I was too tired last night to do any work on my post on 'America as empire'. However, I did come across a website that I found extremely interesting ---- Eject! Eject! Eject! run by William A Whittle.
He is an armed liberal US style --a war blogger. He believes in the manifest destiny of America. So he maintains that the US has fact, history, logic and reason on our side and that it will use its great power, great wealth, great ingenuity and great courage to achieve a huge gain in freedom and happiness for the countries it invades.
Bill would quickly toss the postings on Iraq at Public opinion into the Australian 'leftist rabidly anti-American defeatist nitwits' basket. According to him all I have left is the ruins of Marxism in an ever-more free and prosperous world. And with the little sanity that I have left,I am only capable of chanting the line that the US war with Iraq 'HAS to be about oil, money, revenge and whatever other base motivations I can hurl at' patriotic Americans.
So there will be no engagement on that issue. It is too black and white and excludes how the majority of Australians see the war with Iraq. Thats war blogging.
But we can easily put these differences to one because thre is another side to this weblog. Bill writes weblog essays. They are good ones that are self-reflective, considered and honest. This is philosophy in the public domain based on thinking issues through.
The essay on war, for instance, does set the pro-war position clearly and it gives a good insight into the broad US neocon mentality or discourse. If you can put the "liberals are suckholes" stuff to one side and read it in terms of its ethical/political structure, then you can discern the geopolitical strategy and tactics.
In the essay on celebrities the ethical perspective is more clearly evident---the politics is more in the background and more woven through the text. The essay on empire is the one that interests me. It accepts that the US is an empire and sets out to defend it (as I said the guy is honest). So I will engage with it when I can find a bit more time.
In the meantime, if you have a moment, take some time to read Bill's essays.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at February 7, 2003 09:17 AM | TrackBackGary, It doesn't accept that America is an empire. In fact, that is precisely what he is arguing against.
Posted by: Derk on February 7, 2003 03:54 PMDerk.
thats what happens when you half read a long essay very late at night. I'll re=read it in full tonight.
Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson on February 9, 2003 09:16 AM