[LEMONS] 1.09.2002
Todd Gitlin's piece on MoJo very much captures how I feel about the post 09/11 political environment. The right won't admit America can do anything wrong, the left won't admit it can do anything right.
To quote Gitlin:
Insofar as we who criticize U.S. policy seriously want Americans to wake up to the world—to overcome what essayist Anne Taylor Fleming has called our serial innocence, ever renewed, ever absurd—we must speak to, not at, Americans, in recognition of our common perplexity and vulnerability. We must abstain from the fairy-tale pleasures of oversimplification. We must propose what is practical—the stakes are too great for the luxury of any fundamentalism. We must not content ourselves with seeing what Washington says and rejecting that. We must forgo the luxury of assuming that we are not obligated to imagine ourselves in the seats of power.
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