Teju Cole on the "Empathy Gap" and Tweeting Drone Strikes

[polly7]

"Mother died today. The program saves American lives."

—By Sarah Zhang | Wed Mar. 6, 2013 4:00 AM PST

His drone vignettes also breathe empathy into anonymous killings that happen far away. And Cole, also an occasional Twitter essayist, previously posted a a series of tweets linking drones, Downton Abbey, the IMF, and Virgin America. It's easy to ignore drone strikes quietly happening halfway across the world; it's harder to ignore them when they invade our familiar cultural turf.

1. Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Pity. A signature strike leveled the florist's.

2. Call me Ishmael. I was a young man of military age. I was immolated at my wedding. My parents are inconsolable.

3. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather. A bomb whistled in. Blood on the walls. Fire from heaven.

4. I am an invisible man. My name is unknown. My loves are a mystery. But an unmanned aerial vehicle from a secret location has come for me.

5. Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was killed by a Predator drone.

6. Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His torso was found, not his head.

7. Mother died today. The program saves American lives.

TC: Killing a bunch of people in Sudan and Yemen and Pakistan, it's like, "Who cares—we don't know them." But the current discussion is framed as "When can the President kill an American citizen?" Now in my mind, killing a non-American citizen without due process is just as criminal as killing an American citizen without due process—but whatever gets us to the table to discuss this thing, we're going to take it.

Full Article: http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/03/teju-cole-interview-twitter-drones-small-fates