The Eternal Return of the Shame
I think I have died and gone to irony heaven. Or maybe irony hell. That might explain the conversation going on in the corner.
Soren Kierkegaard: Irony is infinite, absolute negativity.
Alanis Morissette: It's like rain on your wedding day.
Soren Kierkegaard: Infinite negativity.
Alanis Morissette: Rain on your wedding day.
Soren Kierkegaard: I can't even talk to you when you get like this.
Blaise Pascal: It's the eternal silence of the infinite spaces.
Wade Boggs: It's Pitt the Elder.
Soren and Alanis: No, it isn't.
Where was I? Oh yes, IRONY HEAVEN: Oliver North is back in Nicaragua because...because the Nicaraguan people "have suffered enough from the influence of outsiders."
I almost peed myself.
It betrays the paucity and the rigidity of much neocon thought that the reelection of Daniel Ortega is causing hysterical (and entirely speculative) fear-mongering about WMD at our back door.
News flash: the Cold War is over. Don't you all remember taking credit for it?
The Sandinistas were never that bad in terms of governance. They overthrew the Somoza kleptocracy, they instituted free elections, they made unbelievable strides in literacy, they didn't "disappear" people. They weren't perfect--they exercised prior restraint on the presses and they forcibly removed indigenous people from their land. Amnesty International concluded, though, that these abuses were (apart from the repression on the press) not sanctioned by the government, but were the unauthorized acts of the militia and the FSLN attempted to prosecute the offenders.
The real reason - and not, perhaps, entirely unwarranted - that the US was concerned about the Sandinistas was that they had ties to the Soviets and had received military assistance (during the Somoza regime) from the KGB.
There's no KGB anymore. And Ortega is now a Christian free-marketer. So why all the fuss?
I think it has something to do with the trauma theory of memory--that certain events in our past can't become integrated into a seamless narrative, and thus acquire a distorted and distortive significance: we return to them again and again and we are forced to misread them in order to make them fit into the narrative we want to tell.
I guess Nicaragua is that for the neocons--the Iran Contra Hearings are the scene of trauma to which they return and rewrite and relive. By sending North again, a North who is speaking against foreign involvement, they can reimagine themselves as liberators.
Funnily enough, while this is the traumatic scene in the neocon memory, most everyone else has forgotten the Iran Contra scandal.
Except me--I'm still obsessed with it. How can you not love a trial of top government officials that produces the line, "I am not a potted plant"?
Genius.
Soren Kierkegaard: Irony is infinite, absolute negativity.
Alanis Morissette: It's like rain on your wedding day.
Soren Kierkegaard: Infinite negativity.
Alanis Morissette: Rain on your wedding day.
Soren Kierkegaard: I can't even talk to you when you get like this.
Blaise Pascal: It's the eternal silence of the infinite spaces.
Wade Boggs: It's Pitt the Elder.
Soren and Alanis: No, it isn't.
Where was I? Oh yes, IRONY HEAVEN: Oliver North is back in Nicaragua because...because the Nicaraguan people "have suffered enough from the influence of outsiders."
I almost peed myself.
It betrays the paucity and the rigidity of much neocon thought that the reelection of Daniel Ortega is causing hysterical (and entirely speculative) fear-mongering about WMD at our back door.
News flash: the Cold War is over. Don't you all remember taking credit for it?
The Sandinistas were never that bad in terms of governance. They overthrew the Somoza kleptocracy, they instituted free elections, they made unbelievable strides in literacy, they didn't "disappear" people. They weren't perfect--they exercised prior restraint on the presses and they forcibly removed indigenous people from their land. Amnesty International concluded, though, that these abuses were (apart from the repression on the press) not sanctioned by the government, but were the unauthorized acts of the militia and the FSLN attempted to prosecute the offenders.
The real reason - and not, perhaps, entirely unwarranted - that the US was concerned about the Sandinistas was that they had ties to the Soviets and had received military assistance (during the Somoza regime) from the KGB.
