<nettime> it's a nice world after all (2nd draft)

[david turgeon <david.t@steam.ca>]

[ dear douglas,

i have sent you an email recently on a totally different subject so you may 
remember my name.  as i barely know you, this has no reason to be 
personal.  but i needed to say the following in response to your recent 
post.  it could be directed at anyone with a similar rhetoric.  notice that 
i do not reply to the rest of your mailout, because i didn't find myself in 
disagreement with the gist of it.  that's usually how the brain goes.

please note that this is the 2nd draft of a message i have originally sent 
last night, with slight corrections to the wording.  if you choose to reply 
(& i would be glad to hear your thoughts), please do use this version as 
the other one has, by my mistake, not been sent to the nettime list (the 
address was incorrect), so following a night of difficult sleep, i figured 
i would fix a little thing here & there, to make my message more 
concilliatory...  after all, "we're all in this together".

take care,  ~d ]

first, the context.  in his mailout, douglas rushkoff said:

>3) I'm on *our* side in this conflict. Yes, there are sides. There is the
>side of pluralism, creativity, and free will, and there is the side of
>intolerance, dogma, and repression. American idealism has its problems, but
>it's meant to be about freedom, not decrees.
>So far, the rhetoric against the United States has come from three main
>camps:
>1- The extreme fundamentalists who perpetrated the attacks, as well as their
>extremely under-educated and impoverished supporters
>2- The extreme fundamentalists within our own borders, who blame the sins of
>females, homosexuals, and civil libertarians for the WTC attack, and who -
>like the terrorists - suggest that we are being punished by God.
>3- The hyper-intellectual neo-communists of the Nettime list (from which I
>have now unsubscribed) who snicker at our losses, and believe that America
>deserves such an attack as revenge for its actions in Kosovo (saving a race
>from genocide), or the corporate policies of the Gap.

oh, douglas, how right you are to bluntly point at our collective failure 
to solve the problems of humanity with brainpower alone.  but most of the 
posts i've read seemed to revolve around afghanistan & irak, not 
kosovo?  hoaxes & "conspiracies" were usually debunked on the same day, 
which is pretty good by my standards.  or do you fail to recognize the 
logic in certain more general posts attempting to address the greater 
picture of it all (for example, by mentioning free trade politics as a 
similar, albeit different, issue of american interventionism)?  could it be 
that nettime threatens your identity as an american citizen?  let's see...

>All three groups are fundamentalists, who are clinging to a world view that
>tolerance, media, and - yes - capitalism tend to erode. We are all in this
>together. Abortionists and mothers, Arab and Jew, libertarian and communist..

aye, fundamentalist as to what, please?  wittgenstein taught me better than 
thinking my opinion is anything but an opinion, sir.

i don't hold any grudge for you leaving nettime.  there are many reasons 
why one would do such a thing, & one is entitled to so by the US 
constitution.  my personal opinion of the list is certainly not entirely 
positive.  certainly if you find yourself mostly in disagreement with many 
nettime posts, you will prefer to unsubscribe.  any reasonable person would 
do so.

there is really just a major flaw in your post because you can't justify 
that the critique of US foreign policy that has been happening on nettime 
(& in various places across the internet) in the past week is 
"fundamentalism".  sure, it has its shortcomings, but at its best, it is a 
rational, nearly scientific quest for truth.  when i say "nearly 
scientific", i'm saying that sometimes it's too general for its own good & 
sometimes it deals with things which can't be proven exactly, but it does 
follow the scientific (& heck, journalistic) principle of testing truth 
against clear, unambiguous evidence.  if you find me wrong, sir, please do 
step in & inform me. i have no claim to holding the entire truth.  the 
contrary would be dangerous.  & it would make a fundamentalist out of me.

>Take a good hard look at who is attempting to create structures within which
>everyone can live in peace, and who is not. Which looks more like pluralism
>to you? Old Jerusalem or Jordan? New York or Tehran?

sounds like you're a little confused here, douglas...  but let's continue 
to "take sides"...

which has been kept at war for decades with "indirect" aid from the Holy 
Western World?  Jordan or Old Jerusalem?  Tehran or New York?

