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Monday, September 12, 2011
9/11/11, Part 2
Splinters
Moving, I admit.
Very. But silence also means things not spoken of.
THE NAME GAME IS ALWAYS OFF-PUTTING. What do I mean when I talk of splintering? That each of us devolves to one predominant emotion that is somehow isolating. Apotheosis speaks of spite. Eduardo speaks of being sick of sadness as if sadness were irreconcilable with rage. It's all part of the splintering. Precipitated by the slow withdrawing from MSM view of the images that seared our hearts in the first place -- because they might offend the survivors. The first splinter.
Other splinters? Loss of heart. Loss of faith. Conservative/libertarian neo-isolationism, the first since Republicans wanted to give Hitler a free pass in Europe. Not our business. Transference in the form of Bush Derangement Syndrome. He was more than clever in realizing that we could not garrison the U.S. to keep ourselves safe by purely defensive means. He chose a strategy akin to the Allied decision to fight Hitler in North Africa because they couldn't fight him anywhere else. So Bush fought in Iraq to keep them away from here. And (omg) he was right. Al qaida streamed into Iraq to fight the Great Satan and died by the thousands, draining their blood and treasure. More splinters. Bush was the problem of terrorism. He was creating enemies we hadn't had before. Really? If we were just nice to the jihadists, they would be nice back. Like they were in London and Madrid, etc, etc. So we dismissed him from office, hated, ridiculed, endlessly maligned, entirely forgetting that the next great big attack on American soil never happened.
Splinter. The one called total denial. "Hey, let's start completely over with a brand new dude who will make everything awful right by making fine speeches."
Total nervous breakdown. Call it Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. We just wanted out. Sure, we cheered the president who stood on the pile at Ground Zero and promised justice, but now we're having nightmares and disturbing psychotic rages we can't explain. We don't like death. We don't like Guantanomo. We don't like severe interrogations, so much so that we begin to pretend every item of information obtained under duress is automatically untrue. (Hello. Does anyone know how police detectives obtain confessions?) We make up a brand new constitutional right that extends the protections of American citizens to everyone on earth, even those whose mission is to destroy us and our constitution. Right. We're officially crazy now. Can't we all just bail to Oz? Yes we can.
Yes we can. Yes we can watch in awe as a president of the United States wanders the globe apologizing for American sins. American sins? Really? Yes, we can suddenly tolerate Iranian nuclear weapons that will probably be used against Israel, because who likes the Jews anyway? Look at the Europeans; they've always known about the Jews. And speaking of Europeans, maybe we should be more like them and stop expecting people to take care of themselves because what's government there for anyway?
And what's with all this God stuff? The muslims, who may or may not be involved in some aspects of terrorism, believe in God too, and maybe it's God that's the real problem. Maybe we should start listening to Richard Dawkins instead.
Splinters.
Which devolve to Truthers and Code Pink and Breasts Not Bombs and what's so wrong with a wahabbi mosque a few blocks from Ground Zero because we just want everybody to follow the wisdom of the violent thug who said, "Can't we all just get along?" Can't we just bring everybody home and hope for the best?
Dust.
Where we are now. Except that it should be better than that.
It should be a transformational spiritual experience that enables us to feel sorrow, anger, hope, beauty, and eternity all at the same time with no sense of internal contradiction.
But that would be another post.
