Frank wrote:
>I saw Walter Cronkite, a highly respected retired newscaster in the USA,
>interviewed recently. When asked what he thought about 9.11 he said it was the
>inevitable result of a revolution of the poor in Central America, South America,
>Africa, Asia and parts of Europe who have long been ignored by the consumption
>culture of the United States, the richest nation in the world. The interviewer
>quickly cut to a commercial.
>
>
>
I don't know whether or not it would be nice to think that a revolution
of the poor was at the back of that atrocity. If so, it proves the poor
are bastards like the rest of us; but I think that Hitchens & co are
probably right to say that this is a perverse kind of wishful thinking,
and that the perpetrators belong are more like Lessing's resentful
fake-prole rich kids in _The Good Terrorist_ than they are like the
Zapatistas. I may even be being too kind to the Zapatistas; I wouldn't know.
Every time the Two Towers appear on the stage of the imagination, it is
as personifications of something: the house of bricks made by the big
bad capitalist pigs. Here comes a peasant with a pitchfork; he
pitchforks one of the two towers; it remains standing. Here comes an
exilic intellectual; he emits a screed; no result. Here come a
Palestinian throwing stones, a middle Eastern dictator belching mustard
gas, an Egyptian cleric swinging his hook. The towers are invincible and
proud. Now come the three little wolves, dancing like children, waving
toy aeroplanes in the air. They huff and they puff, and the aeroplanes
crash into the towers, killing over 3000 people. The world's poor are
supposed to exhale in satisfaction, dance in the streets, kindle the
fires of warm generous common humanity with hugs and kisses now that the
evil warlock is dead and the blight of his dark magicks is gone from the
land. Instead they get carpet-bombed. Everyone still standing stands
around looking confused and fearful. This puppet-show sucks.
Dominic
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