In another amazing essay by David Brooks (whose ludicrous red state/blue state "analysis" still holds currency in the pseudopolitical imaginations of people who wish very much to not think about actual politics as it affects daily life), he opens like this:
There's something about our venture into Iraq that is inspiringly, painfully, embarrassingly and quintessentially American.
No other nation would have been hopeful enough to try to evangelize for democracy across the Middle East. No other nation would have been naïve enough to do it this badly. No other nation would be adaptable enough to recover from its own innocence and muddle its way to success, as I suspect we are about to do.
One may suspect the howler is that this fellow, supposedly not a propagandist, can conceive of anything that's going to happen in Iraq in the near future as a "success."
Nope. That's small beer compared to the deep insanity of his overall claim, right there in black and white. That stuff you're reading about in the news? Believe David Brooks: it has nothing to do with revenge, military force, or violence as such. It's not about domination and/or the material means to exercise it. It also has nothing to do with economics. Apparently, it doesn't concern geopolitics even conceptually.
No, the fundamental American qualities on offer -- in Iraq right now, but also in general -- are hope, naïvete, and adaptibility. And if any other country had these, if Albania or Monaco were blessed with such talents, they would be obliterating and occupying any number of far-flung lands as well. I think that's pretty self-evident, don't you?
Posted by jane at May 18, 2004 12:31 PM | TrackBackBy gosh, Josh, we Americans are just too darned good and good-natured for our own good. When I think of the native altruism and limitless self-sacrifice of our pioneering democratic selves why I just need to step back sometimes and brush a salty dewdrop from wide and disbelieving eyes. Goshdarnit, don't they know how much we're giving up for them?! Why it makes me want to spit when I consider how unloved our troops and government go as they go throughout the world razing the evil hopes of tyranny and planting hardcore hybrid seeds of democratic idealism in soils heretofore undreamt of for such apple-pie inspirations and sanctity of dogged do-goodedness for what thou lovest well. I mean, geez.
Posted by: db at May 19, 2004 06:30 AMIt's all in the framing, as your friend Mr. Lakoff would suggest. Though I agree that any association Brooks makes to say Sinbad the sailor is ludicrous first of all because the so-called adventurers are not putting themselves in harms way, but imposing that fate on others while they perambulate around the golf course.
The piece is obviously a desperate measure, no? Not just naive, but startlingly regressive, like wow, will Star Wars really make life more like *Star Wars*?
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