We're all going to die one day. Most of us don't know when, most of us don't know how, and most of us probably hope for a comfy death in our sleep after a long, full life. Yet Republicans would have you believe that around every corner is a cartoon villain with a bomb.
For eight years the Republicans have kept this nation in a state of fear that we ought to be ashamed of. Immediately after 9/11, it was understandable to be afraid, to be shocked, to be worried---and to grieve. Part of the extent of those reactions, however, springs from our unique condition and the fact that we're extraordinarily lucky. Americans enjoy a safety from terrorism (Muslim terrorism, that is, which Republicans will tell you is the only kind that exists) that other countries envy. Of course, there's a side to this story that they don't want you to see. Even while we need not fear IEDs or VBIEDs or suicide bombers, the Republicans point desperately to various boogymen and urge us to be afraid. It's a great smokescreen, but why does it work?
Speaking conservatively and from 2008 onward only, there's been a significant number of 'isolated incidents' where angry conservative white guys have loaded themselves with guns, gone to work or in at least one case to a church, flew a plane into a building, or gone to a supermarket, and attacked unarmed people. A partial list is here, but it is by no means complete. Remember, many more incidents are not publicized extensively. You'd think, for example, that a white supremacist with nuclear material in his basement would be a big story, yet how many people saw that on the news, on anywhere but on liberal sites? In the Pacific Northwest, an attempt by a Muslim to bomb a Christmas Tree parade received a lot of attention, yet the plot was under FBI supervision pretty much the whole time, which if you look at a lot of these alleged plots by alleged Muslim terrorists is pretty typical.
Since 9/11 there have been (PDF, and a hefty one as well.) 137 terrorist acts or plots by Muslim Americans. Nearly forty percent were turned in other Muslims.By contrast, white supremacist bombers like Eric Robert Rudolph evaded capture for years, because locals helped him. The anti-abortion community has manuals, safe houses, detailed plans for stalking, harassment, and lists of doctors they want to murder. Meanwhile, as Muslim-Americans celebrated Osama bin Laden's death in Dearborn Michigan, many Americans conveniently forgot or never knew that many Muslim- and Arab- and Persian- and Middle Eastern- Americans were fleeing from people like Osama bin Laden, and Muslims had been killed in far greater numbers than Americans were. Once they arrived here, they are subjected to bigotry and....terrorism. Mosques have been burned, attacked, and desecrated, sometimes while the faithful pray there.
Of course, there have been wonderful acts of brother- and sister-hood from Americans, offering their places of worship to Muslims temporarily displaced. But I think that's just what decent people ought to do.
When I came back from Iraq I marveled at the safety of my new environment. No bombs! No gunfire! No IEDs! No VBIEDs! And after spending the last two weeks of my tour in an aircraft hanger with a hundred women, one electric outlet, and a lot of precariously placed extension cords, I was absolutely floored to find myself the proud owner of an electric outlet all for myself. When I found another one, and another one, and another one, I started to get kind of embarrassed at all the excess. Why, one could plug in more than one electrical appliance at once! It took me days to fully grasp such mad luxury. It was like being at the Hilton. Hell, after Iraq, it was like being a Hilton, as if I'd switched places with one of the notorious Hilton sisters. Americans don't stop to appreciate what we have, and learn some humility. And Republicans play on this. "See that guy?" Republicans slyly say. "He's going to take your rights, your house, your daughter, your wife, and he's going to give it to.....:" fill in the villain du jour. The Republicans are very good at that. What they're even better at, though, is the next level up: a vague sense of unease, of fear, of impending doom. (Yet the doom seems most likely to come from the Repubs themselves.)
Yet I'm not just speaking as a soldier, come home from the war. I'm speaking as somebody who's spoken to people who tried to kill Americans, and tried to figure out why---when there's so little of that sort of terrorism here----we live in terror.
Of course, terror serves some political purposes. Terrified people are eager to not be afraid any longer, to feel safe. If you tell them you have the solution, they're eager to believe you, especially if the solution is one that threatens the rights of those other people....but not certain groups, like your group. The Repubs love to label somebody as the enemy, somebody who's different in some way, and blame them for whatever malaise afflicts America. The current situation in America, economically speaking, is dire: unemployment is high, Republicans are busting unions right and left, and instead of creating jobs, they're determined to end abortion rights and make sure that women create babies they can't feed or care for. Logically speaking, they need to wave terrorism in our faces to distract us from the way they're eagerly sucking up to as many millionaires and billionaires as they can.
The fact that they're using 9/11 as the bloody shirt to wave is foul. Those Americans or people who just worked there were innocent victims, who died horrible deaths. Yet Repubs used 9/11 for the things that placed us in the precarious position we're in now: two wars, the economic collapse---which they ignore happened on Bush's watch---and the gutting of the Constitution. They might just as well piss on those graves.
While doing some research on domestic violence, I came across the story of a battered wife whose husband beat her only once, when as a nearly-married couple they visited his parents and he took offense to something she did. He said nothing till they left the house, but then he proceeded to beat her into a pulp on the sidewalk in front of his parents' home, in front of neighbors, right there in public. No one did anything. That in itself sent a message. Once he was done beating her, he took her home while she was in shock. For years afterward, till she worked up the courage to leave him----which is when most battered women are murdered---he did not hit her again. He said only, "Remember Christmas." The Republicans are a lot like that guy. "Remember 9/11," they say. They keep the shock alive. And they keep the standard of behavior, of scruples so low that when they are somewhat less appalling than they usually are, it seems like a compromise. (Observe their habit of introducing horrible bills, especially on abortion, which have no chance of passing, which they then withdraw and introduce a slightly less horrifying bill, which passes, and which they tout as a compromise. We have accepted this too long.)
