Friday, May 23, 2003
WHO WE ARE
Here is the text of Chris Hedges' speech.
I re-read it, to see if I could have misunderstood him. I didn't. He's ignorant, confused and sadly out of his depth. What he says is essentially incoherent, but there are general outlines that are discernable, if one looks closely enough.
At the root of it all is a fundamental view that he shares with many an "intellectual": he believes Americans are a quick read, easy enough to understand, simple, easily led, essentially children trapped in the bodies of adults.
If you are an American reading this, do you believe that?
I don't.
Generally, he speaks of the "seduction of modern war" as if it were a love affair, something which people enjoy doing.
He speaks down to his audience by asserting that "war allows us to rise above our small stations in life. . ."
He speaks of the sword as that which humans most enjoy to rally around.
He speaks of the goodwill he claims we've lost. We have no allies? We are isolated? We've damaged international institutions? We practically invented international institutions! The world's foremost international organization would not even exist were it not for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And as to America being increasingly isolated in the current war on Islamist terror, I think this shows decidedly otherwise.
He speaks as someone who tells us he "knows Iraq," and "speaks Arabic." Congratulations, I think, but so do 23 or so million other people, all of them Iraqis, most of whom could teach him far more about Iraq after lifetimes of living under evil, than he ever gleaned from living in the Middle East "for seven years."
I've lived in Britain now for nearly four. Yet I cannot imagine being able to proclaim smugly that "I know England" after just a further three will have passed.
Such is the considerable depth of his conceit.
He speaks of the examples of the ancient world. He speaks of Thucydides as if he knows Thucydides, when there are many who know far more about Thucydides than he ever will. Presumably he has read Pericles' "Funeral Oration," but does he really see its significance? And he never bothers to consider that today's Israelis live every minute under siege, like the Trojans during a conflict much older than the one described by Thucydides, having daily to fend off present day versions of "Greek horses" -- people who board buses dressed as "religious Jews" and then . . . blow themselves up.
Indeed, he speaks of Israel not as a democracy under siege, but as an aggressive, oppressor state. He speaks of General Sharon and the heroic citizen defenders of that embattled beachhead of liberty as if there is an equivalence between their defending themselves and the actions of the sons and daughters of despotism and delusion, whose final goal is the annihilation of that democracy.
He speaks of friendship as the key to everything, as if we needed him to tell us that, and as if he were the only one to comprehend the fullness and joys of friendship and love. How indifferent he is to those who saw friendships and love terminated abruptly on September 11, 2001.
He speaks of defending one's homes, one's country, as if one should never move to do so. To fight war is, he feels, to debase ourselves. We should never engage in it, lest we feel war's "comradeship". Better to, one supposes, embrace a gas chamber then? For doing that means one has not debased oneself?
But all that is essentially forgivable. They are ramblings emanating from someone drunken with the conviction that he has uncovered significant knowledge, which he must then share with all comers. They are of the nature of conflict, ancient Greece, Iraq, Israel. Okay. Fine. Just what we need, yet another "deep thinker."
However, when he speaks of an American "empire", of an American "occupation" of conquered lands, he speaks somehow believing that Americans have dreams of carving out a global empire like that of Rome, and one is left asking where is the evidence for such? "the Marshall Plan," or the fact that U.S. forces never remain anywhere they are not wanted -- see France 1966, as just one example -- and so he speaks wrongly. Dead wrongly.
When he speaks of our having spared the oil ministry building in Baghdad as if it were a "Perry Mason moment," proof that it was all about stealing oil, yet does not seem to have considered that it is more likely that the building was spared simply because destroying it would have been less than smart, that a Baathist party headquarters may be flattened because it does no good, but oil is a commodity that, for Iraqis, will prove very useful, and that flattening a major oil knowledge center would not have made any sense, he speaks stupidly. Very stupidly.
When he speaks of our having not levelled the interior ministry -- interior ministries around the world (the U.S. is the only place I am aware of where the Department of the Interior deals with protecting forests) are a wealth of knowledge on law and lawlessness -- and yet seems unaware that perhaps we did not blast it to smithereens in order to be able to document the wrongs done to the Iraqi people, he speaks cluelessly. Extremely cluelessly.
And, indeed, on those two, what is his point?
After all, had we flattened them, "deep thinker" Hedges would have snidely proclaimed that they were destroyed because lurking inside was "evidence" of our own "past evil doings."
Just bear in mind that one cannot ever really satisfy someone like him.
