But that was then. I thought Sheehan had perhaps diluted her message somewhat by rolling with the likes of Hugo Chàvez. There is a subtle but distinct difference between being amused by Chàvez' buffoonish tweaking of Bush's nose, and standing on stage with him as he rails against American policies in general. Even if we tend to agree with essential points, there are better ways to make these points, though certainly not in the American arena of political discourse. So I have some sympathy for her, but I wish she had stuck to the roots of her message, instead of allowing opportunists to co-opt her as some sort of ideological totem.
And it's especially hard not to sympathize with her as she walks away from it all.
Sheehan criticized "blind party loyalty" as a danger, no matter which side it involved, and said the current two-party system is "corrupt" and "rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland."
Sheehan said she had sacrificed a 29-year marriage and endured threats to put all her energy into stopping the war. What she found, she wrote, was a movement "that often puts personal egos above peace and human life."
But she said the most devastating conclusion she had reached "was that Casey did indeed die for nothing ... killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think".
"Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives," she wrote. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most."
She has a point. She sacrificed her son, her marriage, and probably her sense of well-being for a country that worships frivolous narcissism. Sheehan says "it's up to you now", but it was always at least notionally up to us. All that was ever required to prevent what's been happening is for enough people to quit abdicating their responsibility to stay informed and pay attention.
4 comments:
great falwell quote! it REALLY encapsulates EVERYTHING that's wrong with organized religion!
I didn't take much exception to her doing things like associating with Hugo. It's always just a matter of time before this ADHD nation of morons tires of the new shiny object and starts looking for a reason to throw it away, and if it hadn't been that, it would have been something even more trivial. I just saw her as an ordinary person acting from the heart, and as such, why should she be politically sophisticated when the people who pontificate on this shit for a living are so capable of getting it grossly, heart-stoppingly wrong? The fact that Peter Beinart or Ken Pollack - just to name a pair of ostensible liberals - haven't committed seppuku speaks volumes.
I'm not bitching at you here; I think we agree on everything important. I'm just sick of what I've come to see in the bigger picture as some ridiculous obsession with purity, the idea that we aren't obliged to listen for a second to anyone who isn't a fucking angel descended from on high. Al Gore is fat and associated with the Clenis. Scott Ritter might have tried to pick up underage girls online. Michael Moore and Ralph Nader - 'nuff said. All people look to do is ferret out some inconsistency or misdeed without even bothering to engage the argument on its own merits.
In Cindy's case, if she had been a more effective voice, she'd have probably been assassinated anyway. I wish I were being cynical, but I'm not. It always seems to happen to genuinely progressive voices, and I did indeed hear some of my local fascists express a desire to see someone shoot her (because how dare she trouble their guilty consciences by existing?)
All that was ever required to prevent what's been happening is for enough people to quit abdicating their responsibility to stay informed and pay attention.
That's it right there. Did I just imagine that there was ever a time when intellectual integrity mattered, that it was seen as somewhat of a duty to treat ideas separately from the people advancing them, to take them seriously apart from your own personal inclinations? I guess it could have been something I absorbed when I was too naive to know better, and it just stuck with me all these years. I've just always thought of one of my favorite lines from Nietzsche - it's not about having the courage of your convictions, but the courage to challenge your convictions. Any idiot can make a choice and then set it in concrete in their head, but how many people are brave enough to periodically entertain the idea that they might be wrong about everything? Was that always rare, or did something just go horribly wrong in recent years?
I just got Gore's new book in the mail today, so hopefully he'll shed some light on the question for me.
I should also say that I think this underlies a lot of the obssesion with online anonymity. Others have pointed out how wanting to know exactly who is really behind a screen name like Heywood Jablomi or John Lenin is because of wanting to cause problems for them in real life, especially among the Freeper/LGF crowd, but the fact that you also see it from people like Joke Line or Deb Howell is, I think, because of that idea that ideas alone don't matter, that the flawed personality behind the ideas should be enough to determine whether they should be taken seriously or not. I think it unsettles them to think that someone can bypass all the barriers to punditland and force them to have to rely on nothing more than logic or facts.
The main problem I had with Sheehan doing those other things was that I felt it came to dilute what had begun as a very straightforward, effective message.
I think it was inadvertent on her part; as you say, and as she admitted many times, she was a political naif. It was unfair to expect her to know how Chàvez or the people from ANSWER might want to use her to ventriloquize their own anti-Americanism.
And whether or not people agree with specific points they may have used to her to make, it's still orthogonal to one simple fact -- it came to detract from her very effective message that George W. Bush's bullshit war got her son killed, and nobody in the administration gave a fuck.
In Cindy's case, if she had been a more effective voice, she'd have probably been assassinated anyway.
Yeah. I definitely agree with this. They may have done her a back-handed favor by marginalizing her, in that regard. All it takes it one weirdo with enough hatred and will. There is simply too much yahooism and willful ignorance informing the discourse, as I'm sure Gore's new book is affirming for you. I'll have to check that one out one of these days; the excerpts I read were very well-written and incisive.
I have noticed the increase in pundits getting all defensive over our anonymity, and their lack of it. They can take it up with Publius, and stick it sideways in their asses.
Better yet, I have no problem with coming clean with my real name (which a few people actually do know) -- except, you know, for the yahoos. But I'd be happy to trade places with Choke Line if he really wants to get stupid about it.
I think what people like him fear -- and they should -- is that people like us are actually unafraid to forgo anonymity, it just has to be worth our while. I'd be more than happy to write a real Timecolumn, and go on Press the Meat and pimp-slap Father Tim, using my real name, if Joe wants to assume a slick handle and troll the 100-hits-per-day circuit, slaving away in anonymity. Seriously, no fuckin' problem. I can do more and better work than he can, and for less money, because I have no interest in hanging out and drinking appletinis with these fuckers after the show.
Somehow, I doubt he'd take me up on such an offer.
Post a Comment