So, Susan Sontag has died [1].
You will pardon me, please if I find it a little hard to come up with much in the way of sorrow for the woman’s passing.
Those needing a reason for my response should consider her words in the New Yorker, after the 9/11 attacks:
“The disconnect between last Tuesday’s monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a “cowardly” attack on “civilization” or “liberty” or “humanity” or “the free world” but an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word “cowardly” is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday’s slaughter, they were not cowards.
Our leaders are bent on convincing us that everything is O.K. America is not afraid. Our spirit is unbroken, although this was a day that will live in infamy and America is now at war. But everything is not O.K. And this was not Pearl Harbor. We have a robotic President who assures us that America still stands tall. A wide spectrum of public figures, in and out of office, who are strongly opposed to the policies being pursued abroad by this Administration apparently feel free to say nothing more than that they stand united behind President Bush. A lot of thinking needs to be done, and perhaps is being done in Washington and elsewhere, about the ineptitude of American intelligence and counter-intelligence, about options available to American foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, and about what constitutes a smart program of military defense. But the public is not being asked to bear much of the burden of reality. The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.
Those in public office have let us know that they consider their task to be a manipulative one: confidence-building and grief management. Politics, the politics of a democracy?which entails disagreement, which promotes candor?has been replaced by psychotherapy. Let’s by all means grieve together. But let’s not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen. “Our country is strong,” we are told again and again. I for one don’t find this entirely consoling. Who doubts that America is strong? But that’s not all America has to be.
-Susan Sontag
I’m sorry she suffered cancer and died. Unlike some liberals talking about conservatives, I wished her none of what she suffered, and I find myself sorry for it, though I must in all logic wonder if she in her liberal delusions would be so generous in thought, toward such a backward person as a conservative. I doubt it, based on my experience with liberals in general.
While that may be unfair to Sontag to lump her in with the extremist left that I often write about in these spaces, experience counsels that there’s not enough gap between them to fit water into, in the end.
I can only hope she has a firmer grip on reality from her newly acquired side of the veil than what she revealed to us as having on this side of it. Perhaps those already on the other side, as of the 9/11 attacks, will be good enough give her a few pointers on what she got wrong.
You’re offended by my remarks?
Let me check and see if I care. Wait a minute.
Ummmmmmm…. Nope.
Captain Ed [2] has comments not unlike my own.
James at OTB [3] is a little gentler. Too gentle, I think.