Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 05:01:09 -0600
Subject: Re: Baudrillard


Judy:

Thanks for your comments. I enjoy this site because talking to
non-Americans like Steve and Glen give me a sense of breathing room. The
American nation seems like such a small and constricted place nowadays.

I assume you are also an American.

If so, then like me you must feel the sense of paradox that emerges from
this event.  I consider myself (and I hope this doesn't sound
pretentious) to be a global citizen first and an American second. 
Beyond securing American interests there is also the question of
creating a more just world. Americans fail to see the extent to which
their privileged situation derives from the politic and military order
which we impose upon the rest of the world. We are rich because they are
poor and it is the goal of American foreign policy to keep it that way.
Project Infinite Status Quo!

I don't know if you have ever seen the Wallace Shawn play: "Aunt Dan and
Lemon" but it has been haunting me lately. In it, he discusses the fact
that we need to have people like Henry Kissinger to secure our own
comfort just as the Nazis had their own Gestapo and people refuse to
acknowledge that their private comfortable lives are secured by thugs
like these.

I feel like such an outsider in America today, watching a Greek tragedy
unfold in which the protaganist fails to perceive his fatal flaw. "I am
so noble, why don't they like me?" he says, as he plunges his sword into
yet another child's breast.

It scares me to be an American these days and I wonder where all this
will lead. Baudrillard dares to speak out a truth in midst of our
retribalized social conventions. Susan Sontag was totally reviled by the
media for saying much milder stuff. I wonder what the O'Reilly
Factor/Andrew Sullian fifth column and their ilk would make of
Baudrillard?

eric