Letters to the Editor
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Tastes like chicken
I couldn't be arsed reading all 8 pages can anybody tell me where Camille went for fast food this month, and which particular ethnic group supplied it?
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Note
I am formally lodging my complaint that Paglia is writing here. Thats all.
Although, it just occured to me: Paglia should be writing for the New Republic where her idiological cohorts write. Moreover, they are her cohorts in style and substance, and TNR authors, to a man seem to think their mindless, unsubstantiated, ruminations are somehow worthy of airing. Perhaps if they offered her sufficient stipend, it would get her out of my f**king city.
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I love the smell of intolerance in the morning
It's the smell of.....Salon readers.
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Camille, re: "I must confess I dont see the logic..."
Ms. Paglia,
re: "I must confess I don't see the logic in your conflating the ponderous bureaucratic labyrinth that was the Soviet Union with the small, agile, anarchic cells of terrorists who bedevil us now -- and who in fact humiliatingly drove the Soviet Union out of mountainous Afghanistan."
This is why you fail.
#1 The comparison is not between a "ponderous bureaucratic labyrinth" and a "small, agile, anarchic cells of terrorists".
The comparison made, and it is a true one, is the fact that in both instances we faced IDIOLOGIES which are by their deepest nature incompatible with the Western ideologies which provide most, not all, of the foundation to our Western culture, societ and soul.
#2 As a military officer, I can assure you that a "small, agile, anarchic cells" with a WMD is far far more dangerous than a "ponderous bureaucratic labyrinth"; and is so on many levels - psychologically as well as TACTICALLY. Watch any of the hundreds of action/war movies regarding elite forces. And for the public understanding of what truly makes an
"elite" force elite is far off the mark. It doesnt take a Superman. There are thousands upon thousands of more than capable men from the Middle East who can pass muster.
Your confession belies your inability to either understand or believe the above two facts. That is why you fail to see the logic.
I hope some day soon you understand. I fear it will only come through a very painful experience with the ideologies you seem to see as less dangerous than they truly are.
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litmus test for general intelligence and good sense
The stance one takes toward the Iraq war tells much, maybe all, one needs to know about the IQ and good sense of a person. Paglia has flunked disastrously on that. She hasn't a clue what the "terror" is all about (it's about neo-colonialism that is not working), or where it has come from and what has provoked it. Talk about a clueless biddy who knows no history or doesn't care and who sees everything from the point of view of an addle-brained American pundit. Geez, where did her "reputation" ever come from? It sure has to be gone by now.
PS Cammy, old girl; we've lost the "war" already if you haven't figured that out. Just as we lost the war in Vietnam years before we woke up to the fact and got out. Hitler lost his war at Stalingrad but went on and on with the killing for years after, just as Bush is doing now. You, Bush and Hitler: the company you keep.
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Positive Feedback
AS a preliminary matter, I am quite pleased that Camille's unique voice is being heard once again. I appreciate the cosmopolitan approach and subject matter found in her columns. Her discussions are what my gray matter calls to mind when I hear the term "salon" (note the lower case 's'). I have been a fan of Camille's since studying Greek at Wabash College under David P. Kubiak, who referenced her often and fondly, to the occasional consternation of others on that faculty.
I was delighted to discover in a recent article that she was an Upstate New Yorker from her comments on Global Warming in a recent column; I grew up in the northern Finger Lakes region between Syracuse, Rochester and Auburn, and never knew of the connection. Any survivor/escapee of the area is a brother (or sister) in arms to me.
That being said, Ms. Paglia is one of the few voices resembling the American Left's 'Liberalism' that I can read without concerned contempt for their debauchment of our national discourse into irrational demagoguery. The Right may pepper its rhetoric with some jingoism here and there, but the Left panders to the passions of the Mob to the detriment of the common weal. As an academic antacid, she brings an historical consciousness to discussions like rare few on the national stage truly can.
Thank you for giving Camille a home on the web. She is the sole reason I make a point to stop by Salon now and again.
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seriously Camille, leave science out of it, you are bright but you have some kind of a problem with science
like smart people who can't do math, a mental block or something. I think maybe it has to do with the different ways that validity of an idea is determined in the sciences vs the humanities, in the humanities creativity in interpretation is valued, in science it is logic and data. Only someone who doesn't know the facts or doesn't understand how science works could possibly take seriously the "deconstruction" of the case for global warming. Everything that was said, though said with "flair" was scientifically meaningless.
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@realname...
dude, we're not intolerant. We just have a problem with incoherent intellectually dishonest lightweights. But, then, maybe you wouldn't understand that, being one yourself.
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Kennedy would have won even if Illinois went to Nixon
The perpetuated myth stated in this column: "We all know that John F. Kennedy (whom I campaigned for as an adolescent) won the White House by a slim margin thanks to Mayor Richard J. Daley's hanky-panky in Chicago."
No, we do not all know that. The electoral college victory for Kennedy was 303-219. Illinois contributed 27 electoral votes. If those votes had gone for Nixon, Kennedy would still have won, 276-246. Raw data to be found at: http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/votes/1953_1957.html
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War on Terrorism
It is time to end this madness known as the "War on Terrorism." America needs to rethink how it approaches the world and how it interacts with other countries and people. We have attempted since WWII to step into the footprints left by France and Great Britain after they lost their colonies because the war left them berefit of money and power to maintain these empires. Our neo-imperialism has resulted in self-inflicted injuries, and countries that we have arrogantly invaded or whose governments we have corrupted in order to secure favorable access to their natural resources (primarily oil) have struck back at us with the only weapons at their disposal. Just as the Algerians were able to dispell the French from Algeria with a thousand small slashes and the patience of knowing time was on their side (it was their country, after all), the Vietnamese were able to do the same to us in the 1960's and 1970's, and the Iraqis will be able to do the same today.
I don't hear anything about the WMD's of Israel - an estimated 400 nuclear weapons, combined with delivery mechanisms that have global reach. It is also clear from the actions taken during the Yom Kippur War that Israel, driven by Holocaust-inspired paranoia and madness, will use these weapons to cause an Armaggeddon.
Why do countries such as Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, etc. have no problems with "terrorism?" Is it because they have not gone around the world imposing their will and taking what they wanted from other people?
It is time for us to get over the immaturity of our "America, Love It or Leave It" jingoism and view the actions resulting from our foreign policy in non-nationalistic terms.