A news-piece appeared in the “Science News” section of The New York Times for July 7, 2016, under the byline of Jane E. Brody, and was entitled “War Wounds That Time Can’t Heal.” Beneath that title came this one-sentence blurb: “Moral injury resembles post-traumatic stress disorder, with an added burden of guilt.”
Read moreWounding Warriors: Their Own Wounds That Time Can’t Heal (1)
One idea that I find germinating in my own thoughts is that I might do something under some title such as ” ‘Forgetting Ourselves’: Poetry and the Obligation of Remembrance.” In that context, one thing I would want to do is to play upon the ambiguity of the American expression, “forgetting oneself,” which can have both a negative and a positive connotation.
Read moreRemembering Ourselves
...to remind Americans of just who they really are, given their own bloody history—who they for far too long have been, and are called upon to stop being and, in fact, to atone for having been.
Read moreA Brief Reflection on Remembrance for Veterans Day
Some in the United States have said that Mr. Kerrey is also a victim—of an unjust war and disastrous leadership—but such a claim seems ironic, if not outright ludicrous, when one compares Mr. Kerrey’s prominence to the obscurity in which the survivors of the attack he lead and the relatives of those killed now live. His life and career have barely been impeded, except for any personal regrets. Indeed, as Mr. Kerrey was once in Vietnam as an expression of United States power, he now arrives in a different guise but still as a symbol of Western influence, this time as a leader of a university.
Read moreRemembering the Third Reich American Style (6)
Discrimination” ceases to mean the systemic subordination of the social, economic, and political interests of an oppressed population by an oppressing one. Instead, it comes to mean no more than individualized inclinations of anyone in general against anyone else of a different religion, county of origin, sex, sexual orientation, ethnic group, economic status, or whatever.
Read moreRemembering the Third Reich American Style (5)
We need to learn how to listen to our emotions—and also how to address them, if we are to move ourselves together to act wisely and well. Unless we do, populism degenerates into demagogy, and democracy is lost.
Read moreRemembering the Third Reich American Style (4)
It is by just such semantic means that we are all robbed even of any voice and vocabulary to report—even, and most especially, to ourselves—the robbery of our very freedom, let alone to protest against it.
Read moreRemembering the Third Reich American Style (3)
It is by just such semantic means that we are all robbed even of any voice and vocabulary to report—even, and most especially, to ourselves—the robbery of our very freedom, let alone to protest against it.
Read moreRemembering the Third Reich American Style (2)
n addition, all too often such slogans as “Always remember!” or “Never forget!” are employed in the same way: to create a sheer pretence of remembering that actually does dis-service to all genuine remembrance. Similarly, all too often, “official” memorials supposedly erected to honormemory actually dishonor it in just such a way.
Read moreRemembering the Third Reich American Style (1)
n addition, all too often such slogans as “Always remember!” or “Never forget!” are employed in the same way: to create a sheer pretence of remembering that actually does dis-service to all genuine remembrance. Similarly, all too often, “official” memorials supposedly erected to honormemory actually dishonor it in just such a way.
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