to londoners

First I want to simply say I’m sorry for all of you who have had to live through today’s bombings in london. as preface to this post I also want to apologize if anything I say comes across as callus or offensive in the face of what has happened today. As a new yorker I have experienced what you are experiencing now but I’ve also had 4 years to absorb it and to see not only the immediate effects but the longer ranging ones as well. That is what I want to talk about now.

There has been something I’ve wanted to say for a long while now, and it’s something that does not get said often, at least not in a straight forward way. Our response, as a nation, to the terrorist attacks of 2001 has been the wrong one. Perhaps they were only natural, but in retrospect as I watch our country mutate, it seems obvious they were wrong none the less. We have taken the national tragedy of a single day and stretched its frantic, fearful, and angry emotions over our entire culture ever since. We have let an act of terrorism change the fabric of our every day lives. In short we have handed a greater victory to those who seek to destroy us than the victory they won for themselves with their terrorism.

In our case much of the blame for this result can be laid at the feet of the despicable group of individuals which comprises our own government. It is a government which in the wake of a tragedy cloaked its self-serving aims in the populous’ fear in order to further unrelated aims. It is a government which managed to profit politically from the tragedy and managed to parley that profit into monetary profit for its supporters, in no small degree by creating new tragedies. It is a government which lied to it’s people and which resisted at every turn the efforts to learn the truth. Most importantly though it is a government which has sought to expand its own powers at the expense of the people themselves using the rhetoric of patriotism and national security which our tragedy supplied them.

The reason I say “much of the blame” rather than all of the blame is, of course, because it was we who allowed everything which followed 9/11 to happen. It is we who allowed our own collective good sense to be compromised and let ourselves be exploited because of fear. And Now that fear mongering government is even more deeply entrenched despite not having brought the perpetrators of our national tragedy to justice, preferring instead to invade iraq, push the stilted morality of its base, and use the greater powers granted them in our moment of need to secure their own positions. while to this day no one has been held accountable for the internal lapses in intelligence and security or for the acts themselves.

The omnipresent phrase “post 9/11 world” is a glaring linguistic example of what our choices have yielded. This phrase is a canned rhetorical device brought out by disingenuous officials to help justify anything we as citizens might otherwise balk at. A reminder that we ought to be afraid and that we ought to allow our government to run roughshod over our rights, our constitution, and our better judgement because they are doing so to “protect us.”

In truth there is a “post 9/11 world” only so far as we, the american people, have allowed one to exist. There certainly ought to be post 9/11 institutions- a post 9/11 cia, a post 9/11 fbi, a post 9/11 pentagon, and a post 9/11 executive branch. there ought to be post 9/11 security and post 9/11 intelligence. But as for a post 9/11 world? well had we made the right choices the “post 9/11 world” ought to be very much like the pre-9/11 world as far as the average citizen is concerned.

that

would be proof of a country and a people not willing to yield or bend in the face of extremism, brutality, and terror.

What we have allowed in it’s place is a “world” changed. One which has transformed a national tragedy into a crass political tool. one of secrecy, torture, preemptive strikes, meaningless warning systems, jingoism, a castrated press, and a bitterly divided populous. One which seems to reward liars, fear mongers, war mongers, shit stirrers, and the corporate interest they are beholden to with greater power. All because we were scared and angry.

today the very language which is meant to describe our values, words like free, patriot, terrorist, evil, torture, and democracy, have begun to lose their meaning in the cloud of rhetoric and hypocrisy invoked in the memory of 9/11. meanwhile we inch ever further right, closer to the extremism that fuels those who attack us. all of this because we allowed it to happen in our hours of need.

so londoners, i feel for you. mourn, ask questions, and be angry. demand justice. but try and remember in a battle of ideologies the only way to truly be defeated is to abandon what you believe, to willingly relinquish that which differentiates you from the enemy. be careful. look to america as an example of the pitfalls. these terrorist can not kill us all, but if we abandon our principles and surrender our freedoms out of fear, they do not need to. good luck londoners and our condolences to those of you who have lost someone.