To this symbolic - and, presently, deflating - end, with a Guidance System that was panic, malice, neurosis and propaganda, this most wasteful and literally unconceived military gesture has boiled down to, “Well, that’ll teach ‘im.”
A nauseating standard of justice, but who could have expected anything else from a crusade rallied with a bull-horn and protracted with perversion, as a screen for domestic repression and disastrous financial misconduct? Tomorrow, if not today, we'll hear dutiful SEALs made human shields of this misgovernance; and lying with our men will have come full circle.
Vito Corleone, eat your heart out. Your son Michael belongs to us.
Francis Ford Coppola
The Godfather
Paramount, 1972©
Scathing. I am very conflicted about the entire decade of stalking one OBL. I saw that Bush declined the invitation to appear at the WTC site- one wonders? I marked the celebratory events Sunday pm by making comparisons between this State & those in the Middle East- Ralph Lauren Freedom vs. Salvation Army (the clothing references always seem to work for me-with my apologies) pgt
ReplyDeleteFirst, this page will be the last to conceive of a need for an apology from you. Or, from anyone willing to address its content responsively, from any conscientious direction.
ReplyDeleteAs to clothing references, it’s pretty plain that we resort to them and many other projections of structure, to sustain or query the broadest range of considerations. I do not think I am with-it enough to comprehend precisely where you are going with this particular comparison, but readers will readily accept that evaluation of oneself. :)
Finally, the reality of being conflicted by this “stalking” is natural to persons of our citizenship; and this has nothing to do with our patriotism (as it is said to do) or with our capacity to grieve (as it is said to do). This conflict was invented, however, and had never been necessary. Richard Cheney and George W. Bush declared that this would be an occasion for the renunciation of detective work, the renunciation of law - the elated President confided, this would give him something to do - and for the embrace of the blunt instrument of global Manichaean warfare. Very well. Nothing could be more plain, that these criminals did not deserve our men. No one can be surprised, no one can be disheartened, it was honest Naval officers who told how this went down.
Oh I just wrote a long comment on the hooligans raving at Ground 0, and when I said Post Comment, it said that it was unable to do so. I was inspired by the "invented conflict," and by my memory of my view of the north tower, and its blinking red light, which had been in my life for 25 years. It was Spring Break For Assholes, bigtime, on the so-called hallowed ground, vomiting and all. Please tell me how to better communicate.
ReplyDeleteBest,
Danny Fields
if one is trying to raise a child
ReplyDeleteof a certain age
these "news-headlines"
are nothing more
than a dinnertime tragedy of explanation.
one wonders when we began to celebrate death in such a vulgar way.
B
Mrs N, as many of your questions are, I sense this may be rhetorical. Looking at our history, we find this quality of celebration only where we have been able to choose to endure no sacrifice in time of war. The circumstance was not possible until the ending of Selective Service, which has been its very point; with the sole exception of lynchings and tribal massacres, which generated great consumer regard. Justice, too, acquires that profile in such circumstances. I'll demur from psychological explanation, but these are the occasions in history when we've delighted in this way in death. As neutrally as this can be observed, it's only appropriate to notice that this schadenfreude is a pleasure confined to the RIght.
ReplyDeleteWell, Mr Fields, our connections with various internet servers are sometimes more fallible than we'd like to think.
ReplyDeleteI think I am reacting more to the medium than anything...this idea one flaunts and photographs every detail of death these days, across the cyber waves, overloading and making one numb to any introspection let alone repose enough to digest.
ReplyDeletehistory...they don't even know it now. we are living in an age of minute by minute.
speed dial, speed access, hand held bunk.
my little diatribe is ended.
B
A little diatribe is not wasted on the young, when it's of this kind. You have buried somewhere at your blog a photograph of you-know-whom with his face behind a book which is largely obscured by his knees, which is one of everyone's favourite pictures, so I didn't have to reference it literally in a posting of May 6th on reading. The process proposed there, allows at least for some assimilation of context and absorption by concentration. But the phrase, "hand held bunk" might as well have been lifted from Woolf's completely wonderful aperçu on an unintended consequence of Addison's mastery of the short form -- "the shapely silver drop, that held the sky in it and so many bright little visions of human life, is now nothing but a hold-all knobbed with luggage packed in a hurry." Obviously there's no need to remind you of this, but insofar as you remind one of it, it seems appropriate to lay it at the door of this gainful little diatribe.
ReplyDelete