Open Letter to Doug and Friends

The Great Quail quail at libyrinth.com
Wed Oct 3 06:20:45 CDT 2001


I have been following the recent September 11 thread on the List with 
a mixture of amusement, disgust, and wonder. And until now, I have 
tried to keep quiet, because I didn't want to embroil myself in a 
flame war with Doug, Barbara, and that fellow with all the consonants 
in his email address. Also, as a New Yorker, indeed; as a witness to 
much of the attack and as a person who has lost acquaintances due to 
the jihad, I feel my own perspective may not be one of unbiased 
coolness.

But I would like to address Doug's question of "excusing the terrorists."

Doug, I don't think anyone on this List -- even MalignD or David 
Morris -- thinks that you are happy with what happened on September 
11, or that you think the actions of the terrorists were excusable. 
You are obviously an advocate of human rights, and wrongful death 
touches you deeply. But having said that, I do believe you open 
yourself as a target of anger for several reasons.

1. You almost fall over yourself in an attempt to show the 
"legitimate" grievances of the terrorists. All your postings, all 
your passed-on links, all your rhetoric, it is all aimed at one thing 
and one thing alone: to show us that the US is a bad place, run by 
bad men. It may not be an excuse, but it cuts damn close to the bone. 
I mean, can't you even mix it in with some balanced stuff? So the US 
is not the Palace of Righteousness it's painted out to be, but what 
about its culture, its art, its people? This was not an attack on 
just the military or the government, this was an attack on me and 
you. These people see no difference between Kissinger, Chomsky, and 
Tariq Mehmood, the Islamic kid who works in my corner Bodega and 
dates an Italian girl. Some sensitivity and balance in your 
relentless critique would be welcome. I am not saying you have to 
shut up and accept everything that Bush says, but you paint 
everything in such absolute terms, you tend to drive people into 
corners.

2. Your whole tone is objectionable. I feel that you adopt the tone 
of a father confronting a child seriously injured by his own 
misdeeds. It feels that with one hand, you are offering condolences, 
but in the other you have a stern punishment ready. Indeed, I detect 
a note of near gloating in your posts which I find repugnant. (And 
you are not the only one who seems to have adopted such a tone around 
here.) So while no one feels that you are excusing the terrorists, it 
seems that you are using this situation to do nothing more than grind 
your usual axes. It is distasteful -- it seems as if you hate this 
country so much, you are blind to the suffering we are going through, 
merely because you would rather adopt a more "universal" view that 
places you on some perceived moral high-horse. To me, at least, this 
seems a bit crass, and your CONSTANT harping about the evils of the 
US curdles any real sympathies you may choose to show. And it's hard 
to hide the smell of sour courtesy.

3. You also fall over yourself to point out that the US has helped 
create bin Laden and the entire Islamic jihad -- as if we didn't 
know! You indict all media, you assume most Americans to be fools, 
and you cannot even *conceive* of the fact that your government is 
made of humans that do both good and wrong, rather than inhuman 
monsters. The fact is, Doug, most of us KNOW that the Gulf War was 
about oil, we KNOW that the US financed bin Laden, we KNOW that the 
Afghan people are not the enemy. And yet, you keep pointing these 
things out as if they were revelations. It's almost like you can't 
conceive of the fact the US government has *not* yet carpet-bombed 
Afghanistan, and the average US citizen may *not* be the blind, 
drooling jingoist you assume them to be. I get the impression you are 
almost disappointed that Bush & Co. have not lived up to your worst 
expectations.

4. Occasionally, it seems as if you are stuck in the sixties. This is 
not Vietnam, its quite different, and the sixties are several 
generations ago. Let it go, Doug. Much -- not all, but much -- of 
your paranoid rhetoric is tired and inadequate.

5. And the crowning glory -- and this is List specific -- is that you 
feel compelled to drag Pynchon into *everything.*  You act as if you 
are the High Prophet of Pynchon, armed with the only true 
understanding of the Man's work, and it is, frankly, GRATING the way 
you use "understanding of Pynchon" as an acid test for our 
intelligence and political viewpoints. At the very least, if you 
can't show some taste or flexibility with your polemics, at least 
leave our "understanding" of Pynchon out of it.

I thank God this is not the Middle Ages and no one has made you into 
an Inquisitor! I would hate to be beaten with a copy of GR, it's 
quite a heavy book....

--Quail (aka "Big Bird")

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Great Quail, Keeper of the Libyrinth:
http://www.TheModernWord.com

"All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each
event -- in the living act, the undoubted deed -- there, some unknown
but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from
behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!
How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?"
      --Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"




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