When he speaks as if we are fools, who do not understand that things can go wrong in war, as if we are couch potatoes who enjoy war as if it were "reality TV," as if the U.S. forces are somehow not composed of some 2 million of our own all too vulnerable flesh and blood -- our sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands and wives -- and as if we would actually dispatch them lightly, to endure violence and even death for our amusement, he speaks out of ignorance. Unbelievable ignorance.
When he speaks of men and women who join the forces because they've nothing else to do, as if they all joined because they were unemployed or lacking health insurance, as if there is something wrong with being from Mississippi, Alabama and Texas, states he flies over en route to places like Vietnam, El Salvador and Nicaragua, as if there were no such thing as New York's 10th Mountain Division, he speaks from stupidity. Horrific stupidity.
When he speaks of September 11, 2001 as if we thought having the heart nearly ripped out of our greatest city was similar to when a power failure moves us to speak to our upstairs neighbor for the first time, as if it were some sort of warm and fuzzy event that leads us to feel a part of something larger than ourselves, and yet there is not a person I know who would not wish it were once more September 10, 2001, even at the risk of our losing our feeling a part of "something larger," he speaks foolishly. Tremendously foolishly.
He wags a disapproving finger at us, oh, so cock sure that he possesses insider knowledge regarding the lessons of history and insight into the mentality of America that the rest of us blockheads woefully lack.
It has apparently not yet dawned on him that he might have been booed because his speech simply demonstrated how little he really knew the people whom he so haughtily attempted to "challenge", that his speech was in fact just badly thought out, cliche-ridden and made up of such unchallenging, stream of consciousness blather as to draw the active contempt of many of those he forced to endure it.
Unlike him, I do not claim to "know" America, or to have any especial knowledge about its soul. But I find the country of which he speaks unrecognizable. He speaks of a people I do not know. He speaks of a land so alien I find it hard to believe he was born of the same nationality as myself.
However, I offer a humble suggestion: if one wants to better "know" America and "understand" Americans, sit back to take a few moments to read (or re-read) this and this and this. If one reads these, and then reads this, one will see that current America is actually a very familiar place, and is not composed of people to be feared any more so than it was in 1801, 1865 or 1941. Above all, they give one a far more rational sense of how and why Americans do what they do, and think what they think, than anything cobbled together by minor writers like Hedges.
Happy Memorial Day friends.
¶ by Robert, Friday, May 23, 2003
Here is the text of Chris Hedges' speech.
I re-read it, to see if I could have misunderstood him. I didn't. He's ignorant, confused and sadly out of his depth. What he says is essentially incoherent, but there are general outlines that are discernable, if one looks closely enough.
At the root of it all is a fundamental view that he shares with many an "intellectual": he believes Americans are a quick read, easy enough to understand, simple, easily led, essentially children trapped in the bodies of adults.
If you are an American reading this, do you believe that?
I don't.
Generally, he speaks of the "seduction of modern war" as if it were a love affair, something which people enjoy doing.
He speaks down to his audience by asserting that "war allows us to rise above our small stations in life. . ."
He speaks of the sword as that which humans most enjoy to rally around.
He speaks of the goodwill he claims we've lost. We have no allies? We are isolated? We've damaged international institutions? We practically invented international institutions! The world's foremost international organization would not even exist were it not for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And as to America being increasingly isolated in the current war on Islamist terror, I think this shows decidedly otherwise.
He speaks as someone who tells us he "knows Iraq," and "speaks Arabic." Congratulations, I think, but so do 23 or so million other people, all of them Iraqis, most of whom could teach him far more about Iraq after lifetimes of living under evil, than he ever gleaned from living in the Middle East "for seven years."
I've lived in Britain now for nearly four. Yet I cannot imagine being able to proclaim smugly that "I know England" after just a further three will have passed.
Such is the considerable depth of his conceit.
He speaks of the examples of the ancient world. He speaks of Thucydides as if he knows Thucydides, when there are many who know far more about Thucydides than he ever will. Presumably he has read Pericles' "Funeral Oration," but does he really see its significance? And he never bothers to consider that today's Israelis live every minute under siege, like the Trojans during a conflict much older than the one described by Thucydides, having daily to fend off present day versions of "Greek horses" -- people who board buses dressed as "religious Jews" and then . . . blow themselves up.
Indeed, he speaks of Israel not as a democracy under siege, but as an aggressive, oppressor state. He speaks of General Sharon and the heroic citizen defenders of that embattled beachhead of liberty as if there is an equivalence between their defending themselves and the actions of the sons and daughters of despotism and delusion, whose final goal is the annihilation of that democracy.