& incidentally, & on a rather un-P.C. note...  which is not our colour & 
speaks foreign languages & has complicated coutumes we don't understand?

not to say you're a bigot or that you support a racial war, douglas!  in 
fact, i'm sure you completely disagree with my simplistic extrapolation. 
but since you choose to think the binary way, then you can at least let me 
show you what a "sides-taking" mentality also entails, & the poverty of 
thought that it represents, so contrary to what i would imagine something 
called "media literacy" would be.

evidently there are plenty of human rights problems with palestine & 
irak.  they are probably not very pleasant places to live right now.  the 
question, as it has been raised by countless writers long before the WTC & 
the pentagon have been attacked is: how much of these problems are 
encouraged, if not created, by the foreign policy of western 
countries?  the other question, which has also been posed for a long, long 
time, is that of violations of human rights happening within the borders of 
western countries such as the US.  what to make of all this?  it's a 
complex issue, isn't it?  there's no real "good", no real "evil".  just a 
lot of really confused people scrambling to make sense out of the mess.

your sides-taking implies that someone like me couldn't see the good in 
america, or that i must necessarily be supporting terrorist groups in their 
attack on the USA since i criticize your country's foreign policy.  but hey 
douglas, i'm a closet fan of the USA, where i have lived on & off for 
almost a year of my life.  i love NYC.  it's a blooming city; knowing it 
makes me all the more shocked that it would come to be under attack, & i 
fear for the psychological damage done to its inhabitants.  in the end, i 
would be incapable to point at an american & say with some seriousness: 
"you are responsible for the situation in <insert your favorite piece of 
land here>".  & in fact, perhaps that's something US citizens should come 
to terms with.  criticizing capitalism doesn't mean bombing the WTC.  & 
criticizing the USA doesn't amount to say that you, douglas rushkoff, are 
an evil man.  lest i be "taking sides", of course...

...but there is hope.

>4) Introspection and self-loathing are extremely positive when they can be
>used to make real changes to one's outlooks and behaviors. But they can be
>crippling when taken too far, or when they're indulged at the wrong moment.
>Similarly, fist-waving and hyper-patriotic rhetoric seems, to me, like a
>retreat into the symbols of an ancient war rather than an expression of the
>values we aim to defend.

yes!  but what about "pluralism, creativity, and free will"?  if those are 
desirable, aren't they also symbols of the USA we too often accept as face 
value?  what pluralism, in a country where racial & sexist violence is 
raging?  what creativity, where the first reaction to a terrorist attack is 
Bomb Anywhere Regardless?  (& fortunately the tone seems to have gone down 
slightly...) what free will, where a small flat in brooklyn costs over 
$2000 US a month?  sure, we know it's the result of the American Dream myth 
whereby Everybody Has Their Chance, but hasn't the reality of that myth 
been challenged enough by now?  you will tell me that those concepts are 
all ideals, but then, why do you use them as basic assumptions?

it's obvious to me america is first & foremost about attitude.  or about 
geopolitical arrogance: we could argue that it couldn't be otherwise, since 
the country is so big & so far away from every one else, & since it fears 
no one on its own continent.  it's remarkable that the only way to attack 
"america" is to send in kamikazes.  this is the only real similitude with 
pearl harbor, anyway: the method.  they surprised, they attacked & they died.

& why do they accept to die?  for the record, everyone seems to agree that 
in general, it's because they are trained to do so by terrorist 
organizations which are (oh, not always! but quite a few times still) the 
direct or indirect result of previous US patchwork military operations, & 
then left to themselves.  a citizen of pakistan was reffering to his own 
country as somewhere along the lines of "the condom of america, to be 
flushed after usage", if that gives you an idea of the sort of resentment 
US interventionism creates when it fails.

the result: these modern-day kamikazes are piss-poor, in the middle of a 
sponsored religious dictatorship & a shit war all around, & serving an 
extremist cause is about the only thing they can do that will put some sort 
of purpose to their lives (& you'll excuse the language, but it's a mess, 
sir).  think of the fear you felt on the one day you were attacked.  now 
imagine weeks, months, years of this...

& if you scorn the extremists because they're full of hatred, then i hope 
you reserve the same treatment for your own parading flag-weavers & their 
arms industry.

>This is an opportunity take our ongoing struggle for plurality and human
>creativity to the next level. For more consciousness, not less. For the
>dismantling of a war machine that is, in part, our own creation.

i salute your commitment to plurality, creativity & consciousness.  & i 
salute the dismantling of the war machine everywhere it shall happen in the 
world.  all western countries, & all these men & women that lead them, 
would do well to take notice that there is something happening outside 
their own borders.  diplomacy & peace is feasible.  yes, like eolian 
energy, even though it's got nothing to do with the events we're talking about.

if anything, this event has shown a good display of cowardice (from all 
"sides"), but it has also shown a proud people, ready to help itself, 
rebuild & understand.  the rest of the world (which i'm part of) would like 
this country to be a model, not a bully.

now is the utmost time for lucidity, not frenzy.

& nobody said it was going to be easy.  the word is "feasible".

take care,

~ david

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