At 09:05 PM 11/24/01 -0600, Carrol Cox wrote: > > >_We_ were not attacked. And I include in the "we" here those who were > > >killed in New York. They were collateral damage, not the focus of an > > >attack. > >This suspicion is utterly uncalled for; I have encountered hundreds, >perhaps thousands, of u.s. leftists from all over the country over a >period of 35 years, and I really can't think of more than two or three >of all those thousands could conceivably be described as "alienated," >and all of them (again perhaps two or three exceptions) certainly >enjoyed "normal human companionship." This whole paragraph certainly, >however, could be used to illustrate the atmosphere on pen-l which Doug >Henwood complained of.
Of course, the "_We_" you call on must be, implicitly, alienated. It must be alienated from the false consciousness of nationalism. Your strategy, as I see it, is to exploit that alienation in order to direct the need for non-alienated relations toward a socialist "_We_". You demonstrate no understanding of why others feel part of that "We". Indeed, you register contempt for those feelings--even though you'd like to harness them toward your own end.. Finally, you give far to much to the S11 attackers. It is clear that, in the documents they left behind, they believed that the collateral damage would sort itself out in the after life. In other words, there was no distinction made here. They knew what they were doing and they rationalized it with religion.
