Wonderland or Not

Pia remin­ded me that Robert McNa­mara died.

I’m not as well schoo­led on the Viet­nam era as I am on other things, though I know more about it than most peo­ple my age, if only because I find it more inte­res­ting than shop­ping for Jim Choo’s — they are out of my price range and my legs look quite fine without heals because they are fairly long.

I gather, from what I’ve read on McNamara’s pas­sing, that peo­ple think he owns Viet­nam, or he should. So they’ve assig­ned it to him. Unders­tan­da­ble, but I’m not con­vin­ced he should be sole owner. It’s as con­ve­nient, and right, to blame Viet­nam on the likes of McNa­mara as it is to blame Iraq on Bush and friends (liars), a con­gress unwi­lling to lis­ten to the sense of Robert Byrd (cowards), and com­pli­cit or incom­pe­tent jour­na­lism (caught in the middle with you). Next time it will be our fault.

His­tory has chan­ged things. So has the inter­net. We saw that with the pre­si­den­tial elec­tion, we are seeing it in some way now with Iran’s Exe­cu­ti­ves of Cons­truc­tion Party dis­mis­sing the vote and siding with the oppo­si­tion. Next time we will be to blame. As the inter­net con­ti­nues to grow, and access to real and subs­tan­tive sour­ces of infor­ma­tion inc­rea­ses, there will be fewer excu­ses for com­pli­cit apathy by way of inten­tio­nal igno­rance. Yes, it is still a free country, and ever­yone should be free to prac­tice both igno­rance and apathy as they see fit. No one should be denied their pre­fe­rred intent. This is merely a remin­der that we should enjoy the sca­pe­goats while we can.

I’ll have to do more rea­ding on Viet­nam. Not imme­dia­tely, as I have my second sum­mer ses­sion, work, and Infi­nite indiJestion, along with My Sis­ter My Love, will con­sume most of my sum­mer rea­ding time. I’m am up for gene­ral or aca­de­mic rea­ding sug­ges­tions on Viet­nam though.

Spea­king of Infi­nite Jest. I haven’t been an end note vir­gin for years, but now I am an end note whore, having given myself up to my first 9 8.4 page end note expe­rience. Isn’t this a rite of pas­sage? Shouldn’t there be gifts and par­ties, or at least a din­ner out, for this?