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Joan, it's unfair of you to stuff words in my mouth (as in Horowitz) as
I've hardly room for my feet as it is. Secondly. I agree with Horowitz
about as much as I agree with Hitchens (not so much), but as I've
said, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Hitchens, however, can
turn a rhetorical phrase almost as well as Churchill (that's Winston,
not Ward) and I read him for his style more than his substance. Do you
think it's possible I could agree with his positions on economics after
listening to several days of my hun-like narratives on libertarianism?
He does drink too much though (scotch, not bourbon), and I'm with you
on Yugoslavia. <br>
<br>
I'm a bit skeptical on the Lancet's "100,000 dead" statistic you quote
as even Human Rights Watch thinks that number is quite exaggerated, and
the leading source of tracking such numbers, iragbodycount.net, puts
the high side at just under 20,000. Not that that's insignificant, but
one must needs to be careful when spouting statistics that may be
incendiary. Keep in mind that Human Rights Watch estimated that Saddam
murdered an average of about 30,000 a year for ten years. Personally, I
was extremely conflicted over the Iraq initiative and never endorsed
military action, but there are very smart people on both sides of the
argument and I've not just yet made up my mind as the rationale of the
arguments are most often based on a yet inconclusive outcome. (how's
that for a chicken-sh_t answer.) I will, however, stand on my position
that pulling out now would be immoral, but I'm sure you have much to
say about that.<br>
<br>
Last but not least, my suffering from a chronic case of over-zealous
optimism, makes me stick to my guns in hope for you having some sort of
political epiphany. And, as apparently went unnoticed, I'm much more
interested in you leaving the Democratic party than I am recruiting you
into any other. I'm just hoping for greater pluralism in our
politics, especially among the learned. I'm sure that now that Howard
(my barbaric yaup) Dean has become Chair of the DNC, you've great hope
for the revival of the New Deal. But perhaps I'm discounting your last
(incredibly insightful) paragraph as glibness.<br>
<br>
Dave Budge<br>
<br>
<br>
Joan Opyr wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="midBAY10-DAV14157E010230755F30354BC5690@phx.gbl">
<div>Dave writes:</div>
<div> </div>
<div>"It is difficult to find rhetorical balance as a student of
political philosophy. In that effort I read regularly: The Nation,
The New Republic, Reason Magazine, and The National Review (don't choke
Joan.) I also make sure I catch every Hitchens' piece in either Slate
or Vanity Fair. Given the progression of my leanings it's probably not
difficult to figure out which I find to be more credible."</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>I <strong><u>am</u></strong> choking, David, not because you
read <strong>The National Review</strong> but because you cite David
Horowitz with apparent approval. He, more than any of the other
right-wing ideologues you mention, is frequently guilty of selective
quotation and grotesque distortion. I find his work shoddy in terms of
research and his political analyses cheap and shallow. I'm
afraid Horowitz is the Right's answer to Camille Paglia -- another
shallow thinker who disguises her lack of genuine depth with deft
allusions to her "reading for tonnage" and a clever sleight of
vocabulary: </div>
<div> </div>
<div>"Presto, change-o; I'm Susan Sontag! No, really! What do you
mean what I just said makes no sense? I used the word chthonic, didn't
I? Go on, define that! Hah! You can't. Asshole."</div>
<div> </div>
<div>(I hate Camille Paglia. Can you tell?)</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Though my affinity for the Democrats is, as I say, largely
vestigial, you're wrong to think there's any hope for me. I will stay
in the party and fight for its salvation until the last dog (meaning
that frothing old fool, Zell Miller) is hung. I might have been a
Rockefeller Republican -- I like Rockefeller Republicans -- but the
words turn to ashes in my mouth. I . . . can't . . . do . . . it.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Ted -- I've read a good deal of Chomsky. Not the complete
works, of course, because that wouldn't leave me any time for Miss
Marple, but of what I have read, I find myself more in sympathy with
his politics than with his linguistic theory. I began my academic
career in linguistics (before I got tired of transcribing my accent
into International Phonetic Alphabet form) and, even then, 1988-1993,
Chomsky's linguistic work was widely considered outdated. He was
not/is not interested in language acquisition. He simply declares that
the brain is "hardwired" for language and leaves it at that. And so,
except for a few die-hard students, linguistics professors tend to
leave Chomsky alone. His importance as an American intellectual, a
free thinker, and a radical cannot be denied. Agree or disagree, what
he has to say on political subjects is fascinating. He certainly can't
be ignored or sidelined.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>About Chomsky's statements in the 1970s re: Pol Pot and the
Khmer Rouge -- Chomsky's positions, like the US government's, have
obviously changed with new information and new political realities.
Who would have guessed that Pol Pot would murder a million of his own
countrymen? Who could have known that Khmer Rouge massacres would kill
as many or more Cambodians than the illegal US bombing campaign?
What's important, I think, is to recognize that Pol Pot's crimes don't
absolve us of our own. Saddam Hussein's brutality doesn't make our
disregard for Iraqi civilians (100,000 dead and counting) in the
current war okay. Dead is dead, and when you're standing at the
graveside of a lost friend or relative, I doubt very much if you care
about the political how and why. It doesn't matter if that death was
the consequence of the machinations of your own homegrown dictator or a
faraway government. You are enraged; you are bereaved; you're filled
with grief and despair. The question, then, is what do you do about
it? Take the philosophical approach? Go home and keep your head
down? Join a resistance group or build a car-bomb or flee to Iran or
Syria?</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Right now, the only pot I'm interested in is the pot we're
stirring -- and I don't make this pun for laughs. There's nothing
funny about the situation in Iraq, just as there was nothing funny
about the destruction of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Would there have
been a Pol Pot without our mass destruction of Cambodia's rice paddies,
forests, and (however crude by our standards) government and
infrastructure? Would we be fighting a second Iraq War if George Bush
Sr. and Ronald Reagan hadn't propped up and armed Saddam Hussein in the
1980s? American actions have international consequences, but the vast
majority of the population fails to recognize that. America has big,
big feet, but most of us vote and talk and behave as if we were a
nation of toe-dancers. This is where the (corporate) media lets us
down. This is where our two-party system lets us down. This is where
Republicans and Democrats are in perfect agreement: politics is about
mouthing empty rhetoric and rallying just enough of the Rah-Rah crowd
to push through an agenda that benefits the existing hegemony, i.e.,
the ruling class.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Oh, hell -- I'm not a Democrat, am I? I'm an
anarcho-syndicalist. It was bound to happen someday . . .</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment</div>
<div> </div>
<div>PS: Christopher Hitchens drinks too much. He's a once-fine
writer who has boiled too many brain cells in bourbon. He lost me
around about the time he advocated bombing seven kinds of hell out of
Belgrade. And what did we get for that? The eternal enmity of the
Serbs and a radical Islamist government in Kosovo. Dumb, dumb, dumb.</div>
<div> </div>
<div><br>
</div>
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