Dartblog

I can’t recall the last time that a writer for The D published a column in another Ivy paper, but today’s Harvard Crimson contains a piece by Andrew Lohse ‘12, entitled “Liberty or Madness,” that focuses on the civil rights and human aftermath of 9/11. Lohse, whom this space took to task not too long ago, is starting to make a name for himself. His first column in The D, a polemic criticizing Dartmouth students’ enthrallment with corporate recruiting, was reprinted by CNBC, Business Insider, NYT Dealbook, and The Atlantic Wire. The boy has touched a nerve out there.

The Crimson piece contains Lohse’s seemingly typical mix of clear writing, personal detail, and the worst kinds of ideology-fueled generalization: “President Obama… has perpetuated the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld police-state practices”; “Our citizenry has been so psychologically scarred that we are literally terrorized by our own government…”; “It is a unique breed of violent, uninhibited madness”; “This has been the decade that has witnessed the American republic’s death.” He concludes in his usual stirring fashion:

Our generation will be defined by how we deal with the reality of what happened on September 11, 2001 and how successful we are in dismantling the fascist excesses of power, created under the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld administration in the events’ wake and strengthened and canonized by the Obama-Biden-Clinton administration.

That said, in comparison with the milquetoast guardedness of most columns in The D, Lohse’s writing has the virtue of staking out a position. I look forward to seeing if his future work can maintain his unflinching attitude, add some evidentiary support, and then fire with the precision of a sniper’s rifle rather than a blunderbuss.