Argh! I can’t take this anymore, and if I have to hold out much longer, I’m going to make a serious try for Austrian citizenship. (As many of you know, this is something I’ve been threatening for years, so it’s probably no big leap of faith.)
James Lileks is a columnist whose views on culture I respect deeply. He’s a few years older than I am, and his dissections of ’60s and ’70s foibles — and heedeeyous architecture — are beyond reproach.
Ungluecklich, he’s fallen into the War! War! War! camp. There’s a slavering Palestinian with bombs behind every tree; Iraq is one ahead of Satan himself, and al-Qaeda is lurking behind the 7-Eleven.
I will agree that this is a rather frightening time for the United States. We’ve not had to deal with completely foreign (see previous post) attacks on our soil in anyone’s memory.
What frightens me is that Mr. Lileks said to his wife: “Did you ever think you’d live to see the day when Eastern Europe was our ally, and France and Germany our enemies?”
Well, first off, on his own website he gets pretty violently anti-German. And wastes no opportunity to poke fun at France.
Germany and France are not our enemies. They’re older and wiser. They’ve lived through having their roofs burned over their heads and are trying to tell us that it’s not a picnic in the park.
Obviously, we are in a touchy situation here. What our European allies are attempting to say is that we shouldn’t fire blindly in the dark. To prove their point, they have only to show us the citizens of Dresden suffocating as their beautiful city was firebombed, or Nurnberg shelled to unrecognizable bits, or Londoners huddling in terror in the subway.
Is this mania emblematic of American distrust of any but its own? Do we still think of France as a touchy land of incomprehensible food? Of Germany as an empire of evil brute force? Evidently, there’s something, because we’ve claimed them for allies for years and yet won’t listen to their advice.
Until the rest of the world gains some sense I am tying my claim to Austria; it’s always time for a waltz.
James Lileks is a columnist whose views on culture I respect deeply. He’s a few years older than I am, and his dissections of ’60s and ’70s foibles — and heedeeyous architecture — are beyond reproach.
Ungluecklich, he’s fallen into the War! War! War! camp. There’s a slavering Palestinian with bombs behind every tree; Iraq is one ahead of Satan himself, and al-Qaeda is lurking behind the 7-Eleven.
I will agree that this is a rather frightening time for the United States. We’ve not had to deal with completely foreign (see previous post) attacks on our soil in anyone’s memory.
What frightens me is that Mr. Lileks said to his wife: “Did you ever think you’d live to see the day when Eastern Europe was our ally, and France and Germany our enemies?”
Well, first off, on his own website he gets pretty violently anti-German. And wastes no opportunity to poke fun at France.
Germany and France are not our enemies. They’re older and wiser. They’ve lived through having their roofs burned over their heads and are trying to tell us that it’s not a picnic in the park.
Obviously, we are in a touchy situation here. What our European allies are attempting to say is that we shouldn’t fire blindly in the dark. To prove their point, they have only to show us the citizens of Dresden suffocating as their beautiful city was firebombed, or Nurnberg shelled to unrecognizable bits, or Londoners huddling in terror in the subway.
Is this mania emblematic of American distrust of any but its own? Do we still think of France as a touchy land of incomprehensible food? Of Germany as an empire of evil brute force? Evidently, there’s something, because we’ve claimed them for allies for years and yet won’t listen to their advice.
Until the rest of the world gains some sense I am tying my claim to Austria; it’s always time for a waltz.
posted by Daniel | 2:12 AM
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