"Don't feel like Satan but I am to them. So I try to forget it any way I can."
~ Neil Young
Most of us recognize that we fall short. If we are honest, we acknowledge that others might have legitimate grievances with us. For a man to dislike me and perhaps even wish me ill it is not necessary for him to be evil or stupid or misinformed. All that is necessary is for him to see not my aspirations or my efforts to fulfill them but the dark chasm that divides the two. Being able to see yourself as others see you is a blessing, however difficult and distasteful the sight might be.
But as Americans, we seem not to recognize this same gap between aspiration and actuality in our national behavior.
The reasons we ignore it are many. Not least among them is the fact that our rulers and their media lapdogs misdirect and misinform us for the very purpose of keeping us ignorant. They like their power and their privilege. They like us fat, dumb and happy. Those sins are theirs to answer for but their sins do not excuse ours.
A man is not excused for the evil he does because those around him tell him what a great guy he is. It is up to each of us to discover and act on what is right. And the fact that our politicians, media, and power brokers tell us that America is nothing but wonderful and that is why some other people hate us does not mean that we are excused if we fail to find and acknowledge the truth for ourselves. This is not a call to self-loathing but to truth. And the truth, and the truth alone, will keep us free.
When another country is struck by disaster – earthquake, hurricane, flood – America and Americans are the first to help. We are also the first to rain bombs down on other nations. We did it in Serbia. We continue to do so in Iraq nearly every day. If the people of the nation in question do not do as we wish – dump Saddam, give their homeland to the KLA, whatever we want that day – we drop more bombs. Our bombs kill innocents, women and children. They destroy churches and marketplaces and pharmaceutical factories. This is also a true thing about us.
We say that the people who have perpetrated Tuesday's terrorist attacks on us are different from us. We say that they do not place the same value on human life as we do. Is that true? Do Islamic fundamentalists kill a million and a half of their unborn babies each year? I don't know if they do or not, but it seems like a reasonable question. I know that we do. It is one more true thing about us.
We rebuilt Europe, enemy and ally alike, and Japan after World War II. Americans fed, housed, and doctored most of a continent. We asked for nothing in return, which is exactly what we got. Americans can't even get a kind word from many of the people we put back on their feet let alone a few bucks worth of the interest on the loan. But we would do it for them again. Even the French. Another true thing about who we are.
Today we enforce economic sanctions in Iraq and Cuba that inflict extreme hardship on the people of those nations. That hardship includes denying food and medical care to women and children. People die because of our sanctions. We do it because our government does not like their leaders. Does not like their systems of government. The Iraqi embargo is as much a true thing about America as the Marshall Plan.
For how long can we continue to reconcile these two sets of truths about America?
Will the politicians, the military-industrial complex and their media flunkies suddenly see the light and begin to act toward other nations as the people of America act toward the people of other nations? Or will we inexorably slide down the slippery slope into the pit of our shortcomings?
In the coming time, America will attempt to exact justice for the evil that has been done. Not from more innocents, we all hope. In my view, that action is both necessary and appropriate.
In the coming time we will hear calls from the usual suspects asking us to give up freedom in return for security. They have already begun. We must resist. We have already given up too much freedom and security remains an illusion. The only way to be safe is to never feel secure. We cannot protect ourselves by becoming someone else. We must become more American, not less.
In the coming time, we will grieve for the dead. We will build monuments to those we have lost. This also is necessary and appropriate. We need to mourn loss. Heroism and innocence should be honored. But if that is all we do, all of it will come to nothing or worse.
As a people, we must look at ourselves and see the dark of the chasm of our own failures while never forgetting the light of our aspirations and our efforts and our successes. The American nation frequently fails to behave as the American people would behave at their best. This can no longer go unnoticed, un-remarked, unchallenged. Americans must remake our government into something more like ourselves. Something more truly American.
Americans are live-and-let-live people. America is no longer a live-and-let-live country because our government and its acolytes want to rule the world. I, for one, do not do not believe Americans want to rule the world. Do you? Certainly, the world does not want to be ruled by America. Would you? Americans must learn to see ourselves as others see us and to treat the people of the rest of the world as we would have them treat us.
If this great tragedy can awaken us from our bipolar dream state so that we acknowledge the difference between who we are becoming and who we want to be, we might yet create the best possible memorial to our dead. We might yet bring a halt to the American Empire that bombs and starves our neighbors. We might yet rekindle the American Republic that lives in peace with its neighbors.
September 15, 2001
