[lit-ideas] Re: Five Years Ago
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2006 19:20:28 -0700
In the Martin Amis three-part article Simon asked Eric and me to read, Amis
says "Suicide-mass murder is astonishingly alien, so alien, in fact that
Western opinion ahs been unable to formulate a rational response to it. A
rational response would something like an unvarying factory siren of
unanimous disgust. But we haven't managed that. What we have managed, on
the whole, is a murmur of dissonant evasion."
Mike Geary's dissonant evasion reads, " . . . we were attacked again by
people we've known for some time are desperate to get our attention"?
Furthermore Mike tells us that though it was "an horrendous crime," it
wasn't all that horrendous: " . . . it was a minimal military and material
threat to our existence as a nation." Why Mike should tell us that is a
mystery inasmuch as these attention-seekers, bless their little poor hearts,
prefer civilian targets.
Mike tells us that the greater crime was our being stuffy about it: Such
that "we would probably kill tens of thousands of innocent, very poor people
in revenge that would accomplish nothing." The poorness of these people
should exonerate them from their crimes or at least reduce the
horrendousness of them, but we are heartless as well as greedy: Our
"blood-lust would make billions for many American corporations."
Which, Mike tells us, is a dirty rotten shame because our neither our
blood-lust nor our corporate greed is going to solve the problem, not the
"root causes of 9/11" which scholar after scholar (Mike doesn't read
scholars so I'll fill this in for him) tell us is a virulent Jihadist
ideology formulated by Sayyid Qutb. See Martin Amis' article: Part One:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1868732,00.html Part Two:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1868743,00.html and Part
Three: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1868746,00.html
I know that Simon suggested that only Eric and I read Martin Amis' article,
but others might be interested. Amis is another literary type so might not
be of interest to the fat-loving Jack Spratt but others might enjoy it. Of
course, not Andreas because it won't fit in with any of his pre-conceived
ideas. Nor, since the article is long will it be of interested to those
with short attention spans, but there might be one or two beyond Simon, Eric
and I who will want to read it.
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Geary
Sent: Monday, September 11, 2006 5:13 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Five Years Ago
AR:
> What are your thoughts on five years ago?
The same as they were 5 years ago:
1. That we were attacked again by people we've known for some time are
desperate to get our attention.
2. That the attack was an horrendous crime but a minimal military and
material threat to our existence as a nation.
3. That we would probably kill tens of thousands of innocent, very poor
people in revenge that would accomplish nothing.
4. That the blood-lust would make billions for many American
corporations.
5. That none of the root causes of 9/11 would be addressed.
Thoughts not the same as they were 5 years ago:
1. I never guessed that Osama bin Ladin would still be free.
2. I never imagined that the United States, the country I love most of
all for its dedication to individual human rights, would become a nation
that tortured people, that disappeared people, that assassinated people,
that imprisoned without recourse to justice.
3. I never imagined that my government would argue it had the right to
listen in on my phone calls, monitor which books I read, or read my e-mails
without judicial warrants.
4. I never would have believed that America could be so stupid in it's
response to the world.
Mike Geary
Memphis
Other related posts:
