Goddamn |
[13 Sep 2001|03:21am] |
I'm in a room at the moment ruled by the sounds of punk and metal. A musical style that has always epitomized the era of looming nuclear holocaust. A period of free floating fear that most of us grew up in. After spending the last 36 hours watching these horrific events unfold, after watching National Guard F-15s and Police helicopters dominate the air I finally understand this fear. The indefinable fear in this land subsided in the last ten years, but it is back. Those of my generation spent the first 15 to 20 years of their lives growing up in a cloud of fear, at least then we could quantify it. (If you live here, you're safe; if you live near this, you're in danger; if you live near this, you're dead) Our nation, and most of the world has become accustomed to the absence of that fear. No one wants it back. We have lived for a decade with the most basic of human rights intact. The right to live your life in the knowledge that you won't be catastrophically dismembered for no reason. No, this is even worse than the 80's in which we came of age, in the 80's there was an adversary. This adversary was just as fearful of the impending Armagedon as we were. Now though, now metal makes sense to me and punk is understated. The threat of death has been thrust upon the world even though the U.S. was it's target. Of the 50,000 potential victims at the World Trade Center who was represented there? Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Mormons, Atheists; Americans, British, Canadians, Mexicans, Israelis, Palestinians, Russians, French, Croats, Serbs, Vietnamese, Japanese, Chinese, Indians, and probably even Afghanis. Everyone will be represented in this horror. The children of the world were punished yesterday for just going to work. The right of every human being to earn a peaceable, constructive living was threatened. The choice of the World Trade Center by these people is (in hindsight) an obvious and powerful symbolic choice. It represents all that the extremists of the world despise... Large corporate intrusion and exploitation, extreme capitalism, intrusive American Foreign Policy. Many things which are abhorrent even to the population of the U.S., but no matter what the government's crimes, the corporate world's crimes, or the idealogical differences; no one has the right to deprive tens of thousands of human beings of their right to exist, their right to peaceably earn a living, or their right to live without the free floating cloud of despair and fear that has settled across our globe. We are angry, we are furious, we are not just Americans, but we are every people that upholds the right to live without fear. We are the world which has bypassed the nuclear destruction which was imminent until 1990. We are every man, woman, and child that is lucky enough to live in the free world, we are also those whole live within totalitarian regimes who dream of living in freedom. We are the world of the hopeful, peaceful majority. Everyone on this earth deserves this same freedom. We who live in or dream of this freedom must oppose "the terrorist" We must oppose all who are zealous enough to deprive any group of people the right to live a life free of fear. On this we can be unified. We must oppose the Bin-ladens, the IRAs, the UDAs, the Hamas', the Hezbollahs, and all others who seek to deprive the human soul of freedom, today and tomorrow. No hate can justify this act or any other act of mass slaughter. No oppressed people, no fanatical people can entitle themselves to these acts of zealotry. This violation of American soil has galvanized the world. It is shameful that it took this act of magnificent barbarism to move us. For so long we as a culture have allowed terrorism to propagate. For too long we have stood idly by while thousands of others have suffered. I am ashamed. These tens of thousands of people have died, have been sacrificed to rouse the world to action. For years innumerable people have been murdered throughout the world. In Somalia, Burundi, Israel, Palestine, Ireland, Afghanistan we have sat by while fringe groups of extremists have punished thousands upon thousands of human beings, if not for being born a certain way, than just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
To those of you whose minds allow you to justify or rationalize this, for those of you who say our freedom is built upon the suffering of others, for those of you who say we may have deserved this. Remember this, those that died; those that were crushed, those that were blown to unidentifiable bits, those that were sliced in half by flying glass, those that jumped or fell out of 90 story windows, all that they were guilty of was showing up on time. Or those men and women of the NYPD or FDNY, killed for trying to help. This has been going on throughout the world for far too long. No matter what our crimes as a nation, no matter the anger or oppression of these groups, no one is justified in committing mass murder on this or any other scale.
To take this beyond the points at hand: Nationalism, and oppression. Nationalism... this is no more than wide spread zealotry or fanaticism. Guard yourself against this. Zealotry of any kind leads to evil. Fascism, Racism, Jihad, Nazism, Nationalism. These are all forms of Zealotry, these are the things that lead an individual or group to put their interests above the most basic right of humanity. The right to lead a peaceful existence. Zealotry is always evil. Zealotry that spawns nationalism, fascism, racism, or holy war is evil. Any Holy War is evil. Zealotry allows you to dismiss the basic rights of thousands, it allows you to kill for your beliefs. This isn't just about nationalism. This is about the right of any person in any city in any country to pick rice, or process tax returns, or sell bread without the fear of being blown up for no good reason. Its about the right to live a life free of fear.
Oppression. Yes the United States is guilty of evil. Yes the people of the United States are party to this. Some say that "there are people in the world that hate Americans enough to do something like this. They hate us as Americans. It is not a mystery to me. The freedoms and liberties that we tout so much were purchased on the backs of slaves on the lands of Native peoples for whom the word 'America' is a synonym for 'cruel and inhuman'." Yes we have committed atrocities, no one is denying that, and to do so is idiotic. But these atrocities are not the point. I would go so far as to say that our freedoms and liberties have developed in inverse proportion to these atrocities. The less we have exploited the world, the less we have judged by skin or belief, the less we have injudiciously killed; the more we have grown in freedom, and justice. The more we have supported struggling democracies, the more we have opposed fascism, fanaticism, oppression or exploitation; the more we have grown. The worst mistakes we have made in the past fifty years have been isolating ourselves. At the end of the second World War we involved ourselves, and despite the horrible actions we undertook in that war we were, and are still followed. Those who were our worst enemies are now some of our best friends. More recently we have committed atrocities with no follow up support; Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, everywhere we have involved ourselves we have withdrawn and left power vacuums afterward. We have created enemies. We can no longer do this. We must increase our role in the world. Being "Policeman" is not enough, it never has been. No one appreciates the police, unless they're saving lives. We, as a nation, must redefine our role. We must guarantee the right of every man, woman and child on this planet to live a life free of terror. We as a world must work to guarantee a life free of fear.
|
|