Letters to the Editor
pieceofcake
Published Letters: 371 Editor's Choice: 1
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as Glenn is preparing -
[Read the article: Cokie Roberts speaks out on the war on behalf of the American people]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]for a deeper and more thorough discussion of the Irak war - we also would like to join in - And as long as Salon isn't ruining our agenda with stories like: "Why Al Qaeda should be winning" - my father could speak on behalf of art historians. To make sure that everybody is on the same page (in a matter of speaking) we first propose a trip to Egypt - because Bagdad might be much too dangerous for Americans right now and he knows a dude in Cairo too, who is quite an Artist. You can call him "Lo" (Loai) and as i know, that most of you don't have the time right now to leave the PC and fly to Cairo - pleeze - just walk into your kitchen -
Empty some of your herbs into the sink -
turn of all the lights - if you have windows - cover them and CLOSE YOUR EYES!!
I promise you will smell the Cairo airport and "Lo" will pick you up and he will take you for a very unusual and private tour deep into the big Pyramid - (You might want to eat something before at the cafeteria of the Ramses Hilton because you will spent 5 hours in the burial chamber next to the sarcophagi)
Anyhow - Your eyes are still closed and you feel the weight of the stones above you. They were put in its place approximately 7000 years ago and "Lo" will whisper in your ear:
"Time is the worlds anxiety"…
(have somebody in your family doing the whispering with a foreign accent)…"Time is the worlds anxiety" -
And you will suddenly feel bad about any wishes of "instant gratification" and you will think about John McCain and it will dawn on you- that one hundred years are nothing and that even the 200+ years of your proud "homeland" are nothing - and now what are you going to do?!
You slowly will open your eyes and you will have an article of the NY times about "deconstructionism" of Stanley Fish with you - and you will read loudly to yourself an Lo:
"Both the “I” or the knower, and the world that is to be known, are themselves not themselves, but the unstable products of mediation, of the very discursive, linguistic forms that in the rationalist tradition are regarded as merely secondary and instrumental. The “I” or subject, rather than being the free-standing originator and master of its own thoughts and perceptions, is a space traversed and constituted — given a transitory, ever-shifting shape — by ideas, vocabularies, schemes, models, distinctions that precede it, fill it and give it (textual) being. The Cartesian trick of starting from the beginning and thinking things down to the ground can’t be managed because the engine of thought, consciousness itself, is inscribed (written) by discursive forms which “it” (in quotation marks because consciousness absent inscription is empty and therefore non-existent) did not originate and cannot step to the side of no
matter how minimalist it goes. In short what we think with thinks us.
It also thinks the world.
And finally you will be prepared for a deep and rational piece of art about the Irak war!
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being back-
[Read the article: John Yoo: Spearhead or scapegoat?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]from Egypt with a sad sense of defeat about our inability to "deconstruct" torture via the deconstruction of a Pyramid - and confronted with the same old same old (Yoo) i would like to suggest another "experiment" which produced much better results in the past.
Let's call it "YU" and it is nothing else than a newer and more "hip" version of the "Gestalt therapy" some of the "Hippies" on this blog might be familiar with.
To start this "therapy" you should bring together a group of friends or members of your family in the next days. They all have to be "familiar" with the history of Yoo - his torture memos and the biographies of Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell and also the history of McCain.
You will invite them in your home - and you will sit them down in your living room and tell them: "Imagine, that you are in the White House" (i know this sounds silly but it is always a "good opening" and it helps a lot of your friends or your family to relax and open their minds for an experience, which actually could be quite stressful for them)
You will ask each of them if they are willing to play "some kind of "game" where they not only have to play a role - They have to reach as deep as possible into the mind of the person they are "playing"- and if they feel a strong "resistance" they will not have to "play" it (because there never should be any type of "force")
If you got all your "yus" together (i don't like the world "players", because it somehow sounds too "frivolous") - you start collecting your thoughts!!
You slowly get up and you walk over to the first of your friends and you ask him: Would you like to be John Yoo?!
If he agrees - you take him by the shoulders and you walk him into the middle of the room and you say "I place you here as John Voo"! -
And - one by one you place all the other ones around him -
and if you feel some resistance in some of your "yus" about being placed to close to some of the other ones you will know that the "game" has begun and you will influence it by questions and by leading your "yus" in a responsible way through it and if somebody breaks down crying you will release him right away from his role and - you will watch what happens in amazement...
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and-
[Read the article: John Yoo: Spearhead or scapegoat?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]you will receive a lot of answers of questions you haven't even asked!