He speaks of friendship as the key to everything, as if we needed him to tell us that, and as if he were the only one to comprehend the fullness and joys of friendship and love. How indifferent he is to those who saw friendships and love terminated abruptly on September 11, 2001.
He speaks of defending one's homes, one's country, as if one should never move to do so. To fight war is, he feels, to debase ourselves. We should never engage in it, lest we feel war's "comradeship". Better to, one supposes, embrace a gas chamber then? For doing that means one has not debased oneself?
But all that is essentially forgivable. They are ramblings emanating from someone drunken with the conviction that he has uncovered significant knowledge, which he must then share with all comers. They are of the nature of conflict, ancient Greece, Iraq, Israel. Okay. Fine. Just what we need, yet another "deep thinker."
However, when he speaks of an American "empire", of an American "occupation" of conquered lands, he speaks somehow believing that Americans have dreams of carving out a global empire like that of Rome, and one is left asking where is the evidence for such? "the Marshall Plan," or the fact that U.S. forces never remain anywhere they are not wanted -- see France 1966, as just one example -- and so he speaks wrongly. Dead wrongly.
When he speaks of our having spared the oil ministry building in Baghdad as if it were a "Perry Mason moment," proof that it was all about stealing oil, yet does not seem to have considered that it is more likely that the building was spared simply because destroying it would have been less than smart, that a Baathist party headquarters may be flattened because it does no good, but oil is a commodity that, for Iraqis, will prove very useful, and that flattening a major oil knowledge center would not have made any sense, he speaks stupidly. Very stupidly.
When he speaks of our having not levelled the interior ministry -- interior ministries around the world (the U.S. is the only place I am aware of where the Department of the Interior deals with protecting forests) are a wealth of knowledge on law and lawlessness -- and yet seems unaware that perhaps we did not blast it to smithereens in order to be able to document the wrongs done to the Iraqi people, he speaks cluelessly. Extremely cluelessly.
And, indeed, on those two, what is his point?
After all, had we flattened them, "deep thinker" Hedges would have snidely proclaimed that they were destroyed because lurking inside was "evidence" of our own "past evil doings."
Just bear in mind that one cannot ever really satisfy someone like him.
When he speaks as if we are fools, who do not understand that things can go wrong in war, as if we are couch potatoes who enjoy war as if it were "reality TV," as if the U.S. forces are somehow not composed of some 2 million of our own all too vulnerable flesh and blood -- our sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands and wives -- and as if we would actually dispatch them lightly, to endure violence and even death for our amusement, he speaks out of ignorance. Unbelievable ignorance.
When he speaks of men and women who join the forces because they've nothing else to do, as if they all joined because they were unemployed or lacking health insurance, as if there is something wrong with being from Mississippi, Alabama and Texas, states he flies over en route to places like Vietnam, El Salvador and Nicaragua, as if there were no such thing as New York's 10th Mountain Division, he speaks from stupidity. Horrific stupidity.
When he speaks of September 11, 2001 as if we thought having the heart nearly ripped out of our greatest city was similar to when a power failure moves us to speak to our upstairs neighbor for the first time, as if it were some sort of warm and fuzzy event that leads us to feel a part of something larger than ourselves, and yet there is not a person I know who would not wish it were once more September 10, 2001, even at the risk of our losing our feeling a part of "something larger," he speaks foolishly. Tremendously foolishly.
He wags a disapproving finger at us, oh, so cock sure that he possesses insider knowledge regarding the lessons of history and insight into the mentality of America that the rest of us blockheads woefully lack.
It has apparently not yet dawned on him that he might have been booed because his speech simply demonstrated how little he really knew the people whom he so haughtily attempted to "challenge", that his speech was in fact just badly thought out, cliche-ridden and made up of such unchallenging, stream of consciousness blather as to draw the active contempt of many of those he forced to endure it.
Unlike him, I do not claim to "know" America, or to have any especial knowledge about its soul. But I find the country of which he speaks unrecognizable. He speaks of a people I do not know. He speaks of a land so alien I find it hard to believe he was born of the same nationality as myself.
However, I offer a humble suggestion: if one wants to better "know" America and "understand" Americans, sit back to take a few moments to read (or re-read) this and this and this. If one reads these, and then reads this, one will see that current America is actually a very familiar place, and is not composed of people to be feared any more so than it was in 1801, 1865 or 1941. Above all, they give one a far more rational sense of how and why Americans do what they do, and think what they think, than anything cobbled together by minor writers like Hedges.
Happy Memorial Day friends.
¶ by Robert, Friday, May 23, 2003
