I heard about Gore Vidal's "inflammatory" essay about 9/11 long before I actually read it. The consensus seemed to be that Vidal had succumbed to senility of some sort, a bitchy old queen in his dotage subscribing to conspiracy theories on the level of Loose Change. Instead of a screed, I got a well reasoned attack on America's foreign policy and how that policy may well create terrorists - all so the US has the excuse to fight them. The ultimate benefit of the war on terror is a corporate sponsored government that no longer represents the people, the institutionalization of greed and corruption, the dismantling of America's Bill of Rights and the further entrenchment of the military industrial complex that Eisenhower spoke so eloquently against.
Can anybody observing the current state of the world argue that this isn't our current state? And given that and that this benefits a very specific and small group of powerful people, that those people in fact conspire to keep things this way? If anything, Vidal was measured in his attacks on the wars on terror and drugs and how this benefits multinational corporations and the people who control them. We are no longer governed by our representatives, bought as they are via corporate donation and sponsorship, but by corporate megaliths whose interests may not even reside in the United States. The essays with these themes provided a lot of food for thought and read easily with Vidal's trademark wit.
The essay on McVeigh was slightly harder to get a handle on. Just why did McVeigh participate in the bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma City, if indeed he did and if he did not, why did he take the blame for it? Vidal doesn't provide any answers, easy or otherwise, except in one instances where he muses that McVeigh was born in the wrong era - that his was a personality that needed a cause to which he could dedicate his entire existence such as the abolition of slavery or the fighting of a "moral" war but instead he is stuck in our current era of confusion, helplessness and apathy. That rang true, but did little to explain why a person of such fierce morality would or could condone the collateral murder of innocents even as part of a military target as an act of war. McVeigh remains a mystery, though Vidal once again provides questions to ponder.
All in all, a solid and occasionally brilliant collection of previously printed essays. I highly recommend Vidal for his wit, erudition and content; as an essayist he really does have it all.
- Paperback: 174 pages
- Publisher: Bold Type Books (April 10, 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 156025405X
- ISBN-13: 978-1560254058
- Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.7 x 7.9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
- Average Customer Review: 114 customer reviews
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#253,305 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1315 in Essays (Books)
- #1952 in History & Theory of Politics
- #126 in War & Peace (Books)
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