Friends.

I wrote this piece yesterday afternoon, to help myself resolve my feelings about yesterday’s events. Later in the day, I decided it would be worth sharing. This morning I have misgivings. Trying to do a reality check, I asked myself if I really had any idea what I was talking about, and if it really mattered to anyone. Then I checked my email and there was Michael Moore (“Roger & Me”, ”The Big One”, http://www.michaelmoore.com) saying the same thing. So, my confidence restored, here is my take on the situation. Thank you for your attention

Along with the rest of the world I have watched the unfolding tragedy in New York and Washington. I felt the ball of iron form in my stomach and found myself unable to speak, even to utter the word, “horrific”, ”another pearl harbor”, or “tragic loss of life.” I have listened as we all have to the pronouncements, confusion, anguish and pain. I am struggling with the facts- the reality of what happened that it is not another action film but flesh-and-blood event. I’ve tried without much success to imagine what it must have been like to have been a part of that cascade of steel, glass and human beings that spilled onto the streets of New York. And along with all expected thoughts and feelings that we all surely must share, I have felt something else.

I am sad and afraid for Americans not only because we have been dealt a sickening blow, but also because of the upwelling of jingoism that inevitably follows and accident of this kind, I have heard not one work of self-searching, nothing to indicate that Americans have the slightest notion that we ourselves might be partially responsible for this repulsive event. Yet I believe that surely there is a lingering doubt among thoughtful people, something in the back of the mind that might be whispering, ”Wait a minute. Didn’t we secretly expect this to happen?”

With no disrespect to those who have suffered (and to some degree that includes everyone), I would like to speak up for the idea of looking at our own culpability for this latest event in a world that seems to leap the gauzy limits of an inconstant morality on an almost daily basis. As any good therapist with tell you, in order to get better one need to look at oneself rather than blaming others. America is in need of some therapy and while I don’t pretend to be able to offer any help, I would like to simply suggest that everyone climb down off the high horse of outrage and do a little personal soul searching about the part that he or she plays in the devolved condition of the world.

I don’t think it takes a political genius to predict that in the coming weeks and months we’ll be hearing a lot about retaliation, swarthy- skinned monsters, and the need to defend ourselves from future horrors. We are already hearing talk of limitations on personal freedom that is unprecedented since World War II. And government officials, caught flat-footed in one of the worst lapses in intelligence (in both senses of the word) in recent memory., have done their best to project an air of confidence and capability as they predict swift justice for this faceless enemy.

The question on everybody’s lips is,” How do we prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future?” The answers seem to revolve around weapons of technology and beefed up security at any cost to civil liberties, or they reflect a stoic fatalism mixed with outrage at the perpetrators. I believe there’s something missing from this conversation.

The best way we could have avoided this tragedy would to be a people with a history of integrity in our dealings with others. Hard we Americans lived up to our stated ideals of freedom, equality and justice, we would not now be suffering the wrath of so many. It is the understandable wrath of those who are affected by the exploitation that we so nonchalantly practice on the majority of the world’s people. In order to achieve our perpetually retrograde state of unbridled consumption, greed and moral obesity, we have destroyed ecosystems, ways of life, legally-elected governments and individuals by the hundreds of thousands. We are in no moral position to express outrage at any act directed against us, no matter how outrageous it might be.

It has been said that we are now at war, and it’s hard to deny that we must do something to ameliorate what is certainly a very bad situation. Of course, this is the first time in well over a hundred years that serious violence has visited us at home. What is commonplace in most of the world has now come to us and we are shocked. In the past century, we have watched as Europe was destroyed again and again. We have taken part in the leveling of numerous foreign nations. But because we have not experienced this kind of havoc on our own turf, we have gradually developed an attitude that war is something on television, something that, like auto accidents, happen to other people, people who are brown, black, yellow, poor, small, weak, and if not deserving at the least dispensable.

War is something that happens to the producing class, never to the consuming class.

That has been the reaction of our culture to the constant global mayhem that harmlessly comes into our homes via the media each morning and evening. But yesterday it was “people like us” who dies horrible deaths, people in Armani suits and polished shoes. So now America is shocked. Yet, what is the difference between the life of an American businessman and the life of a street urchin in east Timor, for instance? Or a Palestinian, to align the example a little better with the current events? Yet we have habitually looked the way, changed the channel, repressed whatever feelings we may have had for these “others.”

In the years after World War II, beat poet Kenneth Patchen wrote, “There is no war between us, brothers. There is only one war anywhere.” I have always tried to keep that quote in my heart as a talisman working in the service of compassion. I believe I understand what Patchen meant, and I believe there is no better time to consider his words than today when we are at risk of falling into the old-age trap of righteous anger.

We are not at war with others so much as we are at war with ourselves. Ours is a battle between our own dark and good sides. The casualties are the environment, other cultures and nations, and our own well-being. Because we are complicit in the maltreatment of these interests, we have to a greater degree than any of us wish to acknowledge brought this tragedy upon ourselves. By sitting idly by (or protesting weakly) for decades as our government has engaged in one heinous act of imperialism after another, we have helped bring this about. By giving our money to the corporations that now rule the world, we are in league with the very worst forces in the history of humanity. By failing to rein in our consumptive urges and by failing to question our belief that as Americans we are entitled to own at least one of everything that is spit out by the post-industrial economy, we have become the enemy whom we should most fear.

In a statement that is typical of disingenuousness and myopia and world leaders, Great Britain’s Tony Blair said yesterday, “ Mass terrorism is the new evil in the world today.” But mass terrorism is only a symptom of the real evil in the world today – a rapacious global economy that is fed by the patronage of Western  white consumers. It is we who drive the engine of destruction, and the fact that it eventually turns back on us should be no shock to anyone. The grave matter here is not that some vicious Arabs (everyone assumes) have successfully penetrated the integument of American complacency but that the complacency exists in the first place.

Our best defense will be to control our impulses, to live up to our stated ideals as a nation and to work for genuine justice for everyone. Our best defense will be to stop wrecking the world in order in order to have comfort beyond anything anyone else has ever had on this planet. If we do that, maybe in 10 or 20 years some of the anger will burn off and people will stop wanting to crash planes into the symbols of our decadence. That’s how I think we need to handle this.

I do believe that these words will be unwelcome to come. I imagine there will be those who consider them disrespectful, unpatriotic or in sensitive. But I believe they are words that must be said. Americans are in a dream state, anesthetized by worst of all drug problems, affluence. Maybe this event will wake people up, but the probability is that it will instead propel us further into our sickness. That’s the real tragedy.

As always, I’m happy to hear your thoughts.

Owen