Mark Bennett:
> Isn't "Apres moi, le Deluge" attributed to Louis XV, not the Sun King?
WS: You are right. I must have mixed it up with L'Etat c'est moi - albeit ZNEt made the same mistake http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=72&ItemID=8699
perhaps because both monarch have some thing in common with the Bush dynastic reign.
Michael Pugliese quoted Thomas Cushman:
> Adam Michnik, a leading force in the Solidarity trade union movement,
> and the founder and editor of the largest Polish daily newspaper,
> Gazeta Wyborcza, was an outspoken supporter of the war in Iraq. In
> this interview, which occurred in Warsaw on January 15, 2004, Michnik
> clarifies his position on the war and discusses the responses of other
> European intellectuals.
WS: The position of Polish intellectuals is as predictable as the bowel movement. They will embrace anything as long as they see it as anti-Russian and oppose anything as they see it as pro-Russian. They do not think for themselves, they knee-jerk react to what the Russians doe. Witold Gombrowicz made that observations too, and it was also caricatured in "The Ploughman's Lunch" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086122/. They see themselves as the last outpost of European civilization against the barbaric hordes of the East.
Michnik is the Polish Thomas Friedman - so the theme of the barbaric hordes of the East is probably music to his ears. Not to mention the fact that he is a client of the US imperial interests - so it would be utterly stupid of him to bite the hand that feeds him.
Chris Doss:
> I don't get what is supposed to be so awful about Kim.
> He's way better than the House of Saud or an African warlord.
>
WS:
Good question. The logic of vilification is not straightforward. It works
differently for different political orientations. For the right-wingers it
is simply the "our thug vs. their thug" thing. For the left-wingers, it is
the "the enemies of our enemies are our friends" thing provided that the
enemies can be believably characterized as populist underdogs or noble
savages. If they fail that image test, e.g. they are leaders of industrial
bureaucracies - they attract as much - if not more - wrath from the left as
"their thugs" do from the right.
The House of Saud or African warlords are throwbacks to the pre-modern era (feudalism) and may evoke populist innuendos (especially the warlords) - so there is a certain aura of exotic romanticism associated with them - which makes them poor public enemies of the left, aside the fact that they are already "our thugs" of the right. The industrial bureaucrats like Kim, otoh, not only are un-exotic and un-romantic, but they are also a part of the "yellow peril" notion which seems to be popular here, even on the left. Add to it the fact hat they are "their thugs" of the right - and you have your explanation of the disparity of treatment.
Wojtek