The Spirit of Terrorism: And Requiem for the Twin Towers

Rating:
Summary: The Spectacle is Real: Enantiodromia
Review: Jean Baudrillard, perhaps the most aphoristic and clear writing (if not necessarily the most profound) of the postmodernists here wields his phallic pen to cut to the core of the twin tower destruction at the hands of Bin Laden's terrorists. He argues, straightforwardly and convincingly, that the power of terrorism is not contained by its Islamic wielders, but is also a kind of global self-destruction of the globalized American superpower. Anyone could recognize that media and imagery were at the heart of the terror in Manhattan'-that part of the terror was the effective use, far out of proportion to the expenditure made, of comandeering the media to call attention (e.g., the police prefix date, 911) to itself and the helplessness of a crisis for which there is no effective solution. As Baudrillard points out, calling the suicides "cowards" only underscored the inability to answer this realized desire to humiliate "civilization" (what has become of civilization) on the part of those who were willing to put their own death into play. Baudrillard cites Nietzsche with regard to martyrdom being the enemy of truth but in the same breath demonstrates that the terrorists' goal is not a final solution via biological or nuclear warfare so much as a confrontation, a dual that will make the west lose face. He suggests that WW III indeed already happened: it was the cold war. And that now we are in the midst of WW IV which is an anitbody-like reaction of Orwellian globalization against itself. He identifies terror with evil which he suggests tends to exist precisely in the fading of the boundaries between good and evil. An interesting analysis that never mentions, but links to the concept of "enantiodromia"'-adopting the enemies tactics to defeat them. The Israelis did this in becoming nationalistic and materialistic to adopt a state, and the terrorists do it in using the media and its imagery to stage what amounts to a bad Hollywood movie whose extra horror owes to the fact that the spectacle is real.

Rating:
Summary: More Nonsense
Review: More postmodern nonsense from one of the usual suspects, the fellow who brought us "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place." As usual, the most craven appeasement is dressed up as some sort of profound philosophy. I wonder if it were Baudrillard's relatives who were murdered whether he'd be so quick to conclude that it is useless to fight back. But I fear the answer would be the same. God help the West if this is what we've come to. Is there anything we're willing to fight for?

Rating:
Summary: Don't have to buy it. Read it at a bookstore
Review: Short, easy to understand. Good enough not to miss it, but not good enough to own it.
After you read this essay, you will breifly grasp the ideas of why 'fight fire with fire,'which is the current policy on terrorism of the Bush government, will never work to fight against terrorism. Also you may find that collapsed twin towers not only represent the loss of economic Babel tower, but the failure of nostalgic fantasy of globalization in digital-information era.
If you have some time, go to local ..., and check out this interesting short essay. You will finish it before you finish Starbucks coffee. =)