On the Shock Heard Round the World--9/11/2001

Note: I wrote this a few days after 9/11 in shock. It was first published in my monthly newsletter Words, UnLtd.

How much of our existence is built on a social contract of mutual trust? I mentioned the integrity of locksmiths, for instance, who could spend all their time breaking into homes instead of securing them. We must assume the trust is basically intact, despite the debacle in lower Manhattan, in that all the other skyscrapers in this country are still standing. Not to belittle the event, that apparition of Satan on earth - 18 people who call us Satanic and deserving of what occurred and worse - but to marvel that most of the time peace prevails in most places despite all the differences that so alienate us.

Mail was delivered the day of the triple holocaust. I marveled at that. People are out on the streets in droves, whirling about like colored tops as if to defy terrorism. I look about me and breathe in this elevated consciousness and pray that what I am seeing is no danse macabre but rather a danse vivant. All those children deserve life and they will live it, I thought, drawing strength from their radiance and laughter. They will live and reproduce themselves.

I groped for imagery, words, to console the events of Tuesday, blindly faithful that language is our greatest weapon, the ultimate Apollo to balance and neutralize the Dionysiac madness that overstepped its bounds last Tuesday. Sitting among congregants praying, I contrasted the scene I imagined in lower Manhattan: darkness in the wake of thunderstorms that soaked through stories of rubble and corpses in a place that last Monday was as teaming with life as is our defiance now. They hit ordinary people, not the moguls they profess to hate who are vilifying the sacred earth. Ordinary, hardworking parents conscientious to have come to work before 9, most of them commuters who had been awake hours already building their modest kingdoms and dreams. The moguls are elsewhere, as well hidden as bin Laden. What has terrorism accomplished? Was the World Trade Center the Tower of Babel? Is there not wealth enough in the Middle East, in the hands of a few, to buy and sell the World Trade Center many times over?

Idle musings perhaps, but if this war goes the way it should, the moderates will have to deliver up the extremists and cease their two-faced allegiances, difficult as that may be, conveniently as ambivalence serves us all: only when it becomes lethal do we have to put it aside and make choices. The extremists must realize that the wealth they are seeking is right where they are and not here and their own rulers are as guilty, at least, as those Satans they impute in our midst. Where is the locus of Armageddon anyway? Is it nothing more than that battle I've already written of, against that enemy within that Apocalypse Now elicited so brilliantly and dramatically?

If anyone were to ask me what to do, I'd say find the scenario of last Tuesday in a science fiction book and find others and learn from the authors every way we can; they can become our strategists, along with well-schooled experts in terrorism like the Israelis. But just as terrorism became the battle form of the late twentieth century, hard on the heals of guerilla warfare, our biggest challenge is to rise again to new levels. War tragedy occurs anytime anyone dies, especially heroically, as did those police and firefighters last Tuesday, and especially when innocent civilians are victimized. The imagery came to me today, reminiscent of Deucalion and Pyrrha being told to cast their mother behind them to recreate the human race, that we should be fighting fire with earth and water rather than fire. What that means exactly I'm not sure, but another classical scenario also surfaced: the scene early in the Iliad when Greeks and Trojans agree to determine the outcome of their dispute by appointing the two actual disputants, Menelaus and Paris, to fight it out. Why can't wars be fought by those who decree them? Let Bush come head to head with bin Laden and as soon as Bush buries his head in the ground at that prospect, let the president we really elected fight that war. He will win. Because, believe it or not, his opponent will be worthy of him, as heinous as that sounds. The problem with campaign 2000 was a ridiculous mismatch. Here at least is experience and intelligence and ingenuity and strength and commitment to something. Here at least are two leaders of two large groups of idealists, or idealogues, not that I am at all praising bin Laden. It's just that wars concern those who decide they are necessary.

If we decide to evolve to new levels of warfare, they should not involve technology or mass destruction. Let World War III be fought with language, mightier than the sword. Over those ruins in Manhattan and Washington, we must honor those innocent people and their dreams of peaceful lives. They would want their children to grow up in peace. If terrorists are justifying their existence through violence, it must mean that life holds little allure for them. That must change. It is not that they don't value life - but rather that there is probably little in their lives of value. Others are prospering while they are not. Am I simplistic or naïve?

My only other thought is that last Tuesday there was a press conference scheduled in Washington, D.C. by leaders of 27,000 organized Democrats reporting on the huge progress of their massive grassroots campaign since election 2000. The mainstream press had begun to concede news, facts that were submerged since last year. Not only did the Democratic party win the presidency last year, but the majority of the population is still angry and unsettled about this. Mainstream polls have confirmed this. I am no political insider but I pictured someone offering Bush the choice between impeachment and war recently. I envisioned Bush choosing war and decreeing all that tragedy. I hope I am wrong. But I can't help noticing how this holocaust has rallied the world behind him - our allies - whom he had so alienated with his indifferent foreign policy in the months since he took office. If this scenario is at all valid (again, I hope that it is not), history has a way of unveiling the truth. But a pattern was already apparent to me: the American people had been viciously betrayed last December. It could have happened again.

Next Page  1  |  2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).