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

----- Original Message -----
From: "Frederick Pollack" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 01 December 2001 15:16
Subject: Re: from Salon


| Lawrence Upton wrote:
| >
| > From: "Frederick Pollack" <[log in to unmask]>
| > To: <[log in to unmask]>
| > Sent: 01 December 2001 02:14
| >
| > Frederick, I don't have cosmic sympathy. I said I *can't empathise with
the
| > grieving relatives - and that would apply to the Afghan bereaved too. I
can
| > make a little inroad towards it, but that's it. All but one of those
close
| > to me who have died have died in bed. All of my family up to second
cousin
| > declined to participate in any of the C20 wars
| >
| > You suggest I benefit from global inequalities. Yes, of course, I do. I
fail
| > to see how that relates to what I said as any kind of an answer to what
I
| > said
| >
| > I am opposing in such ways as I can the continuance of that
exploitation.
| > You seem, in so far as I can understand you, to be saying that my
freedom -
| > is that the word you would use? - that my freedom derives from Britain's
| > history of exploitation.
| >
| > It isn't entirely false, but it's far from true. However, to be any kind
of
| > a response to what I said, instead of just talking over me with insults,
it
| > must be a claim that killing other people creates freedom for the
killer.
| > Dirty Harry again.
| >
| > If not, please explain.
| >
| > It is self-evident that there is no need to kill to be free and I deeply
| > resent self-appointed police insisting there is no alternative
| >
| > | Any death is important.  Any victimization - of Nicaraguans or
Chileans
| > | or Ibos or Navajos or Palestinians or Israelis or aborigines etc.
etc. -
| > | is wrong.
| >
| > I didn't say any death is important. I said every death is of *equal
| > importance.
| >
| > You do not and
| >
| >   I am profoundly glad that no one has the power to punish the
| > | United States for the policies you mention.
| >
| > confirms, I believe, my suspicion that some USAmericans, yourself now
| > included, treat USAmerican lives as more important than others
| >
| >  Even if they did, I
| > | wouldn't accept being blown up as just payment for them.
| >
| > Well, I didn't ask you to. But in supporting the bombing of Afghanistan,
| > that's *exactly what you are wishing upon Afghans
| >
| > Again, the unstated formula is that USAmerican lives are more important
than
| > other lives
| >
| >   If you came
| > | down from your airless moral height,
| >
| > tiptoe upon a little hill
| >
| >  you would have to say the same
| > | about a thousand British crimes.
| >
| > Have to say what? That I don't want UK punished for its crimes? Yes, I
do. I
| > want just about every cabinet member for the last 20 years in the Hague.
| >
| > That I don't want to be blown up? What a damn fool idea. Of course I
don't.
| > Nor those I love. Nor, with less emotion - see above - any others. One
of my
| > subsidiary objections to the current murders is that it make sit more
likely
| > that I shall be
| >
| > | the nature of the forces we are combating,
| >
| > not "we", but as *you acknowledge it, I'll say _you_
| >
| > you didn't combat them, you bombed everything, killing many who were
nothing
| > to do with it and left the fuzzywuzzies to do the combating
| >
| > bloodsport
| >
| > now everyone who might hurt them is dead, your heroes are going in
| >
| >   Further: the Japan of today is a better place than
| > | the one our nations defeated.
| >
| > & I return to my original question - who the hell gives the us the right
to
| > make these decisions?
| >
| > you were silent on that (contained within that is "end justifies
means" -
| > one of the principles vehemently officially opposed during the cold war)
| >
| > I assume there is no answer beyond the racist assumption of superiority
| >
| > L
|
| In an ideal world, there would be a world state, or at least an
| international court with the power to make suspects appear before it and
| to enforce its rulings.  Right would make might.  In a really ideal
| world, there would be no need for might, for compulsion, even for a
| court.  In the real world, power is held by a few nations and large
| corporations.  Beliefs also have power, but to be real that power must
| manifest itself in movements of armies and considerations of cost. This
| statement applies even to Gandhi.  His power to win India's independence
| ultimately depended on the reduction of England's power, and the main
| reason for that reduction was not his efforts but a war fought
| elsewhere.  For a belief, power means access to power; Stalin's question
| about the Pope's divisions, though vulgar, was valid. Currently the
| beliefs that have access to power are for the most part stupid ones:
| religious fundamentalism, nationalism.  My beliefs - in socialism,
| equity, equality, a benignly inclusive universal culture - have almost
| no access.  So my task, if I want my beliefs to have any application to
| the real world, is to compromise with and make use of other beliefs,
| much less elevated, which I share with large numbers of people.  One of
| these beliefs is that my nation, if attacked, has the right to defend
| itself and punish its attackers.  And - yes - that the deaths in the
| World Trade Center are of more immediate concern than those of
| Mossadeqh, Victor Jara, Steve Biko, Salvador Allende, or the millions of
| others in which my nation unjustly played, and plays, a part.  Yes, at
| the moment those American deaths are more important.  In the real world,
| any hope for social justice must ride the smelly back of some tiger of
| social vengeance.  I suspect this is the calculation that makes some
| otherwise secular, progressive Moslems through in their lot with
| Islamists.  Their calculation, however, is wrong; it fails to take into
| account either bin Laden's intentions or American resolve.
|
| To you, as to the dear, sweet, highly moral people who demonstrate in
| London and Berkeley and both Cambridges, the above must be highly
| unpleasant.  Two statements in your email make it clear that neither of
| us could possibly convince the other.  The first is this:
|
| Further: the Japan of today is a better place than
| > | the one our nations defeated.
| >
| > & I return to my original question - who the hell gives the us the right
to
| > make these decisions?
|
| The right of America (i.e., its government, and the preponderance of its
| people) to decide that corporate democratic capitalism was a better way
| of life for Japan than State Shintoism was conferred by the attack on
| Pearl Harbor.  The right of England to decide that anything would be
| better for Germany than Nazism was conferred by the attack on Poland and
| ratified by the Blitz.  That is how values negotiate in the real world.
|
| The other statement was that your family were pacifists in World War II.
|