Institutions are inherently corrupt. They operate by funneling power away from their many members and into the clutches of their few leaders. And we know from painful experience that whenever power of any significance is collected in the hands of a few, the sins of greed and arrogance and self-righteousness are soon to follow. With this in mind, how are governments not institutions writ large? Yes, they are veneered in respectability thanks to their elective natures, but the moment their elections conclude, they become autocratic institutions, their power limited only by the desire to maintain it. This, at least, is Ms. Roy's view and in this she is quite convincing.
From the Palestinian problem to the Iraq War, from the arrogance of leaders past to the bias of today's cable news, War Talk is a series of essays which coalesce around the events of September 11, 2001, and the extent to which this attack welcomed the United States into a difficult and dangerous world largely of its own creation. After all, Ms. Roy argues, America has worked its ostensibly benevolent will upon the world's various international conflicts for going on 60 years now. And rather than creating a world of peaceful, free commerce -- America's stated aims --, it has wrought bloodshed and misery: toppling governments, supporting despots, proliferating nuclear weapons and binding subservient nations to exploitative contracts that best serve its corporate backers. But though all this is rather obvious to the rest of the world, it is not obvious to the American people who, when they open a newspaper or turn on the news, are not greeted with the sins of their government; they are presented with the noble sacrifices of their soldiers trying to build schools in countries they've just bombed back to the stone age. Freedom, Ms. Roy points out, cannot be brought about by violence.
If Ms. Roy is right to argue that institutions are corrupt and that corrupt institutions and the principles they are founded upon are bound to fail, then what will replace them? Ms. Roy seems less than certain. She favors the power of the people in whom she clearly invests her hopes. Perhaps if we all had to live together, neighbor with neighbor, community with community, face to face with those we purport to hate and beholden to no master, then we would not war. We would find alternative solutions to the problems that plague us. We are aware of the sins of free market capitalism. We are aware of the sins of the hierarchical power structures upon which institutions and governments are based. To continue to pursue them knowing the damage they cause would be nothing short of folly.
Unfortunately, this, to me, is naive. Replacing corrupt institutions with people power is a lovely idea, but how? Direct democracy offers some hope, but as much as direct democracy endows the people with the full measure of national power, how the people vote is still subject to the same biases and prejudices Ms. Roy blames the media for perpetuating. So not only do we require the people to change their political systems, we need them to demand a vast reform of the modern media as well? This seems hopelessly far-fetched.
Ms. Roy is an impassioned essayist. Her advocacy for the downtrodden is as inspiring as her rage at the cruelty of our rulers is invigorating. But while her heart is in the right place, any hope for positive change seems a long way off. We will need multiple revolutions to see a world Ms. Roy can admire. And right now, we all care too much for the things we stand to lose to take a chance on a better future. (3/5 Stars)
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