Traditional aftershocks of 9/11Cultural critic Susan Faludi's latest book, "The Terror Dream," paints a fascinating portrait of our social response to 9/11 and the wars since spawned. It is at once accurate, somewhat overtaken by events, and yet highly predictive of the road ahead in this long war against radical extremism.
Faludi observes that America reflexively re-traditionalized itself following 9/11's shock. We retreated into our past or, specifically, the 1950s childhood of our Boomers. Self-absorbed individualism was out, nurturing families back in.
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Comments (4)
Tom,
For all your intellectual heft, it seems strange to reference a lightweight screed like Faludi. Yes, America's frontier stereotypes did play out in the days after 9-11, but it was just one of many competing themes out there. One couldn't spend 5 minutes at any typical faculty meeting without hearing at least one assertion along the lines of 'we had it coming'...and America as the Evil Empire. You know the stuff I'm talking about.
Faludi has noting but p!ss and vinegar towards free markets (the kind that you repeatedly assert will connect the world and thus is as important in the GWOT). Her disdain plays itself out in the nastiest of rhetoric. Surprised you found her argument in The Terror Dream worthy of inclusion in your column..
Posted by michael | February 11, 2008 7:16 AM
2 questions for my fellow Michael:
1) Have you read the book he's referring to? If not, then why do you think her opinion of free markets has any bearing on her narrative of post-9/11 conservatism?
2) Why do you think the "Evil Empire" rhetoric cancels out the importance of the frontier rhetoric of the right-- the political philosophy actually in charge of the country at the time?
If anything, they're opposite sides of the same coin. When you define Patriotism as "My Country is the Greatest and Can Do No Wrong", you've pretty well limited people to three responses. You can agree with that statement and wonder what the big deal is over Abu Ghraib, or you can reject any notion of being patriotic and join the America haters. As long as adherents to that definition hold sway (or at least are the most visible), Faludi's point of view on this subject will be as valid as yours.
Posted by Another Michael | February 11, 2008 6:23 PM
To the Other Michael,
I skimmed The Terror Dream, reading the first chapter, the last chapter and a few chapters in between. I've read a lot of Faludi over the years and she has been a consistent critic of free markets. In this book she does reference globalization as American cowboy capitalism.
My point, was that Faludi is using a simplistic stereotype to paint American response to 9-11. Simplistic themes are sophomoric ways to argue a point. As a cultural critic Faludi sometimes hits home, and there are some valid critique in this book, but trying to frame US actions over the past 6 years as some hunger to return to the past is just plain silly.
Posted by michael | February 12, 2008 7:08 AM
To the 2 Michaels:
Read Walter Russell Mead's essay on "The Jacksonian Tradition in American Foreign Policy." (I don't know how to do links, but you can google it pretty easily). It makes a lot of points about the relationships between American culture and American foreign policy that are touched on in Barnett's column (which I thought was excellent).
Posted by stuart abrams | February 12, 2008 11:39 AM