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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 9:18 am Post subject: |
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| Hans Blix wrote: |
why would the left prosecute the us? here is, i think, the left's answer.
america (for the time being!) remains the dominant power in the world.
power will always attempt to paint its misdeeds as beneficial. apparently genghis khan even attempted this.
while democracy is a more accountable form of power, it will still, nevertheless, continue to attempt to claim virtue for misdeeds. |
I think I recognize your position. We must resist power and hegemony, and we must defy those who would weild power and hegemony over others. We must attack power and hegeomony as it occurs, whereever it occurs -- or we risk justifying and perpetuating it. There is no neutral ground here: we either resist or serve power and hegemony.
Power and hegemony, then, are bad no matter what form they take. And power and hegemony occur like the hydra -- multi-headed. This requires constant vigilance and "deconstructive" criticism. And if we keep cutting down power and hegemonic hydra-heads then "the powers-that-be" will find it just that much harder to dominate others and the world will be a better, freerer place.
This is Foucault/Derrida and a little bit of Kant, Nietzsche, and Chomsky, if I do indeed recognize your position and have faithfully articulated it.
I disagree with this recklessness. Take it to its logical conclusion, Hans Blix. Where will it ultimately end? It would leave us all without any coordination, legal systems, law-enforcement, other institutions, or any leadership and not even any parental authority at all. We would have to live hermit lives like Theodore Kaczynski to escape and destroy power and hegemony once and for all. Accordting to some, especially many postcolonialists, we cannot even articulate language or construct narratives about anyone at all -- even ourselves, as, within we are all ultimately Others to ourselves, too -- because this necessarily involves inflicting power and hegemony. So we would live the lives of silent and illiterate monkish hermits, Hans Blix...or we might live (and die) as recklessly as Foucault, to list a specific example. And I, for one, do not want to live (or die) like that.
Moreover, most of those who benefit from this philosophy are those who disingenuously want to supplant the current power and hegemonistic system or systems with new ones of their own making, to suit their own needs.
You may think that you are arguing against the United States merely because it is the current power and hegemon, and that were any other institution or nation-state the current power and hegemon, you would faithfully prosecute them, too. I believe that you do think you do this faithfully. But you fail to appreciate that many others -- Hugo Chavez, Terhran -- are prosecuting the United States because it is the United States. They very much want to destroy American influence and replace it with their own power and hegemonic systems. And they will not tolerate your criticizing or prosecuting them, either. Not even for a moment.
Stalin. Mao. Tlatelolco. Tiananmen. Rushdie. The Cartoon-Dutch Embassy affair. Others. Even the righteous left grasps power and uses it to silence opposing points of view...
Remember this...?
Perhaps that is one reason why I defend, then. Our American system, while imperfect, evolves and becomes fairer and better every day in a world inhabited by many wolves. You fail to recognize that in what has become blind, unthinking, habitual prosecution "just because." |
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Hans Blix
Joined: 31 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 1:05 am Post subject: |
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gopher:
"it's almost impossible, and not worthwhile, to envision a state of affairs without power relations. the accounting and undermining of power is an ongoing, endless process.
the commies? yes, far leftists have long criticised them for merely wanting to supplant one power structure with another, different but not necessarily less authoritarian, so as to give themselves power.
yes, the us is improving, as do glaciers flow. yep, many wolves. defenders of the us who point out the misdeeds of its enemies are in danger of letting those wolves set the moral standard."
all paraphrased from the left-winger's manual, probably found on znet. the left, as i understand them, have answers for all this. |
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