Karen Watters Cole wrote:
[snip]
Once again, we have grand examples for the history books and future
classrooms about whether individuals drive history or if history makes
the men, so to speak. The full article below address the US
Ego-in-Charge, the excerpted article profiles the other Big Ego at odds,
swords drawn, mythologies enhanced and the world awaiting the outcome.
Hussein's Obsession: An Empire of Mosques – You HAVE TO see the photo to
appreciate this reporting from Baghdad. Excerpts below.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/15/international/middleeast/15MOSQ.html
[snip]
I too was particularly struck by this picture. It is
a magnificent photograph, especially the way the
photographer captured the luminousness of the light.
But that is not the most important thing about this picture:
as soon as I saw it,
I thought that it could just as well be in The Mall
in The United States capital, Washington, D.C., as in
the capital of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. OK, not on the
mall, but a couple miles to the northwest (where The
National Cathedral is...).
All monumental buildings look basically the same,
whether they are monuments to Saddam Hussein, or to
Adlof Hitler (Hitler and Speer's New Berlin), or Moussolini
(The Third Rome), or anything else, because they are
not monuments to what they nominally commemorate, but
rather monuments to POWER, and POWER is POWER wherever
it is and whatever makeup it puts on. The meaning of
every monumental monument is to make
persons feel SMALL, and to encourage them to OBEY POWER.
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/monumentality.html
A real democracy would not build monuments. At worst, It might build
a very large radio transmitter to broadcast its presence to
the heavens, as the collegium of master builders at Babel tried to do.
A real democracy would have no sacred books, either: nothing would be
"sacred" (i.e., beyond criticism) to it. But its citizens might
study such books as Elias Canetti's _Crowds and Power_.
"Yours in discourse...."
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
