perfidy

I think we can agree on a new Ministry policy directive: We all hate our freedom.

Boys, boys, boys... you both hate our freedom!

So, just so I'm clear:

You are firmly in the "let's build them, because we can" camp, regardless of the phallic connotations which you acknowledge but overall consider minor.

While I am in the, "Why don't we decide why we're building them" camp, and take a stab at some concensus about whether it's the best course. I acknowledge the importance of the creation symbols at work, but am not 100% swayed by them alone.

So, which of us hates our freedom..?

Revenge is blowing them up. Building bigger buildings is just making a statement, like Lincoln completing the capitol dome in the middle of the civil war.

I don't think France has any skyscrapers in the top fifty. Europe as a whole has only one. Most of the new big towers are in Asia. Like I said, if weren't for 9/11, I wouldn't have been demanding that we build a new super-skyscraper just because the chicoms were building a big one.

And it isn't just to show up the Petronus Towers or Taiwan 101 or whatever - it's to say, you destroy, we create. Not just create, but knowck something down and we'll make something even more amazing, and then rebuild your society with our spare change. (And $87 billion out of an economy of over $10 trillion is, in fact, chump change.)

We don't need it, exactly - we could build more efficient low-rise office and residential space. But some things should be done, just because they can be done.

Yeah, to a point. Before 9/11, I couldn't have cared less who had the tallest building. (Okay, maybe just a little.) But after deranged islamofascist fuckwits knocked down our towers, I want a new, bigger, and cooler building to replace them. To say F-you to the f-wits, and to make a symbolic statement about the the relative worth and efficacy of fundamentalist nihilistic violence and a civilized, open society.

And the way to do that is not to make a "freedom tower" that is post-modernist pabulum a fraction of an inch taller than the next building. We need to build something that is significantly bigger. If I thought we could build a beanstalk/space elevator on the site of the twin towers, I'd be recommending that. But a kilometer-high, Wright-designed skyscraper will do in the meantime.

And we should install missiles and lasers and whatnot while we're at it.

I go back and forth on that.

One part of me says that the towers should be replaced by bigger towers. Just for its own sake. Because we can. America got its front teeth kicked in, and now we're gonna have the whitest, strongest implants money can buy or Marvel comics can imagine, bolted into our skull with adamantium screws. It's a sort of revenge, and it just feels so right.

But when I reflect on it, and consider the primal source of the revenge concept, I wonder whether it's a good idea. Are we caving to baser instincts by just making a bigger thing, to replace lost things that were already too big?

Is it OK to have the biggest unit for its own sake, just to be able to say "Choke on that, France! Think you can take all this, China?!"

Because after all, the kooks who delight in blowing up buildings really don't have so many buildings to blow up in their own societies. To whom are we proving our manhood in this regard BUT to other industrial powers?

B,
Doesn't the whole thing about who has the biggest building seem a weeeee bit phallic? Like America has to have the biggest wang (besides Florida), and yearns for the chance to whip it out and impress everybody?

Especially coming from Donald Trump, who's past obsession with things big (to the point of fetishistic), gaudy, and masculine might point to him being the most under-equipped gay dude in New York?