Yeah
there was a little note in our paper the other day, Jill, about yr
election, & I thought, Aha. How sad.
And how sad, that what is happening now was inevitable, & perhaps all we
can hope for is that various, different, voices will continue to speak &
be(allowed to be) heard.
It's no excuse, but i think 'the people' are leading the politicians as
much as the opposite, in their reaction & support in the US. In Canada too.
And I guess I feel we can't just dismiss out of hand the powerful feelings
leading the people to feel so, & to demand a war. I want to keep the
options of oppostiion open, but I don't see stopping it when so many want
it started.
And it doesn't help the side calling for peace, for such a much more
thoguthful & careful reponse than we might think is actually happening
(although it has been more thoughtful than I originally thought it would be
-- not enough, but), when someone like Thobani here spoke out to call the
US the most terrorist state in the world, which has done more against women
than even the Taliban. Predictably, the response generally to that was a)
why wasn't she shut up (the worst), to, well, she should be sent to
Afghansiatan, where she wouldn't be allowed to speak so to a publicly
funded conference, to quiet despair that her comments have undermined both
feminism & the peace movement here.
How, in other words, to think coherently & find a rhetoric that might
actually reach the ears & minds of those we disagree with about how things
are being played out (or should I come out & say, how they are playing
things out?).
Sorry, i think utterly through continuing uncertainty each ady here...
Doug
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
Syntax in poetry is like narrative in novels --
the place where ideology and values are found.
Rachel Blau DuPlessis
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