OK, Yoshie, your point? Is it that I fail to recognize that Amerikkka is the fascist Beast, the Great Satan, utterly without redeeming value, which must be utterly overthrown and trampled in the dust? I can't asy anything right. I mention Brecht to shos his GERMAN patriotism, a harder case than American patriotism, I should think, you mention that he hated America. I mention Blake to show his English patriotosm--and England definitely was an Empire in his day!--and Joanna says that I am commmited to the My Nation ia Number One view that I exprelly disavow. I cite Blake to show that a patriot can admire other nations, and qualify it by saying that of course I know that America wasn't so great then. Yoshie then chimes in, Oh yes it was, it's NOW that it's wicked. (Although we have gotten ridden of slavery, gone a long way towards emancipatioon of women, Jesus, you make me sound like Nathan.
I give up. I will start all my public speeches from now by burning the flag and saying, I hate the fascist pig Amerikkka. That should solidify my left credentials.
jks
>
>Justin wrote:
>
>>>As for Blake, do you really think that when he suggested we "build
>>>Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land" he meant ..."and nowhere
>>>else"?
>>
>>And where did you get that from what I wrote? But Blake wasn't a rootless
>>cosmopolitan. He was aggressively English,w ithout being the least little
>>bit John Bullish about it. To counter Yoshie's impliedsmal at my own
>>patriotism, for which I invoked, as a referent, Brecht's German
>>patriotism, while she quoted some of his anti-American tirades (he didn't
>>like it here, in part because he was very European in general and Geramn
>>in particular), see Blakes America, with its marvelous hymn to the freedom
>>of the salve. Who of course was anything but free when Blake composed
>>America, I will say, jsut to avert someone's pointing out this obvious
>>fact that Blake knew and I do to. But the poem was called America: A
>>Prophesy.
>
>When William Blake wrote "America, a Prophecy" (1793), America, for all its
>founding crimes of enslavement of blacks and expropriation of land from
>Indians, could plausibly serve as the symbol of the revolutionary spirit of
>republican freedom against empires and of democracy and secularism against
>the tyranny of monarchy and the established church. It was ahead of all
>other nations, and it was on the side of revolutionary progress. What is
>crucial is that at its founding moment America was _not yet_ an empire.
>Given its foundation as a settler colonial state, it is difficult to say
>when America metamorphosed from a republic to an empire, but many think of
>the Spanish-American War (in 1898-1901, in other words shortly after the
>massacre at Wounded Knee and the closure of the frontier in 1890, that is,
>after the completion of the colonization of mainland America) as crucible
>of the American Empire. Therefore, one can appreciate Blake's symbolic use
>of the American Revolution as the spirit of freedom at the same time as
>recognizing that today's US armed forces must act toward the rest of the
>world as the Redcoats did toward revolutionary America. This is how Daniel
>Ellsberg puts it in _Hearts and Minds_ (Dir. Peter Davis): "According to
>some people, the United States fought on the wrong side in Vietnam. I
>disagree. In Vietnam, the United States WAS the wrong side" -- the side of
>counter-revolution, the exact opposite of what revolutionary America stood
>for at its founding moment.
>
>Given how Blake portrays the Guardian Prince of Albion -- "A dragon form
>clashing his scales," eventually "smitten" with his "own plagues" that he
>had flown forth to destroy revolutionaries -- one can well imagine how he
>might portray the Guardian Prince of the American Empire were he alive
>today.
>
>Orc, a mythological figure that Blake invented to symbolize satanic
>energies without which no freedom, no progress, can possibly be achieved,
>is called "the terror like a comet...his horrid length staining the temple
>long/With beams of blood" -- "Lover of wild rebellion, and transgressor of
>God's law" in the eyes of Albion's Angel. Would today's American patriots
>embrace Orc, or would they "tremble at the vision" of the terror as the
>King of England does in the poem?
>--
>Yoshie
>
>* Calendar of Events in Columbus:
><http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>
>* Anti-War Activist Resources:
><http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html>
>* Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
>* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>
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