Status Updates From Trip To Hanoi

“Maybe I’m only fit to share a people’s revolutionary aspirations at a comfortable distance from them and their struggle—one more volunteer in the armchair army of bourgeois intellectuals with radical sympathies in the head.”

Actually I feel like I need to highlight the entirety of page 27, maybe even make a copy of it, cover the whole page in bright yellow once again, then frame it

… I, from my side, can’t deny the immense richness of these pleasures, or my addiction to them.”

—I live in an unethical society unethical society that coarsens the sensibilities and thwarts
the capacities for goodness of most people but makes available for minority consumption an astonishing array of intellectual and aesthetic pleasures. Those who don’t enjoy (in both senses) my pleasures have every right, from
their side, to regard my consciousness as spoiled, corrupt, decadent. (Cont.)

“Of course, I *could* live in Vietnam, or an ethical society like this one—but not without the loss of a big part of myself. Though I believe incorporation into such a society will greatly improve the lives of most people in the world (and therefore support the advent of such societies), I imagine it will in many ways impoverish mine. (Cont.)

I adore Sontag, but the Orientalism and Western superiority complex are strong in this one