In the Talk of the Town, John Updike and Susan Sontag clearly have two different ways of viewing the carnage of September 11th. John Updike viewed the whole scenario as an inevitable risk and price of freedom without acknowledging any possible causes. In his eyes, it was a fluke, and despite the catastrophe's biting reality, America is still strong and immune to blame.
Susan Sontag, on the other hand, had a much bolder opinion. She believes that the government is largely to blame: it was our "cowardly" bombing of Iraq and inadequacy of intelligence that brought about the attack rather than random consequence of freedom. She also blames the government of lying to the public by toning down their involvement in bringing about the tragedy and their failures in stopping it. They hide the complete reality from us and don't give us all the facts.
I agree more with Susan. I feel like the government always tries to make themselves look good and at the very least hides information from us (I'm sure they straight-out lie to us as well). My question, therefore, is how can we be a truly functional democracy if the government keeps us from being an informed public? Politicians are constantly trying to sway public opinion their way instead of worrying about helping or fixing America, and to do this, they lie. Isn't it our duty to depose those who forfeit the democracy our country was founded on?
I strongly agree with you, Tim. Yes, it is quite a shame that the govt. keeps a lot of information from us--especially information that is almost necessary to cast an accurate vote. It's almost like, in this day and age, democracy has evolved into a type of government where the people don't have a vote with worldwide conflicts (military, treaties, etc.). I'm sure if we all had a vote towards whether or not we should have become involved in an oil war we would be out of this mess.
ReplyDeleteIn response to the essay:
ReplyDeleteTim, I agree with you that politicians lie or "stretch the truth" to sway public opinion, but 9-11 wasn't just any other day, it shook America to its core, people died, and a city was destroyed. I don't think the government was holding information from us just for the sake of keeping us in the dark, I think they were trying to keep the public from panicking and rioting in the streets.
In response to Austin:
But we do have a voice in the government today. We have representatives that we vote in to best represent our views. The government couldn't have mass elections on every topic; if we did, we'd have elections every other day.