… but the author is a Portuguese poet. Among other things, he writes: “Iraq is not being occupied, it is being updated.” Don’t miss this – it could be described as deconstruction meets Wolfowitz. (ht: Charles Martin)
Update: The author also has a blog.
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Oops, I should have warned Roger that downloading the whole thing has a $5 fee associated. It’s worth the $5 though.
Chauvinism?
“10. One who slanders America, slanders himself.”
“18. Iraq is not occupied, it is being updated. For that very reason, there will soon be other countries being updated and even re-updated. A country delaying the world is a country against the world. One cannot defend the internet and attack it at the same time.”
“20. What is the world? Manifestations of America. America manifesting itself is the being of the world.”
“22. America has brought entertainment to such a state of development that it became something else. In truth, it can even be said that America created entertainment. Entertainment is not an industry, it is a way of thinking. Outside entertainment, we do not think about the world, we act against it.”
“23. The world is not wrong. Wrong are those who think the world is wrong.”
“25. Arithmetic does not accept that 2+2=5. Those who are right do not accept being told they are wrong. To defend what is right is the duty of those who are sane in the world. Making an effort to be sane in the world is what it is to be American. It isn t about making an effort to be happy, but to defend what is right. Making an effort to defend the arithmetic of the world is what it is to be right, what it is to be American.”
Spend the five bucks.
Very cool. I like the “today is the past in America.” Charging $5 is also very American.
that is just amazing.
I find it amusing that this fan of America won the Jose Sarammago Prize. Sarammago is no friend of the U.S. and has written some vile pieces of Jew-hatred.
Someone on another site pointed out that this essay is actually an attack on American attitudes. I didn’t see it until I read Charlie’s excerpts above. Now I see it.
This definately has an alternate reading that is not complimentary: America thinks it knows what’s best for the world and anybody who disagrees should be eliminated. Anybody who is inconvenient to America should be eliminated. Anybody who stands in the way of America’s idea of progress should be eliminated.
Is this alternate reading right? I don’t know, but it’s there.
Byrd, go check out Miranda’s blog. (The “Continuing Interview”) where he says, eg, “Like I said before [in another part of this ongoing interview], America is a poem or a love letter.”
Or “Here, in Portugal, which is a democratic and a tolerant country (USA ally too), since I have started this ‘America is.’ project there is people who donÔøΩt speak to me anymore. It is as if I could do anything but support America.”
I can see how someone could interpret it that way, but I think to seriously hold that interpretation requires some fairly extraordinary mental gymnastics.
(Veering here, brace yourselves: I’ve been reading Camille Paglia’s new book Break, Blow, Burn. She performs a similar exercise in mental contortionism when she reads Emily Dickenson’s “Because I could not stop for death…” as an image of a seduction, and abduction, ending in horror. Can it be read that way? Sure. You’d have to be nuts to believe it, though.
(Don’t take that as a bad review of the book, though: I disagree with a lot of the interpretations — she has an amazing gift for finding homoeroticism in the oddest places — but it’s fascinating stuff.)
Great read, easily worth the $5, a couple of favorites:
84. Only an Ancient Greek could truly understand America; only in Ancient Greece could America be translated.
87. The great dream of America is that beauty be enough for all.