We are like that battered woman, and yet unlike her in significant ways as well. She had to live in close proximity to her abuser, and he waged a campaign of terror against her every day that kept her in shock, going from abuser to kind partner and back again in the blink of an eye. And, please, no victim blaming if you comment. She found the bravery to overcome her shock and her fear and leave and move on. The Republicans want to keep us in that woman's position, living in fear and confusion forever. Yet all they offer is fear and blatant lies, often contradicted repeatedly before our very eyes. Family values? What about the children? Jobs, jobs, jobs? Let's reduce abortion? Truth? Respect for 'real' Americans? (They weasel out of that one by neglecting to mention who they define as real Americans.) And so on.
What has Al Qaeda thrown against America on American soil in the nearly ten years since 9/11?
1. Richard Reid, who converted to Islam in prison because he heard the food was better. When other passengers observed him trying to light his shoes on fire they, er, subdued him. Vigorously. Energetically.
2. Farouk Abdulmuttallab, whose own father tried to notify authorities about his son's increasing radicalization. No one took him seriously. When his son tried to light his bomb packet on fire.....once again, the passengers subdued him.
3. Faisal Shazad, who parked a homemade car bomb in Times Square and walked away. The bomb, it should be said, was extremely amateurish, containing the sort of fireworks anybody can buy as well as various bomb elements that he didn't even connect. Shazad had been a mediocre student for much of his life, so it's hardly a surprise he apparently flunked Al Qaeda's bomb-making class. Once again, an ordinary American noted something odd, which means that that guy---a street vendor and Viet Nam vet---is more effective than the TSA, who thus far, as near as I can tell, has had difficulty in catching its own employees stealing from airplane travelers, much less terrorists.
Of course, there are other plots, but they're frequently marked by the presence and participation of FBI informants and observers. What's really the problem here is "24-itis", which is when people start forgetting that that TV show did not portray terrorists accurately. Now that bin Laden's hard drives are supposedly revealing nuclear plots and all that, I have to say: Live your lives. Terrorists don't act the way they do on "24". If you want true justice against terror, live life fully, live without fear, live boldly.
Terrorists want to blow stuff immediately once the planning's over, because otherwise they might get caught. They're not saying it for Christmas. This is also the argument against WMDs---the Repubs promoted for years this vision of Al Qaeda as the frugal little creature in a fable, saving his WMDs for....what, exactly? A special occasion? WMDs would have ended the Iraq war years earlier because they would have required troops to wear a whole other layer of heavy gear. As it was, keeping people hydrated and keeping them eating in that heat was bad enough. Insurgents and terrorists are brutally practical creatures. A few sarin bombs would have had Bush's advisors bringing the troops home in months rather than years.
9/11 effectively ended the era of successful airplane hijackings. We're actually safer these days when we get on planes, yet we have to accept the sort of poking and prodding that usually occurs in exam rooms in hospitals as a basic part of flying, despite the TSA's demonstrated ineffectiveness.
We have a degree of safety that other countries envy, even allowing for this staggering amount of gun violence in this country. The more immediate dangers we face are to our health, our rights, our homes, and our continued existence as a democracy, if the financial martial law bill in Michigan is upheld by a higher court.
Of course, I'm speaking here of terrorism, as it's presented in Republican myths and by the mainstream media. We face no garbage can bombs, no mailbox bombs, no IEDs, no VBIEDs. A train bomb---one of the things supposedly threatened on a bin Laden hard drive---is laughable outside of one of the large cities. Our public transportation sucks compares to other countries. If they had a nuke, they'd have long since used it, and then every nation on the planet would come after them.
Americans can reliably plan their day and know that they will not face firefights, IEDs, or suicide bombers, yet these are the things the Republicans want us to fear. The Republicans are killing unions, trying to make it harder for largely Democratic populations to vote, are destroying abortion rights, and appear headed for creating a one-party oligarchy. The angry men who do the most damage at workplaces, at schools, in shootouts---many of them share that party's ideology.
The Republicans ran on jobs, jobs, jobs, yet they've created not a one. Once in office, they moved on things they never mentioned: union busting, dissolving legally-elected municipalities.
We can more reliably fear stubbing our toe than we can a bombing anywhere in the country. We have more to fear from a broken steam pipe---which has happened in New York City---than we do from foreign terrorists. We have more to fear from ruptured gas lines than we do Muslim terror plots. Republicans would have you believe that terrorists laying low, plotting something big. But 'they' ---whoever they are, if they exist---can't attack the whole country at once. Just like the airline passengers, there's many more of us than there are of them. But who's doing the real, tangible every day damage to Americans? The conflict in a far away country, or the politicians who've gutted our Constitution, stolen our rights, and demonized people like firefighters, cops, and teachers? How many firefighters do you know? How many cops? How many teachers do you know? How can we live in a world where the Republicans can make these people into bad guys? What are we afraid of?
Why are we letting the Republicans scare us?
You pick your enemies, you pick your battles. I think America has more to fear from Republicans than we do from Al Qaeda. We need to follow the lead of union activists in various states, who are mobilizing recall efforts and voter registration drives. This is a battle everyone can and must fight.