It's coming up on the anniversary of 9/11 again. I was just thinking this morning that I don't have a passport yet, so I can't visit the USA until I get one. Before 9/11, there was no need for me to have a passport to visit the USA. That is one of the effects of 9/11 that will stay with us.I am reluctant to get going on topics like this, but I do like to exercise freedom of speech, and the worst that could happen (I hope) is that Google Blogger suspends my account. So here goes.
Republicans are fond of saying that they kept America safe from another attack. But it is not another attack that they should be worrying about. They should be concerned about the potential breakup of the nation and civil war. The actual 9/11 attack, although it killed over 3,000 people, is really a drop in the bucket for a nation that, since 9/11 has had 320,000 people die in traffic accidents. Another attack even on the scale of 9/11 could be shrugged off, but not a civil war.
The real damage since 9/11 has been to raise the general level of paranoia in the United States, and along with it, a resurgence of racism, as racism is based on paranoia.
I'm pretty sure I'm not giving away any secrets here about America's greatest weakness, which is racism. For the most part, America is a great country, but with an unfortunate history of racism that has caused a civil war, and has not been properly healed, even today. Racism occurs in all countries, and if it was confined to certain isolated groups it would not pose a threat to a country as strong as the USA. It is only when the poison gets into the life blood of the country that it becomes a threat the continuing existence of that country.
In Germany, Hitler rode the dragon of racism in his drive to dictatorship. Today the Germans have learned the lesson. They try to keep it in check, and mostly are succeeding, I hope. In America also there is a desire to keep it in check. Wherever possible, the Republicans place Afro Americans in visible positions within the party. Evangelicals and Southern Baptists have renounced slavery and racism. Fox News does not allow any commentators to make racist comments on the air. And even Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity never mention it unless it is to say that coloured people are the ones who are actually racist, and the whites are oppressed.
But at least one national television station, a radio network, and several Christian religions are squarely against Obama, and spread anti-Obama propaganda 24/7, saying he is a tyrant, a baby killer, a socialist, and a traitor trying to destroy America. Religious "celebrities" claim he is the Anti-Christ. Maybe this is politics as usual, maybe it is the beginning of the end.
If I am wrong and Obama is actually trying to destroy the USA, then I would agree with Fox, Rush, and Hannity, and the birthers and the gun carriers, and the pro-lifers and the Secessionists. But I would not like to see a great nation like the USA brought down like a house of cards over this issue, whether they are right or wrong.
In my opinion, it is far more likely that the extremist hatred of Obama and liberals is all the result of paranoia, that was ignited first by 9/11 and since then has been burning out of control, fuelled by a lot of leftover racism from the civil war days, and the civil rights movement of the sixties. If it does not stop soon, the entire supporting structure that keeps America great is going to soften and buckle, and the USA itself may unexpectedly go down like the towers themselves, just a delayed reaction to 9/11. And that would be a really sad day.
Racism and xenophobia have a deep-seated biological basis which goes back to early human evolution, where survival quite often depended on distrust of the outsider.
ReplyDeleteThat said, 9/11 was the day that liberty in the USA died. The political response (with societal support) was ill-considered and inappropriate. The response was tantamount to revoking from Americans a number of their fundamental freedoms (detention without due process, the Patriot Act, &c.) and inflicting on them those pointless, protracted and unwinnable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I can't recall the British commentator who wrote that, 'Yes, it's very sad about the World Trade Center. But if we British during the Blitz had carried on like the Americans after 9/11, Hitler would have won that war.'
Surely it's past time to wind down all this unproductive emotional and knee-jerk stuff on 9/11 and introduce some perspective.
It's long-standing American interventionism, basically motivated by energy greed, that was the real source of the 9/11 attacks. The War on Terror is a chimera, a sinkhole for tax dollars in support of the military/police/weapons lobbies.
Until meaningful steps are taken to do something about America's long, sad, macho and selfish history of foreign policy, the 9/11 will amount just another pathetic footnote to American history.
How refreshing to read a reasonable view from a fellow motorcyclist. Keep it up!
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