Simon Schama on the last year...

September 11, 2002 6:04 AM

Simon Schama on the last year... Excellent stuff. The article moves from describing the immediate grief to an analysis of where events have taken America religiously, politically, and in its public life.

Apparently, the dead are owed another war. But they are not. What they are owed is a good, stand-up, bruising row over the fate of America; just who determines it and for what end?

posted by humuhumu (14 comments total)

For anyone confused by the reference to Islington in the article, it's the traditional home of the 'liberal elite' or 'arty-farty liberal crowd' in London. The ones who always get shouted at whenever they protest at something the government's doing, like wanting to introduce identity cards, or forcing ISP's to retain all email for two years.
posted by humuhumu at 6:10 AM on September 11, 2002

truly excellent article...thanks humu.
posted by amberglow at 6:12 AM on September 11, 2002

This gave me some good perspective on today. Thanks for the link.
posted by PrinceValium at 6:41 AM on September 11, 2002

"patriotic blowhards""the president still thinks that privatisation of social security is the best way to ensure its future""The greatest honour we could do them is to take back the voice of democracy from the plutocrats"

I love socialists who write polemics like this, (and the Guardian for publishing such noteworthy screeds). Marx you realize what not to read.
posted by hama7 at 6:52 AM on September 11, 2002

"I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master." Franklin D. Roosevelt. The times they are a changin'
posted by johnnyboy at 7:07 AM on September 11, 2002

Simon Schama is my total hero. He's quite an old-fashioned historian in that he's not afraid to show that events are shaped by people and personalities as much as by impersonal forces. But then his concern is always how these events affect the mass of ordinary people, as opposed to how they affect the status of states or rulers. His best work is his account of the French Revolution - Citizens.
posted by Summer at 7:53 AM on September 11, 2002

Tired putdown, hama7. Must try harder.
posted by walrus at 8:13 AM on September 11, 2002

Beautiful. Just freakin beautiful.

Hit many points, chief among them the need for the people to speak up. And yet...we blog and we say we're going to and we don't.

We're a lazy, complacent, stupid (in not realizing what's happening) mass of people.

The terrorists have indeed won. We the people are lost.
posted by damnitkage at 8:33 AM on September 11, 2002

The terrorists have indeed won.

They did? FUCK! Why wasn't this on "Good Morning America"? Oh, well, at least it can't get any worse.

We the people are lost.

Aw hell. Well, I fold. *Dies*
posted by Skot at 8:43 AM on September 11, 2002

Tired polemic, too. Look, the other guys won the election. You don't have to sit on your hands for four years, but complaining for the entire extent of that period that "America is run by an oligarchy" etc. etc. makes you sound like an embittered whiner.
posted by dhartung at 9:05 AM on September 11, 2002

Tired polemic, too.

Only tired to the tiresome.
posted by riviera at 9:11 AM on September 11, 2002

dhartung, what on earth is that supposed to mean? The other guys won the election so get over it? Anyone who wants to debate what's going on is a "whiner"? For God's sake, debate the substance, not the fact it was said at all.
posted by Summer at 9:14 AM on September 11, 2002

Look, the other guys won the election.

Well...sort of.
posted by goethean at 9:21 AM on September 11, 2002

Hey skot, it was on GMA! Really, Diane Sawyer was traipsing about the house in her husbands shirt saying "fuck it, we're through". I don't know if that was an actual bottle of scotch she was waving about, but hey if she said it, then it must be true. Right?
posted by damnitkage at 9:51 AM on September 11, 2002