Let's bury the Statue of Liberty

[robinturner]

It's nice that in these dark days, the impending war can still provide a few laughs. I still can't work out if this site is a troll or for real. It argues that the French are being beastly to the poor Americans by trying to stop them from "defending themselves" (that's one of the things that made me think it was a troll at first, then gave me pause for thought - probably a large number of Americans really do think they are about to kill several hundred thousand people in self-defence). Consequently, America should return the Statue of Liberty to France.

Actually, this is not such a bad idea. As the site itself states:

"When the people are afraid of the government, that's tyranny. But when the government is afraid of the people, that's liberty."
-Thomas Jefferson

The American government is obviously not afraid of its people, and an increasing number of Americans are afraid of their government. France is currently ruled by a corrupt, unprincipled megalomaniac, who nevertheless seems terrified of the people he precariously governs. The French, having had revolutions in 1789, 1830, 1848 and 1871 (plus a near-revolution in 1968) are always happy to contemplate another one. Obviously they deserve the Statue of Liberty more.

Or as e.e.cummings put it:

"so rah rah rah democracy
let's all be thankful as hell
and bury the statue of liberty
because it begins to smell."

Comments

[alienghic.livejournal.com]

Sadly the current administration, if they knew that it was a gift from france, would probably be more than happy to return it.

Do you know why the french are so enthusiastic about having revolutions? (I'm wondering how they differ from the apathetic americans.)

... the symbolism remains.

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

This is a bizarre moment of opportunity: how often do the differences between authoritarians and libertarians come this clear? (I'm having to drill down for new terms ... the opportunistic elitists in the mobilization for global justice [quasi-stalinists?] sicken me nearly as much ... maybe more ... than the authoritarian corporate militarists in the establishment [crypto-fascists?])
Really ... there are certain logistical and tactical problems that have to be grappled with, my favorite being "How do you deal with a mad dog? (trick being to find the creative alternative to "You shoot him.") but what fascinates me is the stuff that makes for political will ... on one side, the "my country right or wrong / we have to stand by our friends" (which IMHO is a group identification syndrome that covers a barbaric blood lust that accompanies zenophobia, racism, misogynism etc etc ... the stuff of fascism) and on the other we have a well-intentioned good-will that (sadly, too often inchoherent) plays into the accusation of *shit ... forgot the term ... the mistake of playing nice with Hitler ... placating ... shit shit shit* appeasement [I'm getting old, I'm poor, my health is failing, my eye-sight is fading, and the thought of losing vocabulary gives me the runs].
The rubbing spot in all of this is that, rather than dealing with the sophisticated villainy of neo-liberalism, we've been pushed back to dealing with fundamentalist barbarism. *ohhh, the blood feuds this is going to give rise to!*
I wish history would just settle down into a nice linear progression. But of course it's fractal in nature. Soooo, we need to make progress on new ground.

Time to dig through Sun Tsu again (academic version here.)