't get me started about Reuters' refusal to call terrorists terrorists. In context of the attacks, I get agitated when the word "blame" is used in the vicinity of "ourselves," or worse yet, when I see "chicken," "home," and "roost" used in the same sentence. This is still a free country, and people have the right to blame whomever they want, but I don't have to agree or even think that the influence of their opinions is helpful. I see patriotism as a kind of national self-esteem, which, for our country to survive, needs to be at a certain level. There's plenty of evidence that our esteem has suffered greatly long before now. I don't doubt that for many of us, patriotism seems the base emotion of a previous age. The magnitude of our nation's power made national cheerleading seem a redundant, arrogant display. We've been ashamed by our success, and we've been our own best critics, perhaps to give us some succor from the guilt accompanying our standard of living relative to much of the world. So how do we now respond to attackers who hate us more than we hate ourselves? The unthinkable nature of what's happened is highlighted by the unthinking assumption of default positions by some on the Left and the Right, pointing fingers at what each see as evil America. Jerry Falwell and Michael Moore represent the most noxious examples of this. Others have done their share of Monday morning quarterbacking regarding our foreign policy (although usually with incomplete specifics regarding what we could have done differently). Foreign policy is a high-stakes, many-tiered chess game, and to focus on any one factor (like our need for oil) is to oversimplify. We need to constantly re-evaluate our policies, but not presume too much about alternative consequences had we acted otherwise in the past. But my larger point is that an attempt to blame ourselves for the attacks is oddly comforting because it is based on the assumption that we are in control of others' feelings about us. By extension, others' actions are a direct result of something we've done, and, by further extension, we deserve what we get. It follows that if we're better, people will love us. But this is a false comfort. These people don't hate us for what we do. They hate America for the values that make us American--tolerance, to name one. One of the best articles I've read since this began was written 11 years ago by Bernard Lewis, and goes a long way towards explaining where this hatred comes from. Hatred is an easy and thrilling emotion, and people will always engage in it. (Conversely, the thrill of imagining that what I just said is not true is part of the enormous appeal of Lennon's song.) Hatred obviously thrives in 2001, and with increasing technological innovation, a few do and will threaten us all more than I'm afraid many realize, even after the Manhattan massacre. I fear that our country faces the greatest challenge in its history. One key to our success is the help of the moderate Muslims. We have to get them on our side and fast. One question that has haunted me since the beginning is, "Where is the Muslim leadership, and why aren't they leading the charge to root out terrorists?" The other day, in Salon, I was alarmed to read this. And if you really want to read something chilling, the Salon article led me to a warning we did not heed. I'm trying not to be negative. I'm hopeful for the good effects of all this. For the first time in my life, I've volunteered (for the Red Cross), and I've even been looking to buy a flag. Here's hoping we'll all be better people and have a better country. I heard Warren Buffett talking about investments in the U.S. the other night. He said, "Where else are you going to put your money?" Good point. I'll take that bet.
Welcome This is my first entry. For some reason I keep thinking of the Police song with the lyrics, "Too much information, running 'round my head." I'm also thinking about Wordsworth's poem, "The World is Too Much with Us." Indeed, the world seems to be too much with us these days, and I suppose this weblog is my attempt to slow down and perhaps capture some of that information so that my brain can do other things rather than juggle it all. Thanks for reading. Brad |