There's no KGB anymore. And Ortega is now a Christian free-marketer. So why all the fuss?
I think it has something to do with the trauma theory of memory--that certain events in our past can't become integrated into a seamless narrative, and thus acquire a distorted and distortive significance: we return to them again and again and we are forced to misread them in order to make them fit into the narrative we want to tell.
I guess Nicaragua is that for the neocons--the Iran Contra Hearings are the scene of trauma to which they return and rewrite and relive. By sending North again, a North who is speaking against foreign involvement, they can reimagine themselves as liberators.
Funnily enough, while this is the traumatic scene in the neocon memory, most everyone else has forgotten the Iran Contra scandal.
Except me--I'm still obsessed with it. How can you not love a trial of top government officials that produces the line, "I am not a potted plant"?
Genius.
posted by Feemus at
8:29 AM
5 Comments:
Speaking of irony:
Your "hands off, America!" attitude is nothing but admirable.
Seriously.
I mean it. It speaks to my Libertarian soul.
Now then, my friend, not one WORD about Darfur. And while you are at it, feel free to renounce President Clinton's bombing of the Serbs, a bombing campaign that - by all accounts - killed four times as many civilians as the Iraqi war.
I admire the sentiment. All I ask is that your sentiment does not wax and wane depending upon the political ideology of who is in power at the time.
By
Anonymous, at 10:35 AM
First off, I don't know where you get this idea that I like Clinton. I don't like either of them.
Your objection (or rather your projected objection) to what you imagine to be my position on Darfur presupposes that *my* objection to the Nicaragua situation is based on a general anti-interventionist stance.
That's a fine position, but it isn't mine. I don't think that all international activity is created equally. I think that, say, Kennedy's fiddling around with Vietnam's leaders was criminal. I think that the US joining the Allies in WWII (and fighting in the European as well as Pacific Theater of Operations) was necessary.
I scarcely think that it's a contradiction to think that some types of interventions are wrong and others are useful. My objection to funding the brutal Contras in contravention of the Boland Amendment and selling arms to people who hate us to pay for it and then lying about it WASN'T on account of a "hands off, America" attitude. I just think it was a very bad plan. And illegal.
I think that humanitarian aid to Darfur is very different from trying to topple a democratically elected government--not for any abuses but because we don't like their political leanings.
I think Clinton bungled the Bosnian war. I actually think that that situation would have been better handled if Reagan and Thatcher had been in power. Clinton and Major clung to the arms embargo as though it were the key to peace, and its effects were disastrous.
Are all Libertarians this bossy? We have some friends who are Libertarians who are always telling me things like: "Well, if you are against censorship, you also have to be against welfare."
Nuh uh. Do not.
That's like me telling my conservative friends that if they are pro-life they have to also be against the death penalty.
But seriously, stop accusing me of liking Clinton. Because that's just hurtful.
By
Feemus, at 1:29 PM
*looks around*
So THIS is where the adults talk...nice...
*runs to the internets to research more on Iran-Contra, Sandanistas, Clinton and Serbia, and a host of other things so that he might contribute intelligently to the conversation*
Benticore (who <3 Dwight & Feemus for the intellectual vigor and tenacity.)
Out
By
Anonymous, at 1:35 PM
African Children Given 30,000 Unused 'Save Darfur' T-Shirts
November 17, 2006 | Issue 42•47
SAN FRANCISCO—Citing poor U.S. sales, San Francisco-based Me Tees T-shirts announced Tuesday that nearly 30,000 of their cream-colored, green-lettered "Save Darfur" T-shirts will be donated to the children of Darfur. "Frankly, we thought this would be a more popular issue," a Mee Tees spokeswoman said. "If we can no longer make money on these T-shirts, we might as well do some good and send them to the poor, victimized Sudanese children." Due to their continued massive popularity in the industrialized world, no Che Guevara T-shirts will be donated to the stricken region.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/55370
Benticore
Out
By
Anonymous, at 2:33 PM
I'm laughing and crying over here, Benticore.
By
Feemus, at 3:44 PM
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