- I am ahead . . .
- I am advanced . . .
- I am the first mammal to wear pants . . .
- I'm at peace . . .
- With my lust . . .
- I can kill cause in God I trust, yeh
- I'm at peace . . .
- I'm the man . . .
- Buying stocks on the day of the crash . . .
- I'm a thief . . .
- I'm a liar . . .
- There's my church, I sing in the choir . . .
- It's evolution, baby.
-
- Pearl Jam, "Do the Evolution"
-
- The September 11 attacks have inspired many people to
predict that America will unite to fight the menace of terrorism, despite
the costs. The image they wish to evoke is of a mighty country, united
in its resolve to combat a menace threatening the shared values, hopes
and ideals of its populace. Unfortunately, a more-than-superficial look
reveals that nothing could be further from the truth. America is far from
a united country.
-
- Our hundreds of millions of people represent a cross
section of the world's population unlike anything anyone could have ever
imagined. Gone are the days, however, when people from around the world
crossed an ocean to be assimilated into a culture of liberty - they now
land on the shores of a country torn apart by gang fighting, welfare-statism,
frivolous lawsuits, mind-numbing political correctness and pressure group
warfare. Once proud and free, we are now a petty, bickering people - though
saying so will surely bring cries of "Treason!" from the mindless,
flag-waving masses that wax so eloquently about the "American spirit".
-
- So where, then, is this spirit? Where is our resolve
to fight a bloody war that could last years and cost thousands of American
lives? Because the latest Zogby poll shows eighty percent of Americans
favor blasting Afghanistan from the face of the earth? Many mistake this
emotional outpouring as the symbol of an uprising, but they are sorely
mistaken. To unite in the face of adversity requires a common goal, a common
sentiment about the justness of one's causeóand in this case, the
justness of one's country. But decades of tragic foreign policies and collectivist
domestic squabbles have left most people with only a sense of unease about
the American way of life. And adding salt on the wounds are those flowery
poetics that dish out such tripe as the idea that America somehow "lost
its innocence" when the World Trade Center was attacked. As an Irish
newspaper editorialist said some years ago, America and innocence go together
like babies and napalm.
-
- President Bush and many others are constantly trotting
out the line that the "enemies of freedom" attacked America,
because "it is free". It is an insult to one's intelligence that
in such serious times we are being subjected to the tired old cliches that
better define a presidential campaign season than a period of national
crisis. I don't wish to kick this country while it's down. I only think
that we should shelve the patriotic, misty-eyed mumbo-jumbo that makes
up the content of our endless news shows, and take a good, hard look at
the country that was attacked on September 11.
-
- So let us first examine the contention that America was
attacked "because it is free". Believing this bit of silliness
requires that one swallow the idea that Osama bin Laden, or some likely
cohort, just woke up on September 10 and said, "Let's go blow up some
buildings in the US tomorrow, shall we?" America has long been the
hated ally of Israel, the most hated country in the Middle East. There
are many noteworthy qualities about the Jews, but Americans more closely
resemble an ostrich with its head in the ground than intelligent human
beings when they drift through life completely oblivious to the history
of bloodshed that defines Arab-Israeli relations. America took a side in
that ruthless quagmire decades agoófinally, we understand what that
means.
-
- Another fact often overlooked by most people is that
Islamic terrorist organizations are resentful because the United States
has troops in the "Holy Land" - bin Laden in particular (a native
of Saudi Arabia) finds the presence of US troops in his country unbearable
(Imagine). Naturally, continued American presence in the Middle East is
most often justified because of the threat still posed by arch-tyrant Saddam
Hussein, who invaded the "free" country of Kuwait. Never mind
that Kuwait's "free" society is as rigid and theocratic as the
rest of that regionóit was for their "freedom", we are
to believe, and not their oil that we called in the cavalry.
-
- And finally, what about the United States? While we're
casually bouncing the idea of "freedom" around, why not take
a look at "the land of the free", and see if it lives up to its
image. Surely we are one of the freest countries in the world, but that
is hardly a threat to the people of other nations. After all, prosperity
and liberty is anything but a zero sum game. For the people of one country
to experience unprecedented wealth and personal freedom has only ever meant
a general increase in the standard of living of those who trade with them.
If the people of the Middle East honestly despise blue jeans and McDonald's
- versus stealth fighters and blockades - cutting off trade is hardly a
difficult thing for them to accomplish.
-
- And how could our "freedom" - which pundits
of both sides of the political spectrum now define, with straight face,
as "American democracy" - mean a damn thing to some sheepherder
in the mountains of Pakistan? Does the 50 percent of our income still allowed
us by our government threaten Kabul? Does an SKS semi-automatic (fully
registered with the FBI and the BATF, of course) in the hands of Joe Six
Pack of Topeka, Kansas, really mean a damn thing to a starving mother in
Baghdad, whose child cannot receive medicine because of a UN embargo? Exactly
which of America's remaining "freedoms" is the source of animosity
between the people of the one hundred plus countries currently hosting
US troops, and the thousands of people buried at the bottom of the World
Trade Center?
-
- In the United States, the government of our "country
united" has imprisoned hundreds of thousands of its own citizens for
nothing more than using some arbitrarily demonized substance. The American
government sues our most productive corporations for the crime of being
too successful - and Americans applaud it. In this country, parents are
forced under threat of criminal prosecution to send their children to state-run
educational facilities, where they are indoctrinated into hating the very
principles America was founded on. In America, ninja-suited storm troopers
assault churches full of women and children, and shoot nursing mothers
in the face, because a gun's barrel length is alleged to have been a quarter
of an inch too short - and Americans say "they got what they deserved".
In America, demagogic "leaders" of the black minority are demanding
that the pockets of their fellow-citizens be picked to pay for the institution
of slaveryó abolished a century and a half agoówhile turning
a blind eye to black slave trading that still goes on in the world today.
In America, white mobs are attacking Mosques and calling their fellow-citizens
of Middle Eastern descent "rag heads". And we're to believe that
this country is united?
-
- The simple, cold hard truth about what happened in New
York (and aboard a plane over Pennsylvania) is that this generation has
finally seen the brutal face of waróthe kind of war that the United
States has been helping foreign governments wage for decades. The reason
for so much ignorance about US foreign policyóand thus absolute
astonishment that anyone could ever really be this mad with us - is that
a nation divided into paltry, bickering tribes of adolescent power brokers
has better things to do than worry about weapons sales to Latin American
dictators, and other forms of overseas atrocities. Such trivial distractions
are for others to worry aboutóas long as Monday night football rolls
as scheduled, the welfare check is in the mail, and no one ever says anything
"unpleasant".
-
- Though this may be like rain on parade day, it is time
that someone had the courage to admit that the United States is not united.
It is Rome in the dying days of Empireóand the barbarians at the
gate are laughing at us.
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