Sociology and Explanations (Re: Hitchens responds to critics)

Charles Jannuzi jannuzi at edu00.f-edu.fukui-u.ac.jp
Fri Sep 28 23:32:22 PDT 2001


My goodness what a fugue state this thread is likely to inspire in any passive observer.

A few scattered comments, and then some wisdom of the ages :

Blowback? How about payback? Revenge. It seems to be what motivated McVeigh, too (though his choice of targets makes very little sense, even if you add Waco to the Persian Gulf War making McVeigh one motivated, vengeful wacko).

And I'm open to the idea that the people who committed the acts of terror felt that too (sheesh, will the US ever identify them, and what does it logically mean to say ' at least one or two had ties to the bin Laden network'?) .

Somehow, in someway, these guys, whoever the hell they were, felt significantly aggrieved by the Persian Gulf War, Palestinian displacement, US militarization of Saudi Arabia, and western media presentations of these, etc.

I reject the 'fascism with an Islamic face' thesis, because (1) these were criminal acts taking place in the US and (2) even if it goes back to an international terrorist network, it is a network that exists across states and in statelessness (which is one reason why US anti-terrorist efforts are so ineffective, since they are still too busy rehearsing cold war scenarios against N. Korea, etc.).

I also reject the idea that any on the left are acting irresponsibly by pursuing a political agenda. That's politics in the limited democracy there and that's freedom of speech.

Also, to conflate international terror networks with the Taliban just shows the categorical confusions that people like Hitchens suffer from (the only thesis I have after reading his two pieces is that being editor of 'Vanity Fair' turns you into a less than cutting edge journalist).

Now, after weeks of being a news junky (with very little new information or derived knowledge from all that reading and watching), I can say the world didn't really change for me in an existential or phenomenological sense. Not anymore than it might have making it through any other day of life. Of course, I probably wouldn't feel much different if intelligent life from outer space obliterated the White House.

My inventory of beliefs--which I believe is closer to reality or how reality ought to be than, say, George Bush's--is more or less intact (it gets revised everyday). So is W's of course. I knew he was back on his track after the phonics session in Florida (bet he can't explain why 'toward' doesn't rhyme with 'coward'), when he used that word 'folks' to refer to the people behind the attacks. And I knew that life in the American empire (and ancillary states) was getting back to normal when CNN International started running commercials again.

And the uncertainty, desolation and despair Americans say they feel? Grieving has to be true grieving, and it also requires forgiveness.

Life: Get on with it. What if you were person in Europe or Russia just after the second world war? Surely the malaise you would have faced would exceed this? What if you had to survive in firebombed and nuked Japan in 1946? And there are plenty of other places that today are just as bleak and desperate.

In a swipe at both Heidegger and the Allies (and their need for infinite justice), Albert Camus wrote in 1948 (Helen's Exile):

"For the Greeks, values were pre-existent to every action, and marked out its exact limits. Modern philosophy places its values at the end of action. They are not, but they become; and we shall know them completely only at the end of history. When they disappear, limits do as well, and since ideas differ on what these will be, since there is no struggle which, unhindered by these same values, does not extend indefinitely, we are now witnessing a conflict of Messianisms whose clamours merge in the shock of empires. Excess is a fire, according to Heraclitus. The fire is gaining ground; Nietzsche has been overtaken....

"Nature is still there, nevertheless. It sets up its calm skies and its reasons against the folly of men. Until the atom too bursts into flame, and history ends in the triumph of reason and the death agony of the species. But the Greeks never said that the limit could not be crossed. They said that it existed and that the man who dared ignore it was mercilessly struck down. There is nothing in the history of today that can contradict them....

"'I hate my time,' said Saint-Exupery before his death, for reasons that are not far removed from those which I have mentioned. But, however overwhelming this cry may be, coming from him who loved men for their admirable qualities, we shall not take it as our own. Yet what a temptation, at certain times, to turn our back upon this gaunt and gloomy world. But this is our time and we cannot live hating ourselves. It has fallen so low as much by the excess of its virtues as by the greatness of its faults. We shall fight for the one amongst its virtues that comes from far off. Which virtue? Patroclus's horses weep for their master, dead in battle. All is lost. But Achilles returns to the fray and victory lies at the end because friendship has been murdered; friendship is a virtue.

"It is by acknowledging our ignorance, refusing to be fanatics, recognizing the boundaries of man and the world, through the faces we love, in short, through beauty, that we shall rejoin the Greeks. In a way, the meaning of tomorrow's history will not be where men think it is. It lies in the struggle between creation and the inquisition. Whatever the price that artists will have to pay for their empty hands, we can hope for their victory.

"Once again, the philosophy of darkness will melt away above the dazzling sea. Oh, noonday thought, the Trojan war is fought far from the battle ground! Once again, the terrible walls of the modern city will fall to deliver, 'its soul serene as the untroubled waves', Helen's beauty."

Charles Jannuzi Fukui, Japan



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list