To call anything in this series “problematic,” “shocking,” or “risky” seems oddly out of proportion to me (and perplexing). To characterize my critiques of certain aspects of the South, of professors, of music, etc “denigrations” is a blanket misstatement I don’t want to spend time quibbling over.

To go into the details of the taxation system to point out that it’s not the WASPs who are paying the lion’s share of taxes in the States, so they don’t deserve my gratitude as much as the suckers they put that tax burden on - I don’t have that in me either (so you’ll have to settle for this).

And to speak of my love of Homer, Mahler, and all the rest as a “problematic” “religious semantics” to the Other (is that tired old trope still alive in academe?) just makes me scratch my head.

Sorry to be abrupt, but I just don’t have it in me to go farther down this path. Psychologize away. I don’t see much profit in it - especially since I’m a pretty happy guy these days, hospital trips to visit a terminal in-law notwithstanding.

I sort of get what you’re saying, though I don’t have it in me to respond to the the catalog of fairly off-base paraphrases of my posts in your last comment. That would take too long.

I’m not sure there is an American Left any more - at least in office. But if there is, I hope it’s doing what any healthy democracy requires, which is exercising informed dissent. If that’s problematic, we’ve got problems.

As for the “semantics” and all, too academic for my tastes. I write with all sorts of figures and tropes because I enjoy playing with language (and let me pre-empt another round by saying I do so fairly consciously, and normally intend the connotations).

I never called soldiers immoral, lobotomized dupes. Two points off. I did say I enlisted partly out of the same financial pressures other soldiers do.

Harold Jarches last blog post..A governing principle for work literacy

Regarding one’s right and civic duty to be critical of one’s government: the political left rarely turns its critical gaze on itself, preferring instead to chime in with the now popular incantations of American self hatred (or America “slamming” by its non-American partisans, from…yes, the Canadians to the French).

Cheers,
Carmen

Harold Jarches last blog post..A governing principle for work literacy

@Carmen: Not sure I get your point. One aspect of Arabic culture I’m critical of is alluded to - Islam and the absence of a strong secular voice in the Arab world speaking out against its follies (but again, America is is becoming more Arab every day in its own religious resurgence; it just doesn’t seem as weird when it’s your neighbors doing it in you own language and with a familiar set of superstitions) - and the rest are pretty predictable. Sexism comes to mind. To have gone more in depth on that and other things would have been off topic. It also would have been very American - my familiarity with that culture begins and ends with knowing those professors, a few other Arabs, and readings I’ve done. I’ll leave it to other Americans to slam a culture they’ve never visited physically. Again, off topic. The topic was the effects of learning a foreign language.

I don’t get the “solely on the basis of irreverence for my own country” part. Evidence in the post belies that claim.

I’d like to thank the American government for making higher education free, as it is in many European countries with a fraction of America’s wealth, rather than for shouldering all non-wealthy college graduates with crushing debt upon graduation. Maybe if we didn’t spend more on our military power than the rest of the world combined - this is true - we’d be able to boast of encouraging education for all. Let’s throw in health care for all while we’re at it. Only South Africa joins us in not providing that, among developed nations.

Grace is a great but tarnished word. I’ll leave it with the preachers. Same with “forgiveness.” Since these seven little papers aren’t a full autobiography, I think you might be mistaking the parts of the life for the whole?

Clay Burells last blog post..

“Yet the unintended consequence of introducing me to my Arabic professors and the beauties of Arabic language, history, and culture … was to convert me into a person who greatly (yet in certain instances critically) respects, sympathizes with, and reveres ‘the enemy.’”

–I’d be interested in hearing more about the “critically”. That you should come away from your language learning experience with a newfound respect and sympathy for a culture different from your own isn’t surprising; isn’t it what we all strive for in language pedagogy? What I find problematical if not somewhat shocking in your account, are the “conversion” and “reverence for the enemy” of which you speak, apparently on the sole basis of your irreverence for your native country! How about the fact that the American government (the at times benevolent arm of it’s tax-paying people) reimbursed your 30K debt to the university system, and by extension to the very civilization that providided you with both the circumstances and freedom to develop and express your critical thinking? It seems to me (at least at the time you were writing this missive) that you erred on two sides, swinging from one end of the pendulum to the other: categorical rejection of your roots and (the vocabulary is revealing) uncritical redemption of cultural otherness.

I see a common thread in your descriptions of discovery, from Mahler in the 80s to the Native American sweat lodges in the 90s: an energetic enthusiasm (reminiscent of the wanderlust of 19th century Romantics) that has allowed you to embrace the different and the new and that one cannot help but admire on the one side; and on the other, something like unrepaired damage (I’m not sure that’s what I mean, but I’m thinking about your statement, “I never went home again”) that risks getting in the way of grace, forgiveness (two more spiritual terms for you), and the willingness to recognize what’s wonderful about this country (in spite of its countless flaws).

Just a thought…