Another Idiot, and a Question for Ward
Here's another letter to our editor. This one I got into print.
Delicious. First, is the fact that Churchill wrote this execrable nonsense three years ago part of your defense, or not? If so, how? If not, why bring it up?
Second, I just love the fact that you think we can't have civil debate because people who don't agree with you call you names -- and that you respond by calling them promoters of fascism, liars, anti-intellectuals, and comparing them directly to Hitler (that's coming later).
But of course, when you do it, it's not name-calling. It's "speaking truth to power" or some such noble claptrap. If you'll permit me a name-sling, you, sir are a hypocrite.
Third, I am praying to the gods that "your" middle school students are your children, and you're not actually a school teacher. But I have a bad feeling my prayer is in vain.
Ah, an actual defense of Churchill, or an attempt. Let's revisit the offending essay, and see what it says about that.
Churchill has since tried to weasel out of his characterization by saying the Nazi reference, "was obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food service workers, firemen and random passers-by killed in the 911 attack." But he makes no such distinction in his essay. His prose wrath homes in on the ones with the educations and the cell phones. But he makes no explicit exceptions. He's talking about the whole building. They got what they deserved.
But now that he wants to make distinctions, let's see him do it. Here's a list of Sept. 11 victims. Please tell us which ones you think were "Little Eichmanns." For instance, is this one? Or was this one? Really, Ward, how do you tell who is a "Little Eichmann" and who isn't? Especially when Churchill's essay explicitly rules out "ignorance" as an excuse.
The letter-writer suggests guilt is based on whether you worked for a business that was "engaged in the suppression of humanity" with its "fiscal and monetary policies." He seems to think these persons woke up in the morning and hit the alarm clock and said, "Now how can I best suppress humanity today?"
Churchill isn't that stupid. He knows they went to the office to make money, like everybody else, and probably believed they were doing essentially good work. But they lacked his Chomskyite view of the world, where all capitalism is mere death-dealing for profit. That was their crime, in his eyes. Refusal to buy into his kook-world is culpability.
But the janitors and firemen didn't buy into it, either. So why distinguish, as Churchill now attempts to do, the bond traders from, say, the immigrant telephone repair worker who allows him to make the bond deals? Or the cleaning crew that keeps his office functional?
Nobody is innocent, if he's right. We're all "Little Eichmanns." Churchill at times seems to inhabit some sort of fuzzy-headed hippie worldview, where high finance is the realm of a handful of yuppie plutocrats. Welcome to the present, Ward. In the barbershop in the corner of my block, the old men talk about their stock market shares. The Port Authority cop who plays the stock market on his home computer. Was he a Little Eichmann? The little old lady on Flight 93 with her pension money in an investment fund handled from within the WTC. Is she a Little Eichmann?
Hmmmm, what about the kids who attend your classes, whose parents pay for them with investment dividends. They pay your salary, Ward. Guess who else is a Little Eichmann? [To his credit, Churchill admited his complicity along these lines after the old essay blew up in his face. What kind of "penalty" he thinks he deserves, he does not say, however.]
Too bad he's not as firm in his convictions now as he was when he was obscure.
* * *
The letter rants on and on, none of it about Churchill anymore, but I'll spare you the rest.
I rise to the defense of Dr. Ward Churchill both in content and for his First Amendment rights. First of all those comments were made more than three years ago. Secondly, it is sad that we can not have a civil debate in this society. President Bush and his people of his ilk name call to a degree that would really impress even my middle school students. If you don't agree with them and their fascist agenda (directed toward their policies not them) you are called a name. Liberal, un-American, traitor, or whacko.
Delicious. First, is the fact that Churchill wrote this execrable nonsense three years ago part of your defense, or not? If so, how? If not, why bring it up?
Second, I just love the fact that you think we can't have civil debate because people who don't agree with you call you names -- and that you respond by calling them promoters of fascism, liars, anti-intellectuals, and comparing them directly to Hitler (that's coming later).
But of course, when you do it, it's not name-calling. It's "speaking truth to power" or some such noble claptrap. If you'll permit me a name-sling, you, sir are a hypocrite.
Third, I am praying to the gods that "your" middle school students are your children, and you're not actually a school teacher. But I have a bad feeling my prayer is in vain.
It sounds like the old adage, Me thinks thou doth protest to much.
Does his comments [sic] hit too close to the truth? Many businesses located in the World Trade Center were engaged in the suppression of humanity with their fiscal and monetary policies. This is not a great revelation, why do you think it was targeted? The real tragedy is that it was the average, ordinary, common man who was simply trying to earn a living that had paid the ultimate price for America's obsession with money and power, not the architects of this New World Order.
Ah, an actual defense of Churchill, or an attempt. Let's revisit the offending essay, and see what it says about that.
There is simply no argument to be made that the Pentagon personnel killed on September 11 fill that bill. The building and those inside comprised military targets, pure and simple. As to those in the World Trade Center ...
Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to "ignorance" – a derivative, after all, of the word "ignore" – counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in – and in many cases excelling at – it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.
Churchill has since tried to weasel out of his characterization by saying the Nazi reference, "was obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food service workers, firemen and random passers-by killed in the 911 attack." But he makes no such distinction in his essay. His prose wrath homes in on the ones with the educations and the cell phones. But he makes no explicit exceptions. He's talking about the whole building. They got what they deserved.
But now that he wants to make distinctions, let's see him do it. Here's a list of Sept. 11 victims. Please tell us which ones you think were "Little Eichmanns." For instance, is this one? Or was this one? Really, Ward, how do you tell who is a "Little Eichmann" and who isn't? Especially when Churchill's essay explicitly rules out "ignorance" as an excuse.
The letter-writer suggests guilt is based on whether you worked for a business that was "engaged in the suppression of humanity" with its "fiscal and monetary policies." He seems to think these persons woke up in the morning and hit the alarm clock and said, "Now how can I best suppress humanity today?"
Churchill isn't that stupid. He knows they went to the office to make money, like everybody else, and probably believed they were doing essentially good work. But they lacked his Chomskyite view of the world, where all capitalism is mere death-dealing for profit. That was their crime, in his eyes. Refusal to buy into his kook-world is culpability.
But the janitors and firemen didn't buy into it, either. So why distinguish, as Churchill now attempts to do, the bond traders from, say, the immigrant telephone repair worker who allows him to make the bond deals? Or the cleaning crew that keeps his office functional?
Nobody is innocent, if he's right. We're all "Little Eichmanns." Churchill at times seems to inhabit some sort of fuzzy-headed hippie worldview, where high finance is the realm of a handful of yuppie plutocrats. Welcome to the present, Ward. In the barbershop in the corner of my block, the old men talk about their stock market shares. The Port Authority cop who plays the stock market on his home computer. Was he a Little Eichmann? The little old lady on Flight 93 with her pension money in an investment fund handled from within the WTC. Is she a Little Eichmann?
Hmmmm, what about the kids who attend your classes, whose parents pay for them with investment dividends. They pay your salary, Ward. Guess who else is a Little Eichmann? [To his credit, Churchill admited his complicity along these lines after the old essay blew up in his face. What kind of "penalty" he thinks he deserves, he does not say, however.]
Too bad he's not as firm in his convictions now as he was when he was obscure.
* * *
The letter rants on and on, none of it about Churchill anymore, but I'll spare you the rest.
