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Title: Theater of War, Updated Paperback Edition by Lewis Lapham ISBN: 1-56584-847-0 Publisher: New Press Pub. Date: 03 November, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.85 (13 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Brilliantly written leftist tirades
Comment: I suppose you will like this book if you despise President Bush, no matter what your political affiliation is. The problem with Lapham is that he is rarely objective, and wrote this book with an aggressive political agenda. As an Ivy League-educated moderate conservative, I tried to be as open-minded to his perspectives as possible.
Although the recession officially began in March 2001, the economy started to have problems in March 2000, while Bill Clinton was president. I must say that I believe the economy is cyclical, no matter who is running the country, and any action a president takes in fixing the economy can take years. If you look at equity market charts during the dot-com era, you will realize that that growth was mostly profitless...smoke and mirrors...because the big spending on marketing did not build brand, and did not result in increased operating margins or profitability. The day Bush became president, he mentioned that the U.S. is in a recession. It's easy to blame Bush. I wonder if Mr. Lapham would be blaming Gore if he were president, as the economy would be the same or close to it.
As for 9-11, Afghanistan and Iraq, Lapham likes looking down on America's ineradicable stupidity. We have been inventing phony wars for nigh on 60 years, says Lapham, all because of our need to prove to ourselves that we are the good guys. Islamic terrorism, the Cold War balance of terror - it is all the same to Lapham, all a ridiculous and self-fulfilling fantasy of national endangerment in the service of America's utopian quest for omnipotence. Lapham thinks that if the United States had forborne to develop the Hydrogen bomb, Stalin and the Soviets might have avoided an arms race. Trouble is, Lapham's silly fantasies about Stalin's reasonableness don't square well with his own vision of a half-mad human race - of our seemingly ineradicable capacity to warmonger, even as we convince ourselves of our peace-loving intentions.
Lapham has certainly fooled himself into believing in his own peace-loving intentions, while nonetheless attributing to mankind (especially American mankind) enough covert madness and aggression to make even the most hardened realist blush. Why should we trust the intentions of a human race half as evil and irrational as Lapham makes us out to be - even as he claims to be putting his faith in human reason and good intentions?
The cultural politics Lapham preaches are essentially an attempt to "one up" democracy by being "more egalitarian than thou." The sense of superiority; the demand for control; anger against a hated foe - all of these forms of human irrationality are abundantly present in Lapham's leftist rants. Yet, a well-brought-up, hyper-egalitarian fellow can only enjoy these guilty pleasures if they are buried inside of an attack against America itself for some imagined sin against democracy. To feel angry at, or superior to, some benighted foreign foe is just too obvious - too embarrassing - a way for a sophisticated modern leftist to gratify all of those nasty but ineradicable human longings for supremacy. So how to run a leftist political crusade when America really is under threat from a foreign and undemocratic foe? It cannot be done.
That's why Lapham-type left-leaning intellectuals have retreated into a stance of tortured isolation and superiority, while still suggesting to anyone who will listen that the threat of terrorism and the war itself are nothing but mass delusions.
Though very well written, Lapham seems like a miserable, out of touch, and faithless Village Voice columnist, who's angry that the dems didn't take the white house for another four years. Although he takes swipes at the dems as well, he dismisses the Clintons' lifting of white house furniture and china, for example, as "more rabid tirades" linked to "media associated with the Republican Party." Please. I expected more balance from the blue-blooded Brahmin Lapham, but he has since been lumped into a cultural elitist limousine liberal teacup, and stirred with Streisand, Baldwin, Penn, Franken and Moore(on).
Rating: 5
Summary: The war at home and abroad
Comment: Theater of War is a collection of 19 essays previously printed in Harper's magazine, written by the Harper's editor. They are arranged in chronological order, starting in October 2000 and ending in June 2003. (The introductory essay, written just for this book, is dated July 2003).
The essays begin with Gore and Bush running for president, and end with the US occupation of Iraq. In between, Lapham covers the Clintons leaving office, Giuliani and museums, recruiting for the CIA, conservatives trying to red-bait university professors, preparing for the invasion of Iraq, imperial arrogance, Bush's religious fanaticism, marketing the war on terrorism, and the White House promoting fear and consumerism.
Throughout the book, Lapham touches on two themes that are laid down in the introduction: (1) the "script" that politicians and the media follow like slaves, presenting the world as if it was a Hollywood film, and (2) the US as an arrogant imperial power, a modern version of Rome.
The best thing about the book is Lewis Lapham's writing style. He's taken great care to make each sentence quotable, but the words flow. It's a very easy book to read (I read it in a day without effort) but none of it is casual or padded out. These essays give the reader a wise view of the key political events of the last few years. I highly recommend this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: a long-term perspective--very welcome
Comment: This book, a collection of editorials from Harper's, is critical and refreshing. Like many editorialists, Lapham is strongly opinionated and sure. Unlike most, though, he gives a long-term perspective, placing America in it's context and reminding readers of the recent and distant past. It was striking, for example, that a piece written in July 2001 focused on the stupidity of the CIA since its formation. (I write this shortly after the spurt of news articles in 2004 about the misinformation that led the US to believe Iraq had WMDs).
The essays that relate back to the book's subtitle--"In Which the Republic Becomes an Empire"--are more thought-provoking. Lapham reminds readers that our country has been acting more like expanding empire than a model of democracy and freedom, and gives historical parallels going back as far as the Roman Empire to illustrate his points.
His essays make me think of HL Mencken or of Mark Twain's more political and satirical work: they are like a sharpened knife, and anyone familiar with his work over the years will know that Lapham's ire is spread among both Democratic and Republican administrations. Not to say Bush supporters will appreciate this volume, but merely to underscore that he is not a partisan, but a patriot ready exercise his authority as a member of the fourth estate.
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Title: Waiting for the Barbarians by Lewis H. Lapham ISBN: 1859848826 Publisher: Verso Pub. Date: 01 November, 1997 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: 30 Satires by Lewis H. Lapham, Lewis Lapham ISBN: 1565848462 Publisher: New Press Pub. Date: 03 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars Which Altered Forever the Political Life of the American Republic 1890-1920 by Walter Karp ISBN: 1879957558 Publisher: Moyer Bell Ltd. Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Indispensable Enemies: The Politics of Misrule in America by Walter Karp ISBN: 1879957132 Publisher: Franklin Square Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Lapham's Rules of Influence: A Careerist's Guide to Success, Status, and Self-Congratulation by Lewis Lapham ISBN: 0812992342 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 01 May, 1990 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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