Have I read this essay before? Yes.
Did I need to buy this slim physical copy of the essay when I saw it at the paper hound? No.

BUT I did buy it because this is one of Didion’s most chilling and prescient essays; one that feels as urgent today as it did when it was published in 2003, and one that deserves the attention and close-read only a physical book can demand from a reader. Anyone who fancies themselves engaged with politics (especially the politics of the Middle East) should probably read this multiple times. Anyone who fancies themselves engaged with literature, culture, and dissent should probably do so too. The poison of fixed ideas aren’t fixed to a single political ideology - their parasitic rhetorical reach is part of our larger cultural incapacity to dwell in disagreement. If only Fascinated to Presume was a cute little book I could lend to my friends as well… it would be a nice pairing with this stunner.

But to finish my series of rhetorical questions:
Was this purchase worth it? Absolutely.
Will I be urging people to borrow and read this essay like it is my gospel? Consider this my first attempt.

Unshockingly prescient.

They make me so sad, all the idiocies implicit in the American political system. I couldn't bear to be further reminded of the tragic farce we all live, and thus I stopped reading. I know enough, and all that knowledge has paralyzed me as a political being. Work like this, rich in wit and poor in hope, make me the injurious and culpable political defeatist I am, and will more sadly remain.

In this tiny essay, Didion argues for the vital importance of not letting pain be used an excuse to mobilize historical ignorance, especially right after a tragedy:

I had expected to find the annihilating economy of the event—the way in which it had concentrated the complicated arrangements and misarrangements of the last century into a single irreducible image—being explored, made legible. On the contrary, I found that what had happened was being processed, obscured, systematically leached of history and so of meaning, finally rendered less readable than it had seemed on the morning it happened. As if overnight, the irreconcilable event had been made manageable, reduced to the sentimental, to protective talismans, totems, garlands of garlic, repeated pieties that would come to seem in some ways as destructive as the event itself. We now had "the loved ones, " we had "the families," we had "the heroes."

In fact it was in the reflexive repetition of the word "hero" that we began to hear what would become in the year that followed an entrenched preference for ignoring the meaning of the event in favour of an impenetrably flattening celebration of its victims, and a troublingly belligerent idealisation of historical ignorance.

A very short book, but Didion's dry incisiveness seems especially appropriate for the topic under discussion.

Typical Didion style. Complex ideas and relationships between ideas with perfect prose.

I rarely read anything that has to do with politics, but I'll read anything Joan Didion writes ... Between books, I picked up this essay, published in book form, which originally appeared in the New York Review of Books in 2003. If you want to know how we got here ... this is it.

Short essay "as published in The New York Review of Book of January 16, 2003"

Subtitled ‘America Since 9.11’ this volume seems a continuation in the tradition of pamphlets going back to Thomas Paine. It did not take me two months to read this book – under 30 minutes, but I’ve been reading more magazine articles from the Progressive and other publications. This is not the first book by Didion I’ve read, I finished ‘Salvador’ years ago, but it was a struggle to finish as I recall. I’m reading as much contemporary political news as I can in preparation for the next election. As for this treatise penned by Didion, well I actually think the forward by Frank Rich was stronger and clearer in its message. I’m not saying that Didion did not make some very good points, but her piece was going all over the place. Her personal recollections of the days following 9.11 seemed distant, her points about where the country has been directed since 9.11 seemed aimless especially since there are so many issues where the current administration are so clearly defiling our constitution. Almost as disappointing as this administration.

Beautiful essay, but does it deserve a whole book?

I'm not sure why this essay from The New York Review of Books of January 16, 2003 was made into a book. It's more like a pamphlet, and a short one at that. Of course Joan Didion is an icon of the American left and a prose stylist deluxe as well as a trenchant social and political critic. Perhaps what Didion has to say is of great importance and perhaps she says it very well. Clearly the unstated assumption of the essay--that we would in fact bring about a regime change in Iraq (that is, we would invade Iraq) has proven prescient.

Didion's essay is in three parts. The first part is mostly an observation on how the Bush administration is attempting to preempt criticism of its policies by labeling critics as somehow unpatriotic or worse. One of the nice points she makes is that the "war on terror" is a misnomer since terror is not a state but a technique. (p. 8)

In the second part she identifies the first "fixed idea." She is talking about the government of Israel. She writes, "Whether the actions taken by that government constitute self-defense or a particularly inclusive form of self-immolation remains an open question." She goes on to say that almost no one in the US dare challenge the fixed idea that we must support the actions of the Israeli government. She says that the question is seldom discussed rationally or at all (in her circle, it would seem) because "few of us are willing to see our evenings turn toxic." ( p. 23) That she herself has to bury this assertion into the very middle of her essay and to express it so obliquely reinforces her point perhaps more strongly than she might have imagined.

In the third part she reveals the second fixed idea, which she identifies as the "theory" behind the "regime change in Iraq" pronouncements made in 2002 by President Bush. "I made up my mind [the President had said in April] that Saddam needs to go." (p. 36) The "theory" that Didion is talking about is sometimes called "The Bush Doctrine" or "The New American Unilateralism" or more bluntly, "The American Empire." The second fixed idea then is that "with the collapse of the Soviet Union" we have an opportunity and an obligation to move unilaterally and preemptively against our enemies as an imperial power might.

I'm not going to evaluate Didion's argument here--that is something you will want to do yourself--except to say that:

1) In reference to the rather high-handed attempt at managing the press and public opinion by the Bush administration, had the Democrats been in the White House post 9/11 they would have done something similar. Indeed all administrations in my lifetime have tried to manage the press.

2) The actions of Hamas and the other Palestinian suicide/murder organizations make it difficult to take any side other than Israel's. If the Palestinian people had better leadership that would pursue their goals in the spirit and manner of, say, Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr., they would find widespread (although not majority) support in the US; indeed, I believe, given world opinion, they would be successful.

3) Yes, we are indeed seeing the emergence of an American Empire. Whether we will have the wisdom to use our power so that we do not go the way of Rome in a relatively quick manner will depend on our ability to work with other nations for the betterment of the entire planet. This is something the Bush administration is not doing very well, but there is hope that the next administration will be wiser.

--Dennis Littrell, author of the mystery novel, “Teddy and Teri”

E pensare che per l'Italia gli Stati Uniti sono un modello da seguire. Eccolo il modello. Tre stelline solo perché è troppo corto e lascia un po' l'amaro in bocca.

É muito engraçado que ela viu vindo exatamente desde a Baia dos Porcos e vem avisando (tudo descrito em Miami é exatamente o cenário político ocidental hj) e isso aqui é uma sequência não oficial a Miami e como as táticas de lá são mais velhas que andar pra frente e continuam sendo usadas (nesse caso após o 11 de setembro, mais futuramente com o Trump)