There is much I dislike about Edward Said (not referring to his literary scholarship), and I have found him frustrating over the recent past because he expresses full contempt for Arafat, seems to believe he knows what is best but offers not much other than a return to 1967 borders (the Right of Return? Jereusalem?), but he is an important voice in the discussion of the mess that is the Middle East, and for that reason, I post this piece by Edward Said on Arafat & the state of the State of Israel
"America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
"Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight."
--James Ellroy, American Tabloid
Ensure a Free and Fair Election (Ban Paperless Voting Machines
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
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