Comments on Tragos: A Question

Excellent website. Good work. Very useful. I will ...

2007-09-09T11:34:00.000-07:00

Excellent website. Good work. Very useful. I will bookmark!

Glad to read articles like this. Thanks to author!...

2007-08-28T06:33:00.000-07:00

Glad to read articles like this. Thanks to author!

Thanks for interesting article.

2007-08-17T23:08:00.000-07:00

Thanks for interesting article.

Thanks for article!

2007-08-17T12:46:00.000-07:00

Thanks for article!

I've recently experienced what it's like to tell a...

2007-06-02T00:02:00.000-07:00

I've recently experienced what it's like to tell all sorts of people that I'll be spending this summer studying Arabic in Damascus. After the initial shock, I'm often asked to clarify exactly where it is -- "Syria" rings an ominous bell, but few can put a finger on it. This is typically followed by pity or a curt lecture. Most members of my family give me a daily rundown of travel warnings, real or imagined, and remind me that it's not too late to change my mind.

To get to my point: before anything can be addressed at an administrative level, I think there's a serious need to get individuals to openly evaluate the ideological impact of this war. We can't "fix" the institutional problems (government, media) unless there's an effort to investigate the causes and development of public complicity. (This is where I'll apologize for my lack of a concrete answer.)

Many of those I've spoken to -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- have had a frighteningly instinctive and literal belief in an "us" and a "them." While preparing for this trip, I've tried to stay smart and cautious without allowing myself to inherit the illogical fear that comes from this, but the volume of negativity can be infectious in itself. The consensus among friends and strangers alike is that anyone lacking military purpose is foolish, even suicidal, to go over "there." Very few people have been supportive of my academic initiative for going. Most prefer to end the conversation with an ironic declaration of my "bravery." For me, this attitude is discouraging, but I'm sharing so many of these responses because, in a far more important and permanent way, they're disastrous.

My momentary contribution, if we can call it that, has been a variation of that "practice of discoursing" explained above. I've tried to keep the conversation going in order to talk about my plans coherently and convincingly. The goal, feasibility aside, is to reach a point where this no longer must also be done defensively.

I think this is the hardest and most important que...

2007-05-28T23:32:00.000-07:00

I think this is the hardest and most important question. My partner was commenting on the fact that the last 7 or so years have been the worst in our lifetime of 30 years. However, in a strange way we as grad-school educated, progressive white people living in NY and LA have not been directly troubled by any of it. She thinks that's a sign of how stratified our country has become, and how unwillingly complicit someone like myself might be in the lack of change, and that rings true with me. We felt that after the 2004 election, the biggest problem seems to be people in different parts of this country (either physically or socio-economically) do live in parallel universes, and everyone needs to try to bridge some of those gaps. So I don't know if this would really solve any of this, but it might add some good spirit to our country, which really couldn't be bad.

So here's some things that I haven't done but think would be good:

Volunteer some time. Chances are, if I am volunteering at a hospital (either for Vets or not), a soup kitchen, after-school program, etc., I would be visiting with people who are not in the same socio-economic zone as myself.

Here's some things I have done that seem small, but something.

Donate time or money. Thinking about Memorial Day made me think about this set of links I put together as part of my job: http://boxer.senate.gov/supportthetroops/donations.cfm

You can donate money to sponsor care packages or put them together yourself. THis seems pretty good because you are sure to be giving soldiers what they want. Many of their requests are very humble (like tampons and socks), which tells you something about what they are supplied with. There are also some very non-violent options. My office did this for Operation Dreamseed ( http://operationdreamseed.org/ ), which is an AMAZING non-profit that puts you in contact with soldiers who ON THEIR DAY OFF in IRAQ OR AFGHANISTAN volunteer by setting up schools for local children and teach them. Pretty humbling.

Donate to the ACLU, NOW, Planned Parenthood, or any other organization that is really fighting the administration. We can always give more.

Perhaps most importantly, volunteer as an election observer/poll worker/get-out-the-vote person in 2008. Since that gives everyone time to plan ahead, we all could do it in places that matter....like Ohio!

"The tragedy arises from the recipient who returns...

2007-05-28T08:18:00.000-07:00

"The tragedy arises from the recipient who returns the letter unopened." -JLB

The language of war is precisely this kind of tragedy: enclosed information knocking elbows in a triangular arena--military, government, society--which, on the contrary, does have an objective sense of causality. The problem, then, is that from this arena, we gather the following "top ten," if you will:

10. Use our citizens as tool
9. Use our citizens as influence
8. Use our citizens as objection
7. Spend energy on law
6. Spend time on thought
5. Spend money on equipment
4. Achieve a thesis
3. Achieve leverage
2. Achieve supremacy
1. End the war

Therefore, the envelope, as metaphor, is never opened, because it's always already opened; it's the third elephant in the room. The language of war may be a frustrating silence, but it's from that quiet that we get poets who talk about the President in terms of a boat metaphor. It's not affective, but effective--like the fantastic spider pop of color that erupts with a bomb, or a venue, such as this, where words echo and bounce.

As Bacevich noted, it is difficult to swallow the ...

2007-05-27T14:45:00.000-07:00

As Bacevich noted, it is difficult to swallow the notion that, after an overwhelming victory in the midterm elections, based, as everyone knows, on strong opposition to the war, and a strong desire that this war be brought to an expeditious conclusion, the Dems are still not willing to shut the thing down. There is something deeply broken in the system. I guess my point in the post below is my usual justification (in the tradition of Emerson) for the "practice" of "discoursing," which is to say, of "writing." Maybe it never works, but our tradition of sent messages, from Melville to Roth, from Thoreau to Bacevich, is a great one, and its very existence does something to keep the atmosphere from going entirely corrupt and (perhaps in a merciful gesture) igniting itself.