DISCOURSE, POLITICS, AND WAR

See the fine post at Body and Soul on what on-line writing means now for one particularly eloquent (and inspiring) practitioner. The results are unsettling. Turning to Chris Hedges, in print, is a good thing to do:

Yesterday, I started reading a quirky but fascinating book -- War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges who draws on his experience as a New York Times reporter in Latin America, the Balkans, and the Middle East, as well as the history of writing about war, to explore the myths of war, the myths it takes to create a war-intoxicated society, and what has to be destroyed in order to feed those myths. And the main thing that falls by the wayside is the ambiguity and complexity that are the essence of truth. And the hardest thing to do in a country wrapping itself in war myths is to avoid creating counter-myths and continue behaving like a thinking and feeling human being.