David, your comment re: 'The American cultural myth of national innocence
seems to be its problem, the bad things belonged in the Old World, not the
New. Whereas the reality is far from the case.'
is especialy interesting in the context of a wonderfully witty & wise
editorial by Lewis Lapham in the July (I think) Harper's, which harped, one
might say, on exactly that point, in its rather blistering attack on the
republican right taking ever more power even then under Dubya's
administration. of course, if he wrote that now (& if anyone read Harper's)
it would be at the very least sacrilege, perhaps something worse. Alas,
yet, yet, & I think you are being too harsh, the people who don't agree
wholeheartedly are there, & some are even speaking up, a bit. As well, in
an age of globalization, some of the worst supporters of this right wing,
if we must, attitude are from elsewhere anyway, say Rupert Murdoch, fro
example.
'They' seem to have most of the power right now, & moreover, it's very hard
to be heard against the general opinion -- so all one can do is say things
anyway, perhaps in rather small arenas, & hope that eventually things will
affect enough people that they will will to change. In Canada, at least,
the media do present a fairly balanced vie: we know because we see on TV
how many Afghani civilians have been killed & wounded in the bombing; if
you can only get US TV, you just don't see that, & therefore have a much
ahrder time knowing that it's all that bad.
Which is to say that I'n generally agreeing with you, but feel that all the
nuances, many of which I don't know about, need to be taken into account...
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
I can always
go back to
fertilization,
kimonos, wrap-
arounds and
diatribes.
Lorine Niedecker
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