Cometh the Hour . . . (This in the WSJ?!)

Opinion Journal ^ | 10/14/03 | HAROLD BLOOM

[Pokey78]

The American Empire needs a general in the White House.

Lincoln, confronting the South's rebellion, first established our imperial presidency. Since then we have become increasingly a plutocracy. Like such precursors as Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley and Warren Harding, the current possessor of the White House sincerely believes in making the rich richer, while expressing the hope that somehow all of his constituents must eventually benefit from this benign process. Our nation has long invested in this hope, with our territorial expansion (mostly at the expense of Mexico, and of the Native Americans) and also overseas extensions fueling the investment. At this time, we occupy all of Iraq, and rather less of Afghanistan. These irrealistic adventures, while expensive in money and in blood, are more venturesome than most of our past incursions, but otherwise not radically new. What is different are the provocations. Fundamentalist Islam conducts a world-wide terror onslaught, much of it financed by Saudi Arabia. Israel and the Arabs continue to fight a Hundred Years War, going back to the earliest Zionist emigrants, and we are now well along in the first decade of a religious war that could endure for another century. All this is piously denied by nearly everyone, yet all the deniers know better. The American Empire, like the Roman before it, seeks to impose a Roman peace upon the world.

[Pokey78]

Hello! Is Paul Gigot asleep?!

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[Robert A Cook PE]

And this jerk thinks Clark is somehow qualified?

(Mentally, emotionally, and politcally?)

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Someone is stoned.

[jocon307]

Holy smokes! Pokey, I just gotta go read this on their website, and then send a scathing comment. Thanks much for the heads up.

(When will newspapers get over this stupid "objectivity" thing? Its so bogus, no one buys it, it only irritates people.)

[exit82]

Mr. Bloom is no sterling professor. More like lead.

Bush is a leader. Clark is a phony and a poser. He rose to his level of incompetence in the military thanks to some unknown pact with BJ Clinton, in my opinion. His only military claim to fame is bombing former allies of ours from 15,000 feet, thus killing more civilians than those supposedly killed in now discredited genocide that started the Kosovo war.

[xzins]

prevented Serb paramilitaries from even more dreadful slaughters of Muslim innocents than those already performed as "ethnic cleansings."

My memory is that they never found any mass slaughters AND, if anyone was slaughtered, that it was Serbs.

Do I remember this incorrectly?????

[happydogdesign]

[AdamSelene235]

In Wesley Clark, we have a four-star general and former NATO commander who is a diplomatic unifier, an authentic hero, wise and compassionate.

, Howard Dean and John Kerry cannot win, unless the terrorists again bring down American temples as vital as the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Mr. Bloom is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale.

I'm starting to reconsider my position on the legalization of drugs. ...Scared Straight by Dr. Bloom.

[BenLurkin]

What a billiuos burst of pompous bloviation.

[browardchad]

Is Paul Gigot asleep?!

Gigot was defending the LA Times smear campaign on one of the talk shows this weekend. The WSJ is no longer politically conservative -- they have few columnists and editors left who fight the good fight, but in general, they are marching steadily leftward.

[Unam Sanctam]

Well, Professor Bloom is entitled to his opinion, however insane, and he did do the culture a signal service with his "Closing of the American Mind". I do object to the notion of the United States as "Empire". We are not an empire in our democratic constitution, and why hand the Leftists a propaganda point by calling ourselves one?

[jigsaw]

These days I respect virtually nothing that comes out of Yale. This prof is (and pardon the phrase) a Bloom'n idiot.

[Dolphy]

Weigh Gen. Clark's qualifications against President Bush's performance, and who seems likelier to lead us effectively in the years of trouble ahead of us?

Is this the same Gen. Clark who believes fighting wars in far off lands where there is no national security interest makes more sense than fighting wars where we have a national security interest? Clark's qualifications make him French diplomat material.

[jocon307]

It is almost unbelievably bad. Could they have been hacked? Isn't this Bloom, the Prof. who wrote "The Closing of the American Mind"? His next opus "The Losing of My Own Mind".

Here's the text of my response to the article:

"I'm sorry you have chosen to embaress Prof. Bloom by publishing what should certainly be a private mash note from him to General Clark.

I'm sure others will reply in detail. I will only add that it is extremely sad that Prof. Bloom, who used to be a smart guy, has allowed himself to be used here as a cat's paw to put Hillary's chestnuts into the fire.

And I'm really glad I didn't copy you folks on my love letters to PM Blair. (Go Tony!)"

I'm sure they'll be swamped (and pilloried) for this. Just awful, encouraging this would be Cesar. Ad the Cesarette too, cause I know that's the end game.

Great scoop on this poop Pokey!

[AdamSelene235]

We are not an empire in our democratic constitution,

You won't find the word democracy in the Constitution either.

[PGalt]

The American Empire, like the Roman before it, seeks to impose a Roman peace upon the world.

But our wars with fundamentalist Islam will continue, and will broaden; others will be attacked.

Double false premise, doom and gloom, propagandist Bloom...supporting Clark? What a lark!

Our most vital interest is to persuade as much of Islam as possible not to join in what the Muslim fundamentalists consider to be a Counter-Crusade. Who is more qualified than Gen. Clark to render such persuasion plausible?

Laughable

[paul51]

Gen. Clark is highly electable for 2004; the other Democratic candidates are not

Well there is just one little problem. He has to win the rat primary first. LOL

[AdamSelene235]

(sound of a bong gurgling)

Dr. Bloom:

As tropes of contraction or limitation, irony withdraws meaning through a dialectical interplay of presence and absence (clinamen), metonymy reduces meaning through an emptying-out that is a kind of reification (kenosis), metaphor curtails meaning through the endless perspectivizing of dualism, of inside-outside dichotomies (askesis). As tropes of restitution or representation, synecdoche enlarges from part to whole (tessera); hyperbole heightens (daemonization); metalepsis overcomes temporality by a substitution of earliness for lateness (apophrades). (Map 95)

[steplock]

WARNING! Wesley Clark sycophant