If the only women on your list are Mary Gaitskill and Joan Didion . . .
. . . or perhaps a token mention of Zadie Smith, whose On Beauty is not as good as everyone says it is, you need to be reprogrammed. This year, a survey was released saying men do not read books by women, especially not fiction. That, I suppose, explains why books like A.L. Kennedy's Paradise, Svetlana Alexievich's Voices from Chernobyl and Maureen McHugh's Mothers and Other Monsters have gotten almost no love. When books like Ian McEwan's Saturday keep popping up on these best-of lists, it makes you wonder what a girl has to do beyond writing a stunning book. But once again, only the books by the legend (Didion), the pretty girl (Smith) and—wait—Mary Gaitskill are actually really good. Someone must have fucked up there when they let her get through.

The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 12:27 PM  |