i should be in bed, but i feel like writing something. so here i go.
i know that’s 2008, and i know that there’s a lot of water under the bridge, but there are certain things that have happened in america that still deserve thought and reflection. seven years later, it’s stuff that we’re still dealing with. they’re events that have shaped the national discourse, and events that are shaping the presidential election.
i’m thinking, i guess, about 9-11, but i feel like i’m thinking about more than that. i feel like i’m reaching further back, and going further forward.
i’ve been, for the last few days, thinking about what i call “american culpability.” that is, how “at fault” is america in the world? our national discourse does not allow this kind of questioning. to ask these sorts of questions still ends up with labels like “unamerican” or “america hating” or “freedom hating” or even more divisive charges of “siding with the terrorists.” thankfully, i’m not part of the national discourse, and i don’t have to speak on those terms.
i heard the question the other day, “what should we have done? if we shouldn’t have gone to afghanistan, what should we have done?” i heard someone answer, “nothing.” i disagree. we should have taken a long look. we should have dropped the pretense of our ridiculous national pride, and asked “why?” in a genuine way. somehow, the terms got all confused. those who controlled the discourse starting talking about “why they hate our freedom” and “why they want to destroy our way of life.” we weren’t allowed to ask what we had done to cause them to “hate our freedom.” we should have, i believe, taken the world seriously. rather than this ridiculous brand of “homeland security” based on fear and paranoia and marginally justifiable wars, we should have engaged in a brand of homeland security that relied on self-sufficiency, that allowed us to remove ourselves from all of the entanglements that breed resentment in so many parts of the world.
our immediate response was to look for heroes and enemies. we needed cowboys and we needed indians. someone needed to shoot the guns, and someone needed to die. rather than engage the radical muslim world as savages who needed to be subdued, our response should have been to engage them as people, and to attempt to understand all of the ways that we had infringed upon their values.
those who control the discourse would have us believe that is impossible. that those people will not stop until the bodies are stacked high the streets of american cities—while we stack the bodies in their cities. when we conduct ourselves without empathy, those who oppose us will respond with the same lack of empathy. too many people would have us believe that is naive.
there must be a solution for american short-sightedness. we must begin to evaluate things based on what they will do to the people of the world, and not simply how they will benefit us. we cannot constantly plunder foreign lands and cultures in order to maintain a lifestyle that is utterly unmaintainable. we must engage in significant reflection on who we are, and how we are treating people in the world.
there must be an alternative to our current brand of existence in the world. we must live in way that it is a defiant superpower that assumes that it can meet any challenge with its might. history has taught us what happens to such arrogance. we simply cannot afford to be so short sighted.
there simply must be another way…