"I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return."W.H. Auden, "September 1, 1939"
Versailles is full of almost nothing but fools. And those who are not fools are forced to spend almost all their time responding to fools. So what would it be like if, instead of wall-to-wall fools chattering endlessly about the Mideast on one channel after another, we instead had an intelligence discourse to guide us? Well, we don't have the TV network infrastructure--at least not here in the US. But we do have the content available, and potential content-providers out the wazoo. To pick up on one channel, in particular, one need only look to the London Review of Books, which has a page, "LRB contributors react to events in Gaza", first put up on January 15, which it has continued to update.
This is page where one can read the views of historians and historically-informed commentators who know that history is always at least a double fabrication--fabricated first by those who act in its midst, and fabricated again by those who pick and chose how the initial fabrication is made sense of, which pieces are kept and which discarded, which kept together, which separated, which disappeared, and which created out of nothing.
Here, to entice you, are a few excerpts of a few contributions, to give you a flavor of what it might be to watch an intelligent discussion on tv for a change. The excerpts are not intended to represent the full views of those quoted, only to reflect some of the kinds of ideas, insights and perspectives they put into play.
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