I haven't seen Elizabeth Nickson's piece, but I'm not sure I want to. I'm absolutely certain I'd share Kenna's outrage and shock, but, well, the _National Past_ (as Dalton Camp regularly calls it) preaches to the mostly converted. > Please, let's answer this! I wish that people who read the _NP_ would be open to a reasonable answer, but I hold no such hope. My first, um, rational reaction to the terrible news -- after all the real first ones -- was to think that this is the end of the open (or at least relatively open) society we've known, that this is _really_ a blow to democracy (and not in the sense that Dubya used the phrase). Nickerson's column is a fairly early move in what I see as a pervasive strategy in response to September 11: to grab the agenda for the authoritarians, the simple-solutionists, the morality-mongers. Attacks on academics are not the greatest of my worries. The frame of discourse is shifted for everybody. It's now almost impossible to say in public (for instance) that the rubble of the World Trade Center really doesn't represent nearly as much suffering as the rubble of cities after World War II, or that the body count is going to be trivial compared to that in Rwanda or even the Balkans, or that there are lots of perfectly comprehensible -- although not, perhaps, forgiveness-engendering -- reasons for someone whose life and culture have been profoundly and irreparably damaged and who sees that at least the US is centrally implicated (and even more that the US responds to being stranded in Vegas in the air travel shutdown by buying an SUV to drive home in), to think it makes perfect sense to smash an airliner into the World Trade Center. At the moment, I'm sad to say, folks like Nickerson have the high ground. I think they're going to have it for some time to come. -- Russ __|~_ Russell A. Hunt __|~_)_ __)_|~_ Department of English St. Thomas University )_ __)_|_)__ __) PHONE: (506) 452-0424 Fredericton, New Brunswick | )____) | FAX: (506) 450-9615 E3B 5G3 CANADA ___|____|____|____/ [log in to unmask] \ / ~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.StThomasU.ca/~hunt/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- To leave the list, send a SIGNOFF CASLL command to [log in to unmask] or, if you experience difficulties, write to Russ Hunt at [log in to unmask] For the list archives and information about the organization, the annual conference, and publications, go to the Inkshed Web site at http://www.StThomasU.ca/inkshed/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-