> Bush has defined 9/11 in a way that has to be dismantled in a climate
> of war and fear that seems to me almost impossible. Let's say we all
> vote for Kerry or whoever and they win. Then what?
[snip]
> Even with all that which is already vastly more than I think Kerry
> can or is willing to manage, there remains the re-construction of 9/11
> in a way that we can get rid of this mindless climate of fear the Bush
> government has generated.
>
> Sure anybody but Bush, but that is not the end. Let's not kid
> ourselves about how difficult it is going to be to get rid of the rest
> of this bullshit.
Quite right, but is that an argument against supporting Kerry or whoever the DP candidate is, or is it an argument that supporting him will not be enough?
Of course, it will not be enough. The "9/11" psychology is a very tough problem, as you say, because it strikes at the heart of the whole complex of ideas, emotions, etc., bound up in the very institution of the nation state, which goes back to the Sumerians, the ancient Chinese, the Incas (probably), etc. In other words, the psychology which says "We are a group of people who rely on a powerful king or whatever to protect us from the evil-doers over in the next kingdom."
Just as Americans all over the country ran to volunteer for the armed forces as soon as they heard about Pearl Harbor (or at least they did the next day, since I guess the recruiting offices weren't open on Sunday), and they clamored for war as soon as they heard that the Maine had blown up in Havana Harbor (we now know that that was because its boiler overheated), and Johnson got his escalation started because of the Tonkin Gulf "incident" (equally phony), the killing of approx. 3,000 people (whether or not this was a conspiracy by Al-Queda or the Bush administration is beside the point) activated the "defense of the nation" psychology in a lot of Americans' psyches, and it will take quite a bit of time passing without another comparable incident for that psychology to calm down.
Of course electing a Democrat won't get rid of the concept of the nation state. I haven't a clue what will. But I'd still rather see somebody replace Bush in the White House.
> And another thing. Bush et al. may continue to implode, but that
> doesn't make Kerry a sure thing.
Nothing is a sure thing but death and you know what.
> We can only wish we were trying to save Weimar with its Mann, Brecht,
> Beckmann, Nolde, Kollwitz, Cassirer, Carnap, Einstein, Born, Pauli,
> Weyl,
> von Neumann, Hilbert, Schoenberg, Schrodinger, ... even its Heisenberg
> and Heidegger.
How about Susan Sontag and Noam Chomsky?
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ After the Buddha died, people still kept pointing to his shadow in a cave for centuries—an enormous, dreadful shadow. God is dead: but the way people are, there may be, for millennia, caves in which his shadow is still pointed to. — And we — we must still overcome his shadow! —Friedrich Nietzsche