Mobs of ecstatic weeping cheering flag-waving Americans are appearing spontaneously in front of the White House and at the World Trade Center site and who knows where else.… I am hearing people say that a chapter has ended for the American people, a whole generation is turning a page, that America is united in celebration….
I have to tell you, I cannot even begin to grasp how people could be declaring, as they are doing, one after another, that the death of bin Laden is the most important moment in the Obama Administration. Even granting the obvious symbolic momentousness of all this, freighting as it does the eighth anniversary of Bush's declaration of "Mission Accomplished" and so on and so forth, I have to say I personally think that there have been at least dozens of legislative victories and defeats that seem to me incomparably more significant, in terms of the effects that will be felt in the lives of millions and millions of people….
Pundits are proposing that it is now possible as it hasn't been before to leave Afghanistan and Iraq in earnest, and if that is true of course that is all to the good. And if long-suffering people can truly begin to heal the wounds opened in and by our recent painful history of terror, war, and occupation, then of course again I am happy that is true.
I am hopeful that the mourning to which Obama referred in his brief speech tonight may begin to do its long-deferred healing work, re-opening Americans in our shared vulnerability as human beings to connection with the fellow-sufferers among Americans of all parties and persuasions and among those denounced for so long as nothing but enemies as well....
But I cannot claim to understand why this is the night for such possibilities, why this is the event that renews this hopefulness, why this is the Presidential announcement that would unlock these possibilities, why this killing, however justified it might be, would unleash these howling ferocious unifying celebratory energies….
There are times when I am proud of the effort I have taken to understand what is happening in the world and the understanding that effort has rewarded me with, but on a night like this I have to admit I don't think I understand anything at all, I don't understand my fellow citizens at all, I don't understand what is going on in people's heads.
9/11 was terrible, but so was America's reaction to it, and I feel it again tonight, whatever the manifold complexities in play, there is something truly terrible in this night, and I for one feel nothing so much as confusion and fear….
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6 comments:
> There are times when I am proud of the effort I have
> taken to understand what is happening in the world and
> the understanding that effort has rewarded me with, but
> on a night like this I have to admit I don't think
> I understand anything at all, I don't understand my
> fellow citizens at all, I don't understand what is going
> on in people's heads.
There's a difference between "understand" and (as Orwell
put it in his invented Newspeak) "bellyfeel".
I don't "bellyfeel" my fellow citizens either; this is obvious
to me every time I walk into the pizza parlor across the street
and see people glued to a baseball game on the HDTV on
the wall.
But don't kid yourself that just because you (and I) can't
"bellyfeel" things (most) other people do that that means
those others are (necessarily) crazy, or wicked, or "irrational".
They may be misguided, and I often think they are, but I
can't be sure of that either -- emotion is, they're saying
now, an essential component of cognition, and if my
emotional range is blunted or different from the norm,
that **may** mean my cognition is "defective", in some
evolutionary sense, as well.
So, like autists, you and I have to work out the things
we can't "bellyfeel" for ourselves the way folks on the
spectrum have to work out how to interact with other people
without offending them or getting thrown out of the
restaurant or off the plane, or getting arrested.
For us, that will have to suffice for "understanding".
And, like autists, we have to restrain ourselves from having
meltdowns when other people don't react or behave the
way we think they should, or the way we would.
There are plenty of things I can, er, "bellyfeel" -- I was just taken aback by the bloodlust frat-party atmosphere that seemed to erupt among so many young people in college campuses and in cities across the country on hearing the news. I teach kids of this generation, I have taken a measure of real hope and pleasure (some of it bellyfelt or at any rate heartfelt) from the work they did on the Obama campaign, for their love of the show Glee, for their effortless embrace of diversity (easily the thing I like best about my country). Hearing them last night roaring USA! USA! because we've thrown trillions of dollars and killed hundreds of thousands of people to slaughter the latest "personification of evil" (granted, sure, he was evil, but dag, the personification of evil?), I don't know, I just suddenly felt I didn't understand what was making people tick at some deep discomfiting level. I found last night's display disturbing, disproportionate, and, frankly, unseemly. I still do. If it means we can declare victory and end the wars and get our Constitution back, though, fine, I don't need to understand it, I'll take it.
> I found last night's display disturbing, disproportionate,
> and, frankly, unseemly.
To say nothing of this morning's headlines. All the papers
had it on the front page, of course, but only the
New York Post would brandish the headline "ROT IN HELL".
CNN was still flogging it at lunchtime. There was a press
conference with a White House guy and a military guy.
There was one reporter who was trying to get the military
guy, who had previously mentioned that a woman believed
to be bin Laden's wife had been trying to shield him when
he was killed, to say that bin Laden or his people had
been "using" her as a shield. The military guy refused
to be a party to this guy's spin -- he said he wasn't
there and didn't know anything about anybody's motivations.
> I was just taken aback by the bloodlust frat-party
> atmosphere. . .
Well, as your metaphor suggests, it's probably at least
partly a testosterone thing, same as cheering for a sports
team on TV (sports is a surrogate for war, is it not?)
Quote for the win: ""But I just can’t find it in me to be glad one more person is dead, even if it is Osama bin Laden.”-Harry Waizer, World Trade Center survivor.
Violence really only begets more violence, especially given how many innocent people were harmed pursuing a man whose death only makes his organization more powerful as a younger, more potent figurehead is chosen in his place. People act like we killed Hitler, like a single act ends anything at all. All killing Osama did is make people hate us more. And what act of unreserved and cold-blooded vengeance ever deserves rejoicing celebration?
At moments like this, I realize that there's a certain kind of self-serving and bloodthirsty (or maybe just sinfully ignorant) patriotism that I'm proud not to understand. Why and how can so many people conclude that this is cause for celebration, that this action is a win at all?
Honestly, I think people are just behaving as they think they should for appearances sake. I don't think all this over-the-top celebration over death is genuine.
I take a “real measure of hope and pleasure” in these things too (except for Glee, can we still be friends?).
I worry sometimes that for kids of the generation some of the big consequences of under-regulated capitalism—starving public institutions, extreme inequality, those are the ones that come to mind—are just the facts of life. This concern, I suppose, comes from being of this generation and seeing things more or less this way until I took an active interest in economics and politics.
But witnessing so many young people get involved in the Obama campaign does give me some real hope. Even more encouraging in my mind is that so many young people voted—and voted overwhelmingly for Obama—in the 2008 election. I just hope his popularity with that demographic had something to do with his policy aims and wasn’t all due to savvy marketing.
I’d like to think that, piecemeal as they may be, this administration’s reforms to the financial and healthcare systems will help people my age to see that social democracy is possible and that it would make for vastly more decent lives for vast majorities.
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