Dear America
Take a moment to ask yourself why you do or do not support President Bush and his administration.
Our country was attacked by a group of organized terrorists in a scheme that was as nefarious as it was symbolic. Vehicles that fly us across the globe in a matter of hours - vehicles we take for granted, killed some thousand American lives in a matter of minutes, and many more in the hours that followed the Boeing collisions with the World Trade Center.
And the "World Trade Center." Look at that name.
Airplanes destroyed the two towers (plus Building 7) that, by name, represent our position as rulers of the world.
You might derive from my tone that I am taking a liberal view-point and scolding America for ruling the world, but I'm not. America is the most powerful nation that the world has ever known. Some of the things we consider to be basic luxury do not exist in other parts of the world. Pieces of technology - like cell-phones and iPods - costing up to $300 a piece, can be cycled through as easilly as seasonal fashion. America is, as one might say: The Shit.
But on that day when two planes hit the World Trade Center and those towers crumbled to the ground, another plane (???) hit the Pentagon, and another plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, Americans were jolted awake from their stable daily lives.
Death tolls. The destruction of a national symbol. Tragedy. Mourning. Anger. Determination for retribution. Complete and utter chaos that the nation was not used to.
President Bush looked into the camera and told us America was hurt that day. And he said he would make it his mission to track down these terrorists - these killers - and make them pay. And Americans started using their economic prosperity to show their support of the nation by buying plastic flags, and they got on the 24 hour news stations and internet and said "Fuck you terrorists, we're not gonna take this shit!" and a minority replied "America deserves this!" and then the media said they were liberal, so people labeled themselves as polar opposite conservatives and said "Fuck you liberals," and then people who weren't liberals but started thinking maybe this 9-11 thing was an inside job - a conspircacy - got on the internet and started writing about that, and the conservatives said, "Fuck you liberals!", and thus the conspiracy theorists became liberals because what choice did they have, and people who weren't conservative became convinced that liberals were trying to destroy the country, so they said, "Fuck you, liberals!" and labeled themselves as conservatives, because what else could they do, and at some point during this time American troops were dispatched to Iraq, and Bush looked into the camera and said that Hussein had weapons of mass-destruction and we have to stop him for some reason, and polls showed that Americans thought Hussein was just as responsible for the 9-11 attack as bin Laden, which isn't true, and everyone kept screaming over the air-waves and the country became so divided, and Ann Coulter said things that made liberals angry, and it made conservatives angry too, but not at her - at liberals, and she got a fat pay-check, and liberal pundits got fat paychecks too for saying inflammatory things, and everyone started getting paid to say things that would raise people's blood-pressure, and conservatives claimed that they were victims of the liberal bias in the media and it was time to take the world back, and liberals said they were being victimized by the conservative power that pervades our country, and it's time to take the world back, and everyone screamed and cried because they were a victim, and you can't really make sense of it when you're down in the noise itself, so you have to pull back as far away as you can, and see that all of the noise eventually vibrates into a unified mantra.
America is shouting: "We were made to feel like a victim and we're not gonna take it! We're gonna destroy you at any cost. We are not a fucking victim!"
And the screaming is right. America is not a victim.
Generally, to be a victim, power must be taken from an individual by a stronger idividual. But Al-Qaeda is not that stronger individual because America sure as hell isn't weak and ripe for the picking. The most automatic, basic response found in human nature is to fight back upon attack, not because its justice, but because a chunk has been taken out of the ego and it must be gotten back. It's the idea of replacing what is lost to make whole once more. You take my power and I'll take it back. But what exactly is the power that is taken in an attack? The concept of self-worth? Why must it be regained through external conquest?
A lot of people died in the 9-11 attacks, and the people who killed them do need to pay. But it is not that they pay that is important now, but the attitude we hold when we make them pay. There is a difference between justice and revenge. Justice is the law of the universe - the ultimate force that brings equality and peace to existence, with or without bloody satisfaction. And that's what revenge is: bloody satisfaction. Unconstructive. Low. Beneath humanity, or should be. Can be. Needs to be.
America, the most powerful nation the world has ever known - America, the modern Rome - victimized by a small group of religious extremists? It is a grand delusion that our city on the hill could ever be victimized. Therefore, we have no power to regain. We have no injured ego to make whole again. We have nothing to react to. But there is certainly action that must be taken.
The people in the World Trade Center were the victims. The passengers of the planes were victims. They were small individuals destroyed by a Boeing jet, hijacked by agents of religious extremism. An extremism born from a feeling of being victimized, and not wanting to "fucking take it." The people who were killed in the World Trade Center meet the annotative criteria for victim:
a person who suffers from a destructive or injurious action or agency
As do, before they accumulated the power to fight back against percieved aggression, the people who hijacked those planes and killed all those thousands of people in a senseless yet symbolic act. The actions of those terrorists are unforgivable, but they originate from a place of despair and hopelessness.
On 9-11, America felt that same despair. "How could this have happened? How did this fucking happen?"
President Bush looked into the camera and said "This won't happen again."
At some point, a long time ago, after whatever incident inspired the sense of victimization, Ossamah bin Laden looked at his followers and said, "This won't happen again."
But it's all going to happen again, and a lot worse, if we don't consciously break the cycle of loss and revenge. Victimization is not a fact of life, it is a state of mind, and a destructive one. We are not destined to have taken from us and bitterly fight to get it back. We can move beyond militant reactive attitudes.
There is another definition in the dictionary for victim:
a person who is deceived or cheated, as by his or her own emotions or ignorance, by the dishonesty of others, or by some impersonal agency
Whenever a person loses hope, there is despair. If a group of people sink into this despair, collectively, there is little hope of overcoming that despair unless a light comes forth and rallies the people. This is true going as far back as Moses and all the way up to Bush.
When Germany had fallen into hard economic times, victimized by the world, Adolph Hitler stepped forward and said, "This is how we're gonna solve this."
We all know what horrible atrocities occured next. The leader of a victimized nation systematically murdered 6 million people. A sense of weakness created the most evil and vile rise to power the world has ever seen.
It's important to understand that the German people did not want all those people to die. But they religiously supported Hitler, their army, and their national integrity. Why? Because they were lost in despair, and he showed them the light. He told them, basically, "This is how you will feel good again. This is how you will be safe." Everyone believed him. I'm sure Hitler believed what he said to be the truth as well.
Today, President Bush will be signing into a law a piece of legislation he believes will help America be safer. It is a law that will give him the power to define torture however he likes it, setting a dangerous, 1984-esque precedent. It will allow government agents to go to more inhumane lengths to get information from percieved terrorists that will help them to further protect America. Basd on the logic that the Bush administration has cultivated: that America has been victimized and must become empowered once more, it is justifiable that this information be extracted by any means necessary. I argue that this basic logic is bull-shit.
Now, forget everything you know about Bush. Forget that he is a conservative and that you're a conversative or liberal, forget that he is a Texan, like you, or not like you, and did or did not go to your college, that you think he looks like a monkey, or quite dashing and handsome, or he is incredibly kind-hearted and benevolent towards people, or a horrible public speaker, always mis-pronouncing words and sounding stupid, or he is a devout Christian, and so are you, or that you're an atheist and don't want a religious person in office, and look at him from the most detached view-point you possibly can. Don't even look at him as a man. A person with such power bestowed on him or her is something more.
Like the World Trade Center became a symbol of America's affluency within the world, a President becomes a symbol for America when he enters Office. Can America, knowing the damage a victim can do, and with enough power to determine the fate of the world, stand with integrity as the archetype of a victim trying to regain power?
Our country was attacked by a group of organized terrorists in a scheme that was as nefarious as it was symbolic. Vehicles that fly us across the globe in a matter of hours - vehicles we take for granted, killed some thousand American lives in a matter of minutes, and many more in the hours that followed the Boeing collisions with the World Trade Center.
And the "World Trade Center." Look at that name.
Airplanes destroyed the two towers (plus Building 7) that, by name, represent our position as rulers of the world.
You might derive from my tone that I am taking a liberal view-point and scolding America for ruling the world, but I'm not. America is the most powerful nation that the world has ever known. Some of the things we consider to be basic luxury do not exist in other parts of the world. Pieces of technology - like cell-phones and iPods - costing up to $300 a piece, can be cycled through as easilly as seasonal fashion. America is, as one might say: The Shit.
But on that day when two planes hit the World Trade Center and those towers crumbled to the ground, another plane (???) hit the Pentagon, and another plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, Americans were jolted awake from their stable daily lives.
Death tolls. The destruction of a national symbol. Tragedy. Mourning. Anger. Determination for retribution. Complete and utter chaos that the nation was not used to.
President Bush looked into the camera and told us America was hurt that day. And he said he would make it his mission to track down these terrorists - these killers - and make them pay. And Americans started using their economic prosperity to show their support of the nation by buying plastic flags, and they got on the 24 hour news stations and internet and said "Fuck you terrorists, we're not gonna take this shit!" and a minority replied "America deserves this!" and then the media said they were liberal, so people labeled themselves as polar opposite conservatives and said "Fuck you liberals," and then people who weren't liberals but started thinking maybe this 9-11 thing was an inside job - a conspircacy - got on the internet and started writing about that, and the conservatives said, "Fuck you liberals!", and thus the conspiracy theorists became liberals because what choice did they have, and people who weren't conservative became convinced that liberals were trying to destroy the country, so they said, "Fuck you, liberals!" and labeled themselves as conservatives, because what else could they do, and at some point during this time American troops were dispatched to Iraq, and Bush looked into the camera and said that Hussein had weapons of mass-destruction and we have to stop him for some reason, and polls showed that Americans thought Hussein was just as responsible for the 9-11 attack as bin Laden, which isn't true, and everyone kept screaming over the air-waves and the country became so divided, and Ann Coulter said things that made liberals angry, and it made conservatives angry too, but not at her - at liberals, and she got a fat pay-check, and liberal pundits got fat paychecks too for saying inflammatory things, and everyone started getting paid to say things that would raise people's blood-pressure, and conservatives claimed that they were victims of the liberal bias in the media and it was time to take the world back, and liberals said they were being victimized by the conservative power that pervades our country, and it's time to take the world back, and everyone screamed and cried because they were a victim, and you can't really make sense of it when you're down in the noise itself, so you have to pull back as far away as you can, and see that all of the noise eventually vibrates into a unified mantra.
America is shouting: "We were made to feel like a victim and we're not gonna take it! We're gonna destroy you at any cost. We are not a fucking victim!"
And the screaming is right. America is not a victim.
Generally, to be a victim, power must be taken from an individual by a stronger idividual. But Al-Qaeda is not that stronger individual because America sure as hell isn't weak and ripe for the picking. The most automatic, basic response found in human nature is to fight back upon attack, not because its justice, but because a chunk has been taken out of the ego and it must be gotten back. It's the idea of replacing what is lost to make whole once more. You take my power and I'll take it back. But what exactly is the power that is taken in an attack? The concept of self-worth? Why must it be regained through external conquest?
A lot of people died in the 9-11 attacks, and the people who killed them do need to pay. But it is not that they pay that is important now, but the attitude we hold when we make them pay. There is a difference between justice and revenge. Justice is the law of the universe - the ultimate force that brings equality and peace to existence, with or without bloody satisfaction. And that's what revenge is: bloody satisfaction. Unconstructive. Low. Beneath humanity, or should be. Can be. Needs to be.
America, the most powerful nation the world has ever known - America, the modern Rome - victimized by a small group of religious extremists? It is a grand delusion that our city on the hill could ever be victimized. Therefore, we have no power to regain. We have no injured ego to make whole again. We have nothing to react to. But there is certainly action that must be taken.
The people in the World Trade Center were the victims. The passengers of the planes were victims. They were small individuals destroyed by a Boeing jet, hijacked by agents of religious extremism. An extremism born from a feeling of being victimized, and not wanting to "fucking take it." The people who were killed in the World Trade Center meet the annotative criteria for victim:
a person who suffers from a destructive or injurious action or agency
As do, before they accumulated the power to fight back against percieved aggression, the people who hijacked those planes and killed all those thousands of people in a senseless yet symbolic act. The actions of those terrorists are unforgivable, but they originate from a place of despair and hopelessness.
On 9-11, America felt that same despair. "How could this have happened? How did this fucking happen?"
President Bush looked into the camera and said "This won't happen again."
At some point, a long time ago, after whatever incident inspired the sense of victimization, Ossamah bin Laden looked at his followers and said, "This won't happen again."
But it's all going to happen again, and a lot worse, if we don't consciously break the cycle of loss and revenge. Victimization is not a fact of life, it is a state of mind, and a destructive one. We are not destined to have taken from us and bitterly fight to get it back. We can move beyond militant reactive attitudes.
There is another definition in the dictionary for victim:
a person who is deceived or cheated, as by his or her own emotions or ignorance, by the dishonesty of others, or by some impersonal agency
Whenever a person loses hope, there is despair. If a group of people sink into this despair, collectively, there is little hope of overcoming that despair unless a light comes forth and rallies the people. This is true going as far back as Moses and all the way up to Bush.
When Germany had fallen into hard economic times, victimized by the world, Adolph Hitler stepped forward and said, "This is how we're gonna solve this."
We all know what horrible atrocities occured next. The leader of a victimized nation systematically murdered 6 million people. A sense of weakness created the most evil and vile rise to power the world has ever seen.
It's important to understand that the German people did not want all those people to die. But they religiously supported Hitler, their army, and their national integrity. Why? Because they were lost in despair, and he showed them the light. He told them, basically, "This is how you will feel good again. This is how you will be safe." Everyone believed him. I'm sure Hitler believed what he said to be the truth as well.
Today, President Bush will be signing into a law a piece of legislation he believes will help America be safer. It is a law that will give him the power to define torture however he likes it, setting a dangerous, 1984-esque precedent. It will allow government agents to go to more inhumane lengths to get information from percieved terrorists that will help them to further protect America. Basd on the logic that the Bush administration has cultivated: that America has been victimized and must become empowered once more, it is justifiable that this information be extracted by any means necessary. I argue that this basic logic is bull-shit.
Now, forget everything you know about Bush. Forget that he is a conservative and that you're a conversative or liberal, forget that he is a Texan, like you, or not like you, and did or did not go to your college, that you think he looks like a monkey, or quite dashing and handsome, or he is incredibly kind-hearted and benevolent towards people, or a horrible public speaker, always mis-pronouncing words and sounding stupid, or he is a devout Christian, and so are you, or that you're an atheist and don't want a religious person in office, and look at him from the most detached view-point you possibly can. Don't even look at him as a man. A person with such power bestowed on him or her is something more.
Like the World Trade Center became a symbol of America's affluency within the world, a President becomes a symbol for America when he enters Office. Can America, knowing the damage a victim can do, and with enough power to determine the fate of the world, stand with integrity as the archetype of a victim trying to regain power?