At 10:24 PM -0700 3/4/03, Jeremy Green wrote:
>The
>problem is that framing dissent as a matter of individual conscience
>is a convenient way for the media to avoid the -political- arguments
>about the warmongering of the Bush administration. The soundbyting
>of individual conscience so quickly swerves into the image of the
>idealized and abstracted liberal subject caught up in a fever of
>hand-wringing. The media thereby offers a simulacrum of 'balanced
>coverage' while avoiding any of the real questions at hand.
Quite correct and astute, I think, Jeremy. Nevertheless noise in a
democracy, if it is big enough, does have effect: crude political
thinking, I know, but there it is. Nothing is going to work on its
own, but millions of different actions working together may well.
Geraldine, I wasn't thinking that at all!
I'm sure Peter Boyle won't mind my posting the poem he sent - it's
one of my favourites of the ones I've received, though as I said I
was impressed by the quality of a large proportion, which were so
often thoughtful rather than soggy... it seems silly talking about
aesthetics in this context - but anyway - for the pleasure of it -
Philosophers and other world leaders
It seems much later in the history of human thought than merely this
evening. A curl of thin smoke marks the bomb blast obliterating the
city that has yet to be built. An arrow has been fired through a
crowded beauty parlour into tomorrow's discrepancies. Statistical
adjustors have already rewritten the body count and proven to
everyone's satisfaction that what goes around comes around.
"Playfulness" is already becoming a word untranslateable in the idiom
of sombre morgueologists. In the last days before the theatre of live
sports hits the screen, rhetoric builds bridges to make it easier to
part the demonized from the saved. Ordinary madmen report that
Pythagoras of Elea found no problem being in several places
simultaneously. His exemplary calm shone and is shining above those
streets where fleets and armies have just sailed off into the
harrowing of a cancelled tomorrow.
Peter Boyle
Best
A
--
Alison Croggon
Editor
Masthead Online
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
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