After ten years of grief and angst, the American public feels vindicated.
The big bad, the evil one, the devil incarnate has been made to pay the price for fucking the world’s saviors, the country that rights the wrongs globally of evildoers.
On the unassuming Sunday that this news was delivered while also interfering with Desperate Housewives, I was getting ready to have a proper romp with my gorgeous man. When the news broke, it slowed us down for an hour or so then we felt compelled to the call of the wild.
I can say that seeing the joy, the celebratory smiles and chants of America being number one both frightened and intrigued me.
It made me want to be very close and safe with someone.
There were a ton of interviews from people who had lost loved ones who were thrilled that Osama had not only been found but also eliminated. What frightened me was that I could not recognize any difference between the alleged glee that murder and domination provides as exhibited by the smiles and dancing of the people in the Middle East and the smiles and seductive mob like mentality that was exhibited here in the U.S.
I remember asking aloud and internally, “what is any different?” Didn’t we get highly disturbed when people overseas found joy in our misery ? I don’t find cause for celebration when anyone is murdered.
I watched this story unfold and thought what about the people who were killed in the attack?
The people who mourned them will still not have them back and possibly this will do nothing but bring back those old feelings. While there was much jubilation in regards to the death of Osama, there was no plan for psychological and or emotional support for folks who might be simply reliving and subsequently rehearsing all of the pain and disbelief that began a decade ago.
It almost seemed as if the option was join in the blood lust and the Cartesian world view of the us vs. them mentality or be considered unamerican.
I am sure there will be those who choose to label me unamearican.
I will take that on.
I feel a better use of our time and money would have been both incarceration of the man we felt was responsible for the destruction that was 911 and an in depth observation into not only why we (Americans) are seemingly hated world wide but the causes of this most deadly and unrelenting sentiment.
We are being duped into believing that the game is now over, all the evil has been handled, the boogey man is no more and we can rest easy.
We are being duped into thinking that the elimination of one person will stop a counterattack and singlehandedly alter our place as a world power and give other evil doers a message: Don’t fuck with us.
Like the brilliant BBC series the Power of Nightmares we have moved from looking to our collective daddy (government= elected officials) to accomplish our dreams to running to him to eliminate our nightmares.
While I felt incredibly unsafe living in NYC at the time of the 911 attacks, I knew that this was only the beginning.
I also knew that it was a time to increase our love for one another as well as our compassion for people of color worldwide and here in our great country. When something horrendous happens, it is natural to want to strike back and yet the feeling of relief and vindication is hollow and short lived.
The relief only reminds us that it is only a matter of time before the next catastrophe unleashes itself and we have to deal with it all over again.
We as a global community were all affected by the 911 attacks.
Personally, I want to address Americans and what we did and what we could have done. While the attack was vicious, vile and just plain scary, we could have chosen to meet all this hateful response to America by collectively grieving and demanding some serious social change.
We could have chosen to look at our foreign policy and examined wholeheartedly our approach and the way we are viewed worldwide.
We should have demanded the insanity that was spending billions of dollars on capturing our foe be utilized to set up grieving and compassion vigils/camps.
This is not a time to create and obsessively focus on getting revenge.
Instead this was a call to change the way we have done things for hundreds of years. In other words, our commitment to global and local imperialism and domination was given a mighty blow and the vivid proof that it is unproductive, divisive and plain does not work.
Instead, we opted to return hate with hate, ignorance with more of the same and then trot out our muslim/arab brothers and sisters and make them responsible for all of our fears.
We have got to do better.
As I mentioned earlier, much of what is being played out can be seen in the wonderful series Power of Nightmares.
To provide clarity and the understanding of what gets created and by whom, the term precautionary principle was shared.
This term simply means that in an effort to justify ridiculous action tomorrow we have to imagine the very worst today. With a heavy dose of gloom and doom, the populus can then be lulled into a opiate laden fear induced fury.
The precautionary principle is not based on any type of proof instead it relies on fears that get created then sold to us and then the almighty gets to swoop in and save us and we can rest easy.
The danger in this thinking is that there is no thinking going on.
Within this film it was pointed out that the person with the most vivid imagination and the most harrowing tale of what might occur gets all the attention and is proclaimed the one who will save the day. By far the most frightening part of this policy is that it is not open to change and reinterpretation.
Wonderful policies that refuse to alter and rethink their effectiveness soon become not so wonderful.
Policies, like all good scientific theories are only true until they are not.
Upon discovering gravity it would have been crazy to say it doesn’t exist.