Stoopid Stuff

Ok, I quit. The Terrorists have Clearly Won

What does it take to paralyze a modern American city? To shut down its roads, its public transportation, it's business? What would a terror cell require to cause so much consternation, disruption, so much terror? Would it be explosives? Nerve gas? A "dirty bomb"? Hijacked airliners, poisoned water supplies and maybe even nukes?

Nope. As it turns out, you just need a few Lite-Brite knockoffs and a couple kids to distribute them. Just another little marketing campaign, and the great city of Boston wets it's collective pants. Nobody had to bring terror to Boston, they were more than happy to create it out of whole cloth.

How did we get here?

They say 9/11 changed everything. Perhaps it did. The intention of the planners of the terrorist attacks was to terrorize America. And if, over five years later, a major American city is shut down for hours because of a marketing campaign for a cartoon, then it's time to turn mother's picture to the wall, get out the white flag and surrender. Because we clearly are not about fighting terror, we are about being victims again and again.

Then there is the unbridled joy and excitement of the right wing every time they even THINK there might be another attack on American soil. Why do they get so excited? Could it be that they know that our response will be more killing, more destruction and more movement toward the world clash between the west and Muslims? Let's take a serious look at where we are today. The American people are getting harder to terrorize. They take less seriously the fear mongering of the republican politicians and their pundit-class water carriers. On the other hand, the law enforcement and "Homeland Security" responders have lost any ability to discern the reality of a terrorist attack as opposed to day to day real life with it's little surprises. At the same time, the warmongering right has been so thoroughly discredited that they are actually hoping for another devestating attack on American soil so popular sentiment turns once again to military action.

This is a crazy situation. We cringe and cower in fear, reacting to the most banal examples of daily urban life. We cannot fly without jumping through hoops. We waste huge amounts of our treasure trying to harden our nation against small unit assymetrical assaults that cannot be defended. We have lost. We are effectively terrorized, and some part of our population is hoping for more. After Iraq, Afghanistan, all the hearings and government reorgs, we lost on that September day, and we're still losing. Those 19 guys who flew those planes into those buildings are still the winners. And until we find the courage to shake off that awful day and learn to live in a twentyfirst century world that includes, along with cancer, traffic, global warming and poverty a risk of terror attacks, we will always be the losers...

posted by mikey @ 1:50 PM