Lawrence Upton wrote:
>
> Dear Frederick,
>
> There is no such thing as an ideal world. When I hear the words "In an ideal
> world", I know someone has reached for their revolver and doesn't like to
> admit to it.
>
> There would be an international court if the US had not opposed it. I know
> all about the real world; I am just trying to define it without the schmaltz
> and sentimentality.
>
> When you say "My task... is to compromise with and make use of other
> beliefs", it is a meaning of "belief" of which I was previously unaware.
> Your words remind me of the joke about faking sincerity.
>
> And, then, buried top and bottom in a pile of irrelevancies, we have it:
> "those American deaths are more important"
>
> Thank you, but what a surprise that you admit it.
>
> You say: "To you... the above must be highly unpleasant." You know little of
> me, and you don't get it right. Let me correct you: It isn't particularly
> unpleasant, no more so than faeces. It is arrogantly smug. It is knowingly
> hypocritical. It is culpably and murderously stupid.
>
> You say: "The other statement was that your family were pacifists in World
> War II." I did not make that statement. Nor do I see how the actions taken
> by others before I was born could possibly predict my willingness to agree
> or disagree with anything.
>
> And you are wrong: we *have agreed on something, and after that the rest
> becomes irrelevant. I accused you of the racist belief that USAmerican
> deaths are more important than others and you have confirmed it. I had never
> heard it *explicitly from a professional USAmerican who is interested in
> poetry.
>
> Perhaps something has changed, though it seems a position appropriate to a
> citizen of a country whose government deliberately bombs the non-combatant,
> uses radioactive and other poisons, uses cluster bombs, shoots to kill
> instead of taking prisoners and suspends legal rights - why, I wonder, did
> you speak in favour of those who resisted Nazi Germany?
>
> I see no hope for us
>
> L
>
> -
Oddly enough, I see some hope for you. Our brave soldiers - and, don't
kid yourself, they are quite brave; but they are effective soldiers and
try, as Patton said, to kill more than they are killed - as well as, if
you'll excuse the expression, yours, will bring justice to bin Laden and
his associates: the only kind of justice now available. And thereby
preserve you and your kind's freedom to sentimentalize. And to distort:
precisely nothing in what I said indicates racism. The US government
and people can be mobilized to take what action necessary to avenge our
victims - not, unfortunately, the other victims you and I have
mentioned. The only way to change that, to transform a capitalist power
into a force for unalloyed good, is to bring force to bear. Real force,
not your empty (as I say, airless) moralism. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban
are not that force; their aims are entirely different. But we've been
over this.
I am so sick of you people. Self-righteous, irresponsible, consumed
with envy ... I will say, however, that I'm sorry I read your statement
as suggesting your family were pacifists.
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