Alison Croggon wrote:
> At 2:56 PM -0600 12/10/03, Rebecca Seiferle wrote:
> >An insignificant ancedote perhaps,
> >but still, I think we have a special effects mind,
> >victory is Bush landing on an aircraft carrier,
> >special effects war, and so, of course, special
> >effects, governors.
>
> That's what it looks like from here. Colosseum culture, with the
> frisson of real blood. I guess I should go and read Gibbon now.
Alison, we lost a war in 1973 and we never recovered. The current
colosseum culture, as you put it, is all about Vietnam. It's the chief
tenant of our national anxiety closet. We didn't withdraw, after all;
we didn't engage in a "tactical retreat," we got outfought by Little
Yellow People overseas and increasingly nonsupported by people
Stateside. I do not know for certain when the monstrous ego of my
country began to grow--perhaps with the administration of the first
Roosevelt beginning in 1901--but by the time Vietnam rolled around all
that mattered was our version of the White Man's Burden as interpreted
by the State and Defense Departments.
Ever since 'Nam we have been looking for what we perceive as out lost
national cojones. No other way for me to put that. The patron saint of
American culture should be the late football coach Vince Lombardi:
"Winning isn't the most important thing, it's the only thing." So these
idiotic incursions in Grenada, Panama, the Dominican Republic, and the
1991 Gulf. And the more lethal incursions into the Sudan and now
Afghanistan and Iraq. The culture is reflected in who it elects. I
believe it was Eliot Weinberger who wrote that we have had Presidents
who were infuriating like Reagan and Bush I, or contemptible liars like
Clinton; but this is the first time--in GW Bush--that we have a
President who is simply a stupid fool. Gibbon indeed--it really does
feel not like the rise of Empire but its wane.
Ken
--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538
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