We Have To Ask How

I Do Think We Need To Allow For There To Be Room For Subversive And Ironic Speech. We Need To Be Able To Put Out Plays In Which We Make Fun Of Ourselves Or In Which We Interrogate The Words That Injure Us. And Maybe Give Them Another Meaning.

A Different Kind Of Pleasure Surfaced In The Aftermath, The Pleasure Of Seeing The Towers Fall Time And Again, The Experience Of Being Entranced By The Visual Spectacle, And Then Also The Very Graphic Forms Of Public Mourning For Exemplary Citizens (taking Place At The Same Time As The Refusal To Mourn The Undocumented, The Foreign, Gay And Lesbian Lives Lost There, For Example). I Am Not Sure That The Guilt Over The Pleasure Re-installed The Good Citizen.

I Think There Is No One Answer. It Is Still A Struggle, There Are Tensions And I'm Sure There Are Many People Who Would Like To See These Questions Laid To Rest Or Cease To Be Posed Altogether.

We Cannot Choose With Whom We Cohabit The World.

Obama's Failure To Close Guantanamo Is Yet Another Instance Where The Rhetoric Of Democratic And Constitutional Rights Proved Not Useful For His International Relations, Relations Which Are Always Pursued In Ways That Continue To Link And Fortify Securitarian Power With The Opening Of New Markets.