Update: “For Good Heh, Read the Whole Thing” (Iowahawk)
Isn’t Joseph Rago’s invocation of that great Swedenborgian vision that so dominated Henry James, Sr.’s life – the “Vastation” – kind of weird in his column designed to piss off the average blogger (“The Blog Mob”)?
I don’t see Iraq that way & wonder if he does. I suspect it is the kind of allusion he thinks bloggers like us don’t make. Most often used to describe a spiritual emptiness, a profound & deeply disturbing recognition of emptiness, he probably means here a “laying waste, depopulation, devastation”. Some don’t see Iraq this way, but some seem to. (Certainly, it must be how Jamil Hussein sees it, but that is another matter, one worth discussion in places resistant to such considerations, i.e., Kurtz‘s column.)
This is an abyss word. Modern thinkers often draw us to the edge of what they declare to be an abyss; they clearly see it as titillating, as a show of courage. Of course, it isn’t really courage because they don’t feel the fear. They want to use its shock, but don’t, not really, feel it to the depth of their bones. If this is what he truly believes, it should be the subject of the column. He needs to face it – and communicate what he sees – a lot more urgently and honestly. This is far too grim a vision to merely use rhetorically. But I get the feeling he doesn’t really think it is an abyss, he just throws that in, just as he throws in the word itself, to give the illusion